The House is out of session until Sept. 4, but the Senate plans to keep working, beginning next week with a vote on a major appropriations measure, a defense policy bill, and a motion to begin negotiations with the House on a five-year farm policy measure.
The Senate will also probe “foreign influence operations” in social media.
The subject will be part of a rare open hearing conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The panel has invited social media experts to discuss the issue, which lawmakers are focused on following President Trump’s Helsinki meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his walked-back suggestion that Russia did not try to meddle in the 2016 election.
The Senate is planning to dedicate part of the summer work session to confirming President Trump’s judicial and executive nominees, staring with a vote on the nomination of Britt Grant to serve as a judge for the 11th Circuit.
[Related: Trump calls on McConnell to keep Senate in session until all ‘good people’ are ‘approved’]
Senate lawmakers are preparing to hold a confirmation hearing on Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh will continue making the rounds in the Capitol, where he has already met with dozens of Republicans. He plans to start meeting with at least a few Democrats in the coming weeks and will sit down this week with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
The Senate also plans to vote next week on the Interior, Environment, Financial Services, and General Government appropriations legislation.
The bill combines four separate spending bill into one package, which lawmakers have labeled a mini-bus.
Republicans are eyeing consideration of a massive spending bill that would combine Department of Defense spending as well as the funding for the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Departments.
But the Defense-Labor-HHS bill was not announced as part of next week’s agenda and could slip until after a planned weeklong recess beginning August 6.
“We are trying to negotiate any amendments we have left,” Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said when asked about the Interior-Environment bill. “We are making progress. I’m hoping we will finish these bills and at least get into Labor-HHS. If we can do this, it would be progress.”
The Senate schedule, however, is already full next week.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the Senate will also consider the House-Senate compromise 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.
The bill calls for $716 billion in defense spending and could run into opposition from Democrats and some Republicans because GOP leaders stripped out a provision that would have re-installed sanctions on the Chinese firm ZTE. The sanctions language was taken out as part of a deal to include increased oversight of foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms.
An aide to Senate Armed Services Committee senior member Jim Inhofe told the Washington Examiner Inhofe expects the bill will pass.
The Senate is also poised to clear a House-passed measure extending the indebted National Flood Insurance Program until Nov. 30, which is the end of the official hurricane season.
The bill does not implement reforms and has attracted opposition from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
Lee tried to introduce an amendment that would have capped flood insurance at $2.5 million.
“My amendment says that people who can afford a multimillion dollar waterfront home should be able to afford to ensure those homes on their own without a government subsidy paid for my America’s poor and middle class.”
The amendment was blocked by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who is on the panel working on an NFIP reform plan lawmakers hope to pass later this year.
