With both the House and Senate in session this week (the first time that both were in Washington at the same time since the last week in September), there is a moderately busy hearing schedule. The Senate continues to concentrate on nominations (see the Washington Post nomination tracking page), while the House catches up on a host of talking point hearings. There is an aggressive list of bills to be considered on the floor of the House, both under suspension and under rules.
Rules Committee Hearing
This afternoon the House Rules Committee will hold a rule hearing on eight pieces of legislation. None of the bills being considered is of specific interest here, just the number of bills that will be considered under regular order this week.
Typically, the House will consider just two to four bills each week under a rule(s). Generally, the leadership does this to limit the time that members are forced to be on the floor for debates and votes. This frees up time for committee hearings, taking care of constituents, and other congressional duties.
With this many bills being considered, I would expect the Rules Committee to formulate closed rules for most, if not all, of the bills under consideration. This means that there will be limited debate (generally an hour for each bill) and limited (if any) amendments to be considered on the floor. While this sounds like consideration under suspension of the rules, these closed rules only require a simple majority for passage. To further limit mandatory floor time, any recorded votes on these bills will be postponed until the evening (after hearings are ended), or Thursday afternoon, the last day of the week’s scheduled session.
On the Floor
Today the House will begin consideration of eight bills under the suspension of the rules process with another nine scheduled for tomorrow. Bills of potential interest here include:
HR 2659 – Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act,
HR 5078 – PILLAR Act, as amended, and
HR 5062 – Pipeline Security Act
NOTE: I have not published an analysis of HR 2659, but it is similar to HR 9769, the Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act. That bill was considered by the House Homeland Security Committee in a business meeting on September 25th, 2024, where it was agreed to without amendment by a voice vote. The Committee Report was published on December 10th, 2024, the same day that the bill was considered under the suspension of the rules process and agreed to by a voice vote. No action was taken in the Senate.
Interestingly, there are no spending bills on the schedule in the House this week. With just four legislative weeks left in 2025 and seven spending bills not yet considered in the House (HR 5342 – CJS, HR 5166 – FinServices, HR 4213 – DHS, HR 4754 – IER, HR 5304 – LHH, HR 4779 – State, and HR 4552 - THUD), this calls into questions the leadership’s commitment to passing individual spending bills before the new CR runs out on January 30th, 2026.