Lawmakers get ready for a tense fall
Published: September 2, 2025, 6:58 AM EDT
By Andres Picon and Kelsey Brugger
TL;DR
• Congress faces a packed agenda with less than 30 days to avoid a government shutdown while dealing with multiple legislative priorities including permitting reform and the defense policy bill • Democrats are threatening to walk away from funding talks due to the White House's moves to claw back appropriated dollars, including climate funding, creating additional tensions • Republican leaders are considering changing Senate rules to speed up confirmation of Trump's nominees, while also preparing for a second budget reconciliation package
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Congress returns to Washington this week with less than 30 days to avert a government shutdown and simultaneously staring down a pileup of other legislative priorities.
Some of those priorities — keeping the government funded, reviving a push to pass comprehensive permitting reform and advancing the defense policy bill — promise to be bipartisan in nature.
Others, like plans to start work on a second budget reconciliation package and confirm more of President Donald Trump's nominees, could be entirely partisan.
The split-screen negotiations will make for a tumultuous few months on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers left for the August recess with tensions flaring over nominees and appropriations, and the temperature is already rising — especially with the White House moving to claw-back more appropriated dollars, including for climate efforts.
Democrats have threatened to walk away from funding talks if Republicans don't provide assurances that bipartisan agreements will be upheld.
"The September 30th funding deadline will be upon us shortly," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter last week to their Republican counterparts.
"It is therefore imperative that we immediately meet upon our return to Congress next week to discuss the need to avert a painful, unnecessary lapse in government funding," they wrote.
A Schumer letter Tuesday stresses unity among Democrats, after the House and Senate minority sparred over strategy during the last funding fight.
"I have spoken with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and we are aligned on our shared priorities for September: where Republicans obstruct, we press forward; where they sow division, we answer with unity; where they threaten shutdown, we hold them accountable," Schumer wrote.
The action will kick off this week with a House vote on the fiscal 2026 Energy-Water bill, a proposal backed only by Republicans that would prop up some bipartisan energy priorities but slash funding for programs favored by Democrats.
Across the Capitol, the Senate Appropriations Committee will continue advancing bills with support from both sides of the aisle. The panel will mark up its State-Foreign Operations bill later this month.
The full Senate will take its first procedural votes this week on the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act; the House will consider its version of the bill next week. Both bills this year contain provisions supporting the Pentagon's embrace of advanced nuclear reactors.
Lawmakers are hoping to pass a compromise NDAA before the end of the year. It could serve as a vehicle for other bipartisan priorities, such as cryptocurrency legislation or a new proposal to streamline the federal permitting process for energy and other projects.
House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) are just a few of the lawmakers who are reviving last Congress' failed effort to ease reviews for energy infrastructure.
"I think what we're seeing here is a convergence of clean energy folks and people like me who are all-of-the-above meeting together with an urgency, and I think that's why I think we have a better shot at [it] this year than we've had over the last few years," Capito said on a call with West Virginia reporters last month.
Also this fall, Republican leaders will begin the process of assembling a second reconciliation bill, just a few months after passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and crisscrossing the country to sell the bill's tax, security and energy provisions to constituents.
Nominee confirmations will continue to take up the brunt of the Senate's floor time, especially with Democrats signaling that they will continue to slow-walk votes.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and the Republican conference are considering changing the Senate rules to allow the majority party to confirm nominees more quickly.
Throughout it all, lawmakers will work to move other bipartisan priorities across the House and Senate floor. Some members have vowed to revive efforts to release documents related to the crimes of the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein. The issue paralyzed the House before the summer recess.
Shutdown politics
The House's vote this week on the Energy-Water spending bill could serve as a bellwether for the rest of the appropriations process, which is already on shaky ground.
Last year, House leaders scrapped a vote on their Energy-Water bill at the last minute because they did not have enough votes for passage. The bill never passed, and Congress ultimately extended fiscal 2024 funding through the end of fiscal 2025.
Now, the House's $57.3 billion proposal for fiscal 2026 is coming up for a vote still lacking Democratic support — and with only three weeks in session before the government funding deadline.
While the House and Senate have been steadily advancing appropriations bills, Republicans and Democrats are moving in different directions, and there is no clear path for keeping the government funded past Sept. 30.
Democrats are balking at the White House's plans to unilaterally withhold appropriated funding, and GOP leaders are accusing their counterparts across the aisle of obstructing bipartisan funding talks.
"If, at the end of the fiscal year, the Democrats use any suggestion made by anybody in the administration as a cover for not doing appropriations yet — or worse yet, as a cover for trying to shut the government down — that is an argument that's not going to be sustainable," Thune said before the recess.
Republicans passed a $9 billion rescissions package in July and are angling for more cuts, infuriating Democrats who see those cuts as a breach of appropriators' bipartisan agreements.
Democratic leaders have drawn a line in the sand and said they may not support a funding deal at the end of the month if Republicans do not reject the White House's desired cuts.
