Bills Introduced – 7-24-25
Yesterday with just the Senate in Washington, there were 49 bills introduced. Three of those bills will receive additional coverage in this blog:
HR 4754 Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026 Rep. Simpson, Michael K. [R-ID-2]
S 2431 An original bill making appropriations for the Department of the Interior, environment, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes. Murkowski, Lisa [Sen.-R-AK]
S 2465 An original bill making appropriations for the Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes. Hyde-Smith, Cindy [Sen.-R-MS]
Spending Bills
HR 4754 will be similar to HR 8998, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies [IER] Appropriations Act, 2024, that was introduced by Simpson in July 2024. That bill was passed in the House on July 24th, 2024, in a party-line vote. No action was taken in the Senate.
NOTE: HR 4754 does continue funding (at a much reduced rate) of the Chemical Safety Board, which the Trump Administration proposed zeroing out and closing as of October 1st. More details in a later post.
S 2431 will be similar to S 4802, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025, that was introduced by Sen Merkley in July 2024. No action was taken on that bill in the 118th Congress.
S 2465 will be similar to S 4796, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025, that was introduced by Sen Schatz (D,HI) in July 2024. No action was taken on that bill in the 118th Congress.
MIP
I would like to mention one other bill in passing that will not receive additional coverage in this blog:
S 2427 A bill to require certain agencies to impose extendable sunset dates on certain regulations, and for other purposes. Risch, James E. [Sen.-R-ID]
Readers of this blog are surely aware of what can happen when Congress imposes sunset dates on statutes that form the legal basis for regulatory action. The idea is sound, Congress would periodically go back and review an agency, its mission, and the need for it to be renewed, revised, or closed. In a perfect legislative world those reviews would be scheduled by the Committee(s) assigned oversight of the program, hearings would be held, new statutory language crafted, and both houses of Congress would vote up or down on those bills. But, as we have seen, a single Senator can completely stall that process and kill a program that a majority would vote to continue.
It looks like Risch has come up with a way to avoid that political blockage by transferring the sunset date from a congressional mandate to an agency mandate, avoiding the need for periodic congressional review and renewal. I am not sure that I would like to see this Administration or (to a lesser degree) any other Administration that I have observed, have that level of control over the existence federal agencies. I think the Founding Fathers included the idea of checks and balances in the formation of our government for a reason.
The current process did indeed fail the CFATS program, but how many other agencies would have been erased since January 20th, 2025 if there had not been a system of checks and balances in place to moderate the DOGE ax.