PSW Weekly Round-Up - 4/7

Legislative Update

Senate. The Senate will continue to consider nominations. Both chambers plan to recess at the end of this week and will be gone for two weeks for the Easter and Passover break.

House. The House abruptly adjourned for the week last Tuesday after Speaker Mike Johnson was rebuffed in a vote on his effort to block Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s legislation to allow proxy voting in the House for new parents. Luna (R-Fla.) said Sunday that a deal has been reached that will end the standoff that has halted work in the House. Under the agreement, proxy voting would continue to be prohibited, but “vote pairing” will be formalized, which will allow a member who is absent during a vote to coordinate with a present member on the opposite side of the vote and offset the absence. Luna said the voting option would be open to all members who are unable to vote, including new parents, the bereaved, and lawmakers facing various medical and family emergencies.

With the impasse over proxy voting apparently resolved, the House will consider the various measures that were scheduled to be voted on last week. This includes two Congressional Review Act resolutions that have been approved by the Senate. One would repeal the Biden Administration rule capping overdraft fees that large banks and credit unions can charge, while the other would repeal a rule that expands the oversight of digital payment apps like Venmo and PayPal. The House will also vote on the SAVE Act, which would require individuals to provide proof of U.S. citizenship in person when registering to vote in federal elections.

The major vote of the week will be on the FY 2025 budget resolution that the Senate approved 51-48 on Saturday. Johnson has a bit more room to navigate close votes now that two more Republicans have been sworn in. Reps. Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine were sworn in April 2 after their special election victories in Florida to fill the seats of Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz, respectively. The House now stands at 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats, with two Democratic vacancies. A special election on Sept. 23 will fill the seat of Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has set November 4 as the date for a special election to fill the seat of Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died on March 5.

Budget Resolution. Speaker Johnson is tentatively planning to bring the Senate-amended budget resolution to the floor Wednesday afternoon. Over a dozen House Republicans have voiced opposition to the measure, but the question is whether they will actually vote no under pressure from President Trump to adopt the resolution. The reasoning behind opposition to the Senate version is reflected in Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington’s (R-Tex.) observation that “the Senate response was unserious and disappointing, creating $5.8 trillion in new costs and a mere $4 billion in enforceable cuts…. It also sets a dangerous precedent by direct scoring tax policy without including enforceable offsets.”

Rather than working out an agreement with the House on instructions for reconciliation, the Senate left the House’s instructions to its committees intact and then inserted its own, very different instructions for its committees. Thus, the budget resolution adopted by the Senate calls for Senate committees to come up with a minimum of $4 billion in spending cuts while House committees have instructions for at least $1.5 trillion in cuts.

The “direct scoring” that Arrington referred to is the Senate’s use of a current policy baseline, which would score as zero the cost of extending some $3.8 trillion in tax cuts that are expiring at the end of the year. The Senate resolution then provides for at least $1.5 trillion more in tax cuts. The House, on the other hand, uses the conventional baseline based on current law and provides instructions for $4.5 trillion in tax breaks. Another major difference is that the Senate instructs the Finance Committee to increase the debt limit by $5 trillion while the House Ways and Means Committee is instructed to provide a $4 trillion increase.

House and Senate Republican leaders have decided to move forward with this novel approach to a budget resolution with the intent of resolving differences between the two chambers later in the negotiations over the budget reconciliation legislation.

Tariffs. Today President Trump said he would impose an additional 50% tariff on goods from China, effective April 9, if China does not withdraw the 34% tariff it said that it would impose on U.S. goods, effective April 10, in response to the 34% “reciprocal” tariff on China that Trump announced on April 2. Before Trump’s threat today, China was already facing a cumulative tariff rate of at least 54% when adding in the 20% tariffs Trump imposed in February to address the flow of fentanyl from China into the U.S. Hiking the 34% rate to 50% could mean Chinese goods would face tariffs of at least 70%.

The “reciprocal” tariffs for China and other U.S. trading partners that Trump announced last week were intended, the Administration said, to reciprocate against other countries’ tariffs and trade barriers. However, economists have pointed out that the higher tariff rates for some 60 countries that maintain trade surpluses with the U.S. do not actually reflect tariffs and trade barriers imposed by those countries. Instead, the U.S. determined the tariff rates using a formula taking into account each country’s exports and imports.