"So far, the Republicans seem to think that if they can roll us once, they can roll us twice," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of several Democrats opposing spending bills in protest.
The White House's latest proposal Friday to rescind $4.9 billion in foreign aid and peacekeeping funding has already inflamed the tensions further.
The Office of Management and Budget argues that because this rescissions request was sent to Congress with fewer than 45 days left in the fiscal year, it can and will withhold the funds regardless of whether Congress approves the clawback.
The rare maneuver is known as a pocket rescission. The Government Accountability Office and congressional appropriations leaders on both sides of the aisle say it is illegal.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who put up some resistance to the White House's last rescissions request, called the latest effort "a clear violation of the law."
Schumer said it represents "an unlawful gambit to circumvent the Congress all together." The House and Senate could vote on the package this month.
Schumer warned in a statement that "if Republicans are insistent on going it alone, Democrats won't be party to their destruction."
Climate money in play
The new rescissions memo, filed in court Friday as part of a larger case, proposes to slash more than $440 million from a peacekeeping account that the White House said is "a slush fund used to support projects well beyond a core security focus, including hybrid energy power generation pilot projects in Nepal and South Sudan."
Another proposed rescission would target more than $3 billion appropriated to a State Department development assistance account that the White House said provides tens of millions of dollars for "climate resilience" and "green economic opportunities" in Honduras; "biodiversity and low-emissions development in West Africa"; a "partnership with the Green Climate Fund" to support "climate change mitigation" in Barbados; and other projects.
The White House said in its request that some of the rescissions from that account are for activities that "have completed their goals and are no longer needed for their intended purpose."
The Senate passed its fiscal 2026 Agriculture, Legislative Branch and Military Construction-Veterans Affairs spending bills with broad bipartisan support in July, and appropriators will look to make more headway this month.
House and Senate leaders have expressed an openness to passing some compromise spending bills before the end of the month and using a continuing resolution to extend the remainder of federal funding.
Some of the Senate's bipartisan appropriations work has already been waylaid amid protests from individual members. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has gotten in the way of his own Commerce-Justice-Science bill because of concerns over a provision related to the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) has been demanding a lower top line for his own Energy-Water bill, preventing it from being marked up. Kennedy also plans to protest the Senate's bipartisan Interior-Environment bill.
Schumer and Jeffries sent a letter to Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in early August requesting a meeting to discuss the government funding deadline. They followed up with a second letter last week after they said they received no response.
Asked by reporters last month whether he would be willing to meet with Democratic leaders to discuss a path forward on appropriations, Trump said he would but that "it's almost a waste of time to meet because they never approve anything."
The House Appropriations Committee's Labor-HHS-Education bill — released Monday ahead of a subcommittee markup Tuesday — includes $100 million for the Make America Healthy Again initiative. It would scrap funding for the Democrats' climate and health efforts. It would also cut the Mine Safety and Health Administration by $40 million, Democrats said.
But in defiance of the administration, the bill has a $10 million increase for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The White House has called for scrapping it.
House appropriators are also looking to mark up their Financial Services-General Government bill this week. It targets a District of Columbia suit against the oil and gas industry.
Lawmakers have already filed dozens of amendments to the House's Energy-Water bill, including ones that would protect grant funding for renewable energy projects, prevent the use of funds for rescinding energy efficiency standards and eliminate funding for the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office. The Rules Committee will hold a hearing on the bill Tuesday afternoon.
Nominees fight
The Senate's battle over Trump's nominees is set to heat up this week, with Thune facing a backlog of more than 100 picks awaiting confirmation and Democrats unlikely to relent in their resistance.
In a statement last week, Schumer said, "Historically, bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats."
Trump and top Republicans are vowing to change the Senate's confirmation rules to speed up the process. Some Democrats say such a move would amount to taking the "nuclear option."
Among the people awaiting Senate confirmation are nominees for key positions at EPA, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Energy and other agencies. Additional Trump picks, including two for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, are still waiting for committee approval.
"You can't sustain this business model, and so we're going to have to fix it," Thune said last month on South Dakota news station KOTA-TV.
Democrats slow-walked votes on dozens of those nominees before August, forcing the upper chamber to take multiple procedural votes for each pick in protest of the administration's actions and sometimes in a rebuke of the nominees themselves. Trump has become increasingly frustrated with the dragging pace of approvals.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week in which he said so-called "recess appointments are also an option" to help fill vacancies but noted it would only be a "temporary fix."
"There are some things that we've looked at, I think, that could allow for a more expeditious consideration of these nominees that still allows for a vote and people to be able to weigh in," Thune said last month without spelling out specifics.
