Back from recess, Senate turns to defense while House looks to get back to business

Niels Lesniewski, CQ-Roll Call on Sep 2, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The House and Senate are back from the August recess Tuesday with no shortage of work to do this week, let alone the month of September.

Senators start Tuesday afternoon with a procedural vote to limit debate on taking up the fiscal 2026 defense authorization bill, one of the pieces of must-pass legislation on the fall agenda.

As reported out of the Senate Armed Services Committee on a 26-1 vote, the bill would authorize $32.1 billion more that President Donald Trump requested for defense and national security spending. When the committee released a summary of the bill in July, Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., called the current threat environment the most dangerous “since World War II.”

“My colleagues and I have prioritized reindustrialization and the structural rebuilding of the arsenal of democracy. Accordingly, we have set forth historic reforms to modernize the Pentagon’s budgeting and acquisition operations,” Wicker said in a statement at the time.

Traditionally, lawmakers will consider a slew of amendments to the annual defense policy bill, with many adopted by unanimous consent.

Off the Senate floor, the Senate Finance Committee has a headline-grabbing hearing on Thursday, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. scheduled to testify about the Trump administration’s health policy agenda. That comes in the immediate aftermath of the administration’s dismissal of Susan Monarez as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the departures of other key leaders at the public health agency.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., has been among the Democrats calling for Trump to oust Kennedy.

“RFK Jr.’s stubborn, pigheaded, and conspiracy-based attacks on proven science are going to make many more people sick and cause more deaths. Americans are in greater danger every day Robert Kennedy Jr. remains as HHS Secretary,” Schumer said in an Aug. 29 statement.

In the House

The headline House floor action should be the fiscal 2026 Energy and Water Development spending bill, assuming that House Republicans can muster the votes to advance a rule without again being tied up in questions about the government’s handling of the sex trafficking case against disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Since the early start to the House’s August recess, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed records related to Epstein from the Department of Justice and elsewhere. And Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has expressed the view that the Trump administration is in compliance with the demand for documents.

Still, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he was confident that he and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., would muster the votes to discharge a bill calling for the release of the Epstein records.

“We will have the petition live on Sept. 2,” Khanna said. “We have all 212 Democrats committed to signing it. He [Massie] has 12 Republicans. Only six of them have to sign it. What will be explosive is the Sept. 3 press conference that both of us are having with 10 Epstein victims, many who have never spoken out before. They’re going to be on the steps of the Capitol. They will be telling their story, and they will be saying clearly to the American public that they want the release of the Epstein files for full closure on this matter.”

As for the Energy-Water spending bill, it would provide $61 billion in discretionary funding for the Energy Department, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation and related agencies. That figure includes proposed cuts to renewable energy and environmental cleanup activities alongside increased spending for nuclear energy research and weapons activities.

The House also plans to line up votes on three joint resolutions of disapproval designed to stop Biden-era decisions from the Bureau of Land Management. The Government Accountability Office determined earlier this summer that “records of Decision” like those used to implement resource management plans at BLM are subject to the disapproval process outlined in the Congressional Review Act.

All of this is a prelude to later in the month when the House and Senate will need to figure out a way to avoid a funding lapse and partial government shutdown at the end of September.