Committee Action of Note

Monday, April 7

• House Rules Committee Meeting to formulate a rule on various measures, including:
  • H.R. 1526, “No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025”
  • H.R. 22, “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act”
  • S.J. Res. 18, “Disapproving of the rule submitted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau relating to Overdraft Lending: Very Large Financial Institutions”
  • S.J. Res. 28, “Disapproving of the rule submitted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau relating to Defining Larger Participants of a Market for General-Use Digital Consumer Payment Applications”

Tuesday, April 8

• Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Hearing to consider pending nominations, including Stephen Vaden to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture
• Senate Finance Committee Hearing: “The President’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda” with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer
• House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health Hearing: “Lowering Costs for Patients: The Health of the Biosimilar Market”
• House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Hearing: “Decades of Dysfunction: Restoring Accountability at HUD”
• House Agriculture Committee Hearing: “The Power of Work: Expanding Opportunity through SNAP”
• House Administration Subcommittee on Elections Hearing: “Revisiting the 2024 Election with Secretaries of State”
• House Financial Services Task Force on Monetary Policy, Treasury Market Resilience, and Economic Prosperity Hearing: “U.S. Treasury Debt in the Monetary System”
• House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Intelligence Hearing: “Deficient, Enfeebled, and Ineffective: The Consequences of the Biden Administration’s Far-Left Priorities on U.S. Foreign Policy”
• House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Work and Welfare Hearing: “Government Watchdog Findings: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program in Need of Reform, Better State Accountability, and Fraud Protection”
• House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation Hearing: “Final Report of the National Security Commission for Emerging Biotechnology”

Wednesday, April 9

• Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Hearing to consider pending nominations, including:
  • Jared Isaacman to be Administrator of NASA
  • Olivia Trusty to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission
• Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Markup to consider pending nominations, including:
  • Scott Kupor to be Director of the Office of Personnel Management
  • Eric Ueland to be Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget
• Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Markup to consider four measures, including S.714, to amend the Energy Act of 2020 to include critical materials in the definition of critical mineral
• Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Hearing: “Improving Future Management of the Superfund Program”
• Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider pending nominations, including:
  • William Kimmitt to be Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade
  • Kenneth Kies to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy
• House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee Hearing: “Sanctuary Jurisdictions: Magnet for Migrants, Cover for Criminals”
• House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Hearing: “Restoring Trust in FDA: Rooting Our Illicit Products”
• House Foreign Affairs Committee Markup of nine measures, including:
  • H.R. 747, To impose sanctions with respect to Chinese producers of synthetic opioids and opioid precursors, to hold Chinese officials accountable for the spread of illicit fentanyl, and for other purposes;
  • H.R. 1998, To require the imposition of sanctions with respect to foreign persons engaged in piracy, and for other purposes;
  • H.R. 2635, To support the human rights of Uyghurs and members of other minority groups residing primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and safeguard their distinct identity, and for other purposes;
  • H.R. 1422, To impose sanctions with respect to persons engaged in logistical transactions and sanctions evasion relating to oil, gas, liquefied natural gas, and related petrochemical products from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and for other purposes;
  • H.R. ___, To provide for control of remote access of items under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018;
  • H.R. 260, To require a strategy to oppose financial or material support by foreign countries and nongovernmental organizations to the Taliban, and for other purposes;
  • H.R. 2643, To require the Secretary of State to submit an annual report to Congress regarding the ties between criminal gangs and political and economic elites in Haiti and impose sanctions on political and economic elites involved in such criminal activities.
• House Energy and Commerce Hearing: “Converting Energy into Intelligence: The Future of AI Technology, Human Discovery, and American Global Competitiveness”
• House Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence Hearing: “American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets Aligning the U.S. Securities Laws for the Digital Age”
• House Ways and Means Committee Hearing: “The Trump Administration’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda” with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer
• House Appropriations Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Oversight Hearing: Review of U.S. Department of Agriculture Programs
• House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government Hearing: “GAO’s Assessment of the Costs of Deferred Maintenance Across the Federal Government”
• House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party and U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging Joint Hearing: “How the CCP Exploits American Retirees and Undermines National Security”

Thursday, April 10

• Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to consider pending nominations, including:
  • Mr. Preston Wells Griffith III to be Under Secretary of Energy;
  • Dr. Dario Gil to be Under Secretary of Energy for Science; and
  • Ms. Kathleen M. Sgamma to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior

Recent Executive Actions of Note

The President’s recent executive actions include:

• Combating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market – March 31, 2025
• Establishing the United States Investment Accelerator – March 31, 2025
• Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices that Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits – April 2, 2025
• Further Amendment to Duties Addressing the Synthetic Opioid Supply Chain in the People’s Republic of China as Applied to Low-Value Imports – April 2, 2025
• Review of Proposed United States Steel Corporation Acquisition – April 7, 2025

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