Among the nominees awaiting confirmation are:
- Jessica Kramer to lead EPA's Office of Water
- Audrey Robertson to head DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
- Michael Boren to oversee the Forest Service
- Lanny Erdos to be the director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement
- Neil Jacobs to lead NOAA
- Paul Roberti to be administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration
Permitting talks
Industry advocates are not giving up hope that a bipartisan permitting deal can be struck now that the One Big Beautiful Bill is in the rearview mirror.
Some advocates are looking to see how renewables are treated at a time when President Donald Trump has taken repeated actions aimed at handicapping solar and wind energy.
Heather Reams, president of the center-right Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, said she was looking to permitting reform as a "bellwether."
"Are we going to start to see permitting for certain kind of energy, not others?" she asked.
In recent months, lawmakers and Hill aides have been talking about the prospects of a permitting accord — largely picking up where they left off last December, when a long-shot deal collapsed.
It had been the pet project of former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), who fought for permitting in exchange for his support for the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 Democratic climate law that Republicans have all but gutted.
The idea that the two sides — which are more polarized than ever on energy issues — are going to strike a deal in this political climate seems far-fetched.
Republicans tried to forge some bold permitting provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but the Senate parliamentarian struck them down. Democrats were highly critical.
Now, lawmakers in both parties and both chambers say they want a deal, which could look a lot like the old one: Democrats push for provisions to build out the nation's grid to unleash more renewable energy, and Republicans revamp environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act or the Clean Water Act to accelerate projects of all kinds.
In July, Capito and Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) spoke on the Senate floor about the need to work on the issue, though Whitehouse expressed far more hesitance.
"Chair Capito and I are ready to do our part to move permitting reform forward and, ultimately, across the finish line," Whitehouse said in July. "We are engaging with our colleagues in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. And I hope Republicans in the House are able to move responsible legislation as soon as this fall."
He stressed: "But I must remind everyone — again — that it makes no sense for Democrats to agree to permitting reform until the Trump administration stops its lawless disregard for congressional authority and judicial orders."
He continued to say corruption is "rampant" and questioned the administration's ability to execute any kind of legislative deal.
"So to my colleagues: If you want a permitting bill, this lawless and unconstitutional madness must end," he said.
Adding to the challenges: Many Republicans don't seem keen on making it easier to build power lines through their states, and the administration is already moving to ease how environmental laws are implemented.
Reconciliation 2.0
Congressional Republicans are gearing up for a second stab at budget reconciliation this year, hoping to build on the tax, security and energy policies of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
GOP staffers, led by a Republican Study Committee working group, have begun discussions about priorities for the next party-line bill, including a meeting last month with Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee aides.
House and Senate committee leaders have stayed mum so far about the specific policies they want to pursue, but lawmakers say they will make another run at some provisions that did not make it into the first reconciliation bill — especially those that were struck in the final weeks due to adverse rulings from the Senate parliamentarian.
Lobbyists and advocates are also eyeing potential tweaks and follow-ups to components of the first bill. Changes to clean energy tax credits, regulations and other provisions are on the table.
"We'll enact and claw back spending and eliminate fraud, waste and abuse in the multiple reconciliation packages and in appropriating lower levels of funding," Johnson said on Fox News in July. "All these things will be done while we're codifying more of President Trump's executive orders."
Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said there are dozens of tax policies members are interested in enacting, but Johnson has indicated the next reconciliation bill will be smaller than the first.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Capito have said they would be interested in reviving a proposal to impose annual fees on electric vehicles and hybrids in order to shore up the federal Highway Trust Fund.
ENR Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) and other conservatives are eager to try again on a sweeping deregulatory proposal. They fought to get a version of the "Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act" into the One Big Beautiful Bill, but were unsuccessful.
NDAA
The Senate will begin consideration of its version of the annual defense policy bill this week, and the House is expected to take up its version next week.
House lawmakers have already submitted hundreds of amendments, including some on nuclear energy and remediation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
Both the House and Senate bills advanced out of the Armed Services committees with bipartisan support, and both include language designed to push the Pentagon to further adopt nuclear energy and use advanced reactors. Trump has ordered the Pentagon to use nuclear energy for national security purposes.
The bills also include language on critical minerals production, energy and weather resilience, and environmental cleanups.
The compromise NDAA at the end of the year is likely to carry other bipartisan legislation, such as a Coast Guard reauthorization. A bill to reform the Federal Emergency Management Agency is another possible contender.
Johnson promised members of his conference earlier this year that a cryptocurrency bill would also hitch a ride.
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AI Analysis
This article highlights the significant challenges facing Congress as it returns from recess with an extremely packed legislative agenda and deep partisan divisions. The looming government shutdown deadline creates additional pressure on already strained bipartisan relationships, particularly around spending bills and nominee confirmations. The White House's controversial use of "pocket rescissions" to claw back climate and international aid funding appears to be further poisoning negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. The scope of issues—from permitting reform to a second reconciliation bill—suggests this fall session could be one of the most consequential and contentious in recent memory, with potential lasting impacts on both legislative processes and inter-party cooperation.
