September brought changing leaves and a flurry of members returning from recess. They were not the only auspicious arrivals, however, as Washington welcomed China’s leader to great fanfare and congressional outcry. On the domestic front, Congress hurriedly passed a funding bill to stave off yet another shutdown despite Republican concerns. The president then pulled a fast one by nixing funding for left-wing programs financed through federal agencies. Finally, Congress ventured into collegiate athletics in order to impose a little order on a chaotic field.
Stopgap, No Shutdown: The 119th Congress has overseen its fair share of government shutdowns, including a historic closure that lasted 43 days. In September, Washington again found itself barreling toward yet another shutdown come October 1st. In light of midterms, both the House and the Senate wanted to enact an appropriations bill with as little fuss as possible, and so President Trump signed the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027 on September 2nd, punting all funding disagreements to December.
Of course, not all lawmakers were completely satisfied. Several House Republicans expressed their frustration with Senate additions, particularly a hold on new rules for federal grants distributed by the Office of Management and Budget. These new rules would have placed the authority of grantmaking back more squarely with the executive branch, a move which Democrats have denounced as overly political. According to Sen. Murray (D-WA), “The proposed rule would systematically politicize federal funding and allow Trump officials to cancel grants at any time for any reason.” Republicans argue that this new rule would protect taxpayer money from going to left-wing causes and reclaim for the executive an authority that had been unjustly handed to bureaucrats. Despite the disappointment with the Senate’s choice to remove this new grant structure, many Republicans realized that a funded government during midterm elections should take precedence this time.
Hands off my money!: Upon signing the new appropriations bill, Trump sent the Hill into a tizzy when he announced that he would ax roughly $800 million in Congressionally approved funds. This maneuver, known as a pocket rescission, is when the executive branch seeks to cancel certain federal funding near the end of the fiscal year. The White House stated that this move was meant to protect the American people’s hard-earned money from funding destructive ventures and programs, including $567 million for Health and Human Service programs for undocumented care and $15 million for the Department of Homeland Security’s welfare for illegals. In the request to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), the White House stated that this move is “consistent with the Administration’s goal of ending the use of Federal taxpayer dollars to support non-citizens, putting Americans first.”
The president announced this hold on September 25th, only five days before the end of the fiscal year. Try as they might, lawmakers could not grab the cash back. This left many members enraged, arguing that the president overstepped congressional authority and perhaps even violated the law. While some threw around the idea of adding stricter guidelines on rescission in future appropriations measures, Senate Leader John Thune acknowledged that the legal boundaries of rescissions are “probably something the courts should decide.”
Bull in a China Shop: Washington welcomed President Xi Jinping and his stylish wife from September 23rd to the 25th. This was the Chinese leader’s first visit to D.C. in over ten years, when he was last welcomed by President Obama in 2015. President Trump and the First Lady greeted China’s first couple in style and bestowed a statue of a bronze eagle meant to represent the “free and soaring spirit of America.” While the two world leaders interacted warmly with each other, several members of Congress were left a little disgruntled at the reception. Senator Wicker (R-MI) spoke on the floor saying that he would have suggested to the White House to “not invite Xi Jinping to Washington for such a lavish welcome here in the United States of America based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.” Several members of the GOP hoped that the president would raise the issue of China’s support for Iran, particularly as the war rages on. Others encouraged the president to confront Xi on the issue of Taiwan. Still other Republicans expressed concern at the fate of religious dissenters and political activists, many of whom are in prison for their crimes against the Chinese state. Democrats were also quick to denounce the president’s attitude, expressing concern for the future of AI and tech competitiveness with China.
Tug of War: The Hill and the (White) House are at again. The war in Iran wages on and many in Congress are eager to rein the president in. The latest war power resolution introduced into the Senate, which rebuked the conflict in the Middle East, failed by one vote. However, several Republicans expressed concern over what the war is costing Americans, particularly as the daunting prospect of midterms races ever closer. Rep. Hinson (R-IA) said that, “Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran.”
Democrats are taking advantage of general frustration about the war’s effect on the cost of living for everyday Americans. Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that the war needed to end, because “Americans are getting crushed at the gas pumps, working families are getting cleaned out at grocery store counters, and family farms are going under.” It’s not clear how this conflict will be resolved, so Republicans must be prepared to answer tough questions as they continue their campaigning efforts for the midterms.
Congress Goes to College: American collegiate athletics is a multi-billion dollar industry, so of course Congress had to get involved. The Protect College Sports Act was introduced in June of this year by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). The Senate passed the bill on September 28th and handed it on to the House, which will most likely vote on it after midterms. According to Sen. Cruz, the field of college sports is the “wild West.” The bill is sweeping in scope. It hands the National Collegiate Athletics Association antitrust authority and places a minimum of revenue sharing in big universities where certain sport departments receive significantly more income than others. Additionally, the bill would standardize regulations around transfers, limit the eligibility for a student athlete to five years with a few exceptions, and place a cap and protections for athletes’ compensation for name, image, and likeness used in brand deals. It did, however, side step the issue of whether athletes are employees and therefore protected as such.
Although the bill received bipartisan support, there has been some resistance. The Congressional Black Caucus released a statement arguing that “The legislation passed by the Senate fails to provide student-athletes with employment rights, includes antitrust provisions that restrict student-athletes’ ability to bring private legal action when disputes arise, and fails to guarantee funding for HBCUs, among other significant shortcomings.” The House may have a few lively debates on the matter when they return to the Hill.
Applying Phyllis’s Philosophy Today
Students are returning to college campuses, campuses which have been transformed from places of learning to ideological battlegrounds. Phyllis was keenly aware of the effect that higher education had on transforming the outlook of America’s youth, from the embrace of radical Marxist views of Western Civilization to the pervasive poison of feminism. This month, Congress focused on the issue of college athletics, but the real crisis in higher education is the substance of the education itself. In a 2014 report, Phyllis told the story of a woman who shared her daughter’s college textbook: “the book endorses abortion. The traditional model of the family is presented as only one of many forms of family. The book teaches that married women should be liberated from marriage and turn their children over to the state to be raised. This college textbook has a radical feminist political agenda: anti-marriage, anti-homemaker, pro-abortion, and pro-lesbian.” Phyllis founded her collegians program to combat this extremism and to provide students with conservative formation, a tradition which our organization continues to this day.
Veronica Lademan is the congressional policy analyst for Eagle Forum Education & Legal.
