First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for July 17, 2023: Summer of Minoritarian Legislating

TOP LINE The NDAA is about to burst into flames like an unwatered Christmas tree, having passed the House by a bare 219-210. The appropriations bills have become a Barbenheimer of toplines and messaging amendments. Welcome to the summer of minoritarian legislating. The Senate Appropriations Committee reported out the Legislative branch appropriations bill 30-0 mid-week, … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Impressions: Funding Breakdown in the FY 2024 Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill

By Taylor J. Swift, senior policy advisor On Thursday, July 13, the full Senate Appropriations Committee reported out the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill and report 30-0. Unfortunately, the bill text, manager’s amendment, and committee report didn’t come out until Friday morning, the day after the markup. The Senate proposed to appropriate $6.761 billion towards the … Continued

Press Releases

House Unanimously Adopts Critical Privacy Amendment, Proves Ready to Tackle Data Broker Loophole

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House of Representatives just unanimously adopted a critical bipartisan privacy amendment (Amdt #66) offered to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2024 by Reps. Davidson (R-OH), Jacobs (D-CA), Mace (R-SC), Jayapal (D-WA), Biggs (R-AZ), Lofgren (D-CA), Tenney (R-NY), and Hoyle (D-OR). This amendment closes the data broker loophole at the Department of Defense and … Continued

Press Releases

Statement on House Passage of the National Defense Authorization Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morning, the House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (H.R. 2670). In response to its passage, Demand Progress Policy Advisor Hajar Hammado issued the following statement: “We are dismayed by the deeply flawed NDAA amendment process this year, which has deprived Congress of the opportunity to … Continued

Press Releases

26 orgs urge support for Syria war powers NDAA amendment

WASHINGTON – Today, a transpartisan group of 26 organizations – including Demand Progress Action, Common Defense, R Street, Justice Foreign Policy, Center for International Policy, Quincy Institute, and Win Without War – sent a letter to representatives urging them to support a Syria war powers amendment offered by Rep. Bowman to the FY 2024 National … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for July 10, 2023: The Pre-Recess Sprint

TOP LINE Congress returns from the July 4th holiday and dives into a three-week sprint of work before the longer August recess. Appropriations bills remain the focus, with the Senate set to markup the Leg. Branch, CJS, and FSGG bills on Thursday. Look out for the proposed text perhaps the day before. The NDAA is slated to hit the House … Continued

Blog

Maricelly Malave and David Moon Appointed Interim co-Executive Directors of Demand Progress and Demand Progress Education Fund

We are excited to announce Maricelly Malave and David Moon are interim co-ExecutiveDirectors of Demand Progress and Demand Progress Education Fund. Maricelly Malave is a Boricua human rights and Latin American specialist, with expertise inmigration policy, and civil and labor rights. She is a longstanding activist for racial justice andrefugee rights with experience in peace … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for 6/26/23 – Teeing Up a Busy July

TOP LINE This week Congress starts its two-week Independence Day holiday. We’re hoping to take next week off from writing our little newsletter, but we’ll be back. Among the highlights from this past week: Senate Appropriators adopted 302(b) allocations that are very different from the House’s untenable numbers, but with many Republican defections the National … Continued

First Branch Forecast

Demand Progress Statement in Support of New Resolution Granting Senate Staff the Right to Unionize

“The introduction of a resolution to grant Senate staff unionization rights long available to workers across this country is an important step toward strengthening Congress,” said Taylor J. Swift, senior policy advisor at Demand Progress. “We commend Senator Sherrod Brown and all senators supporting this important resolution to improve congressional workforce rights. A year of … Continued

First Branch Forecast

Demand Progress Statement on Today’s Reintroduction of the PRESS Act

Today, Rep. Kevin Kiley and Rep. Jamie Raskin in the House and Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Mike Lee, and Sen. Durbin in the Senate reintroduced the Protecting Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, legislation that prohibits overreach by government prosecutors seeking to extract confidential information and sources from reporters and their communications providers. The … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for June 20, 2023: Approps Heats Up

TOP LINE After a House Administration Subcommittee hearing focused on the personal rather than the institutional aspects of the Office of Congressional Ethics, we take a deeper look at why that office is vital to an ethical Congress. Congressional unions scored an historic win for committee staff and others. This week both chambers are in … Continued

First Branch Forecast

Statement on Today’s Announcement of New House Staff and Committee Unions

Today, several congressional offices — including the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Democratic staff — have filed union petitions in the House. Staffers in Reps. Val Hoyle, Sylvia Garcia, and Mark DeSaulnier have all recently filed union petitions while a majority of staffers in the offices of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, Mark Takano, Sean … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for June 12, 2023: Who’s the boss?

TOP LINE This week. The House and Senate are in and we will see whether Republican House leadership regains control of the floor. (We discuss the power struggle in more detail in the next section.) We expect to see top-line appropriations numbers in the House, a few (big) appropriations markups, and NDAA subcommittee markups in … Continued

First Branch Forecast

Bipartisan Coalition of 35 Organizations and Individuals Urge House to Protect and Strengthen the Office of Congressional Ethics

In advance of tomorrow’s House Administration Oversight Subcommittee hearing on the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), 35 organizations and individuals across the political spectrum sent a letter today to leaders of the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee urging them to protect and further strengthen the OCE in its mission. Notably, the coalition asks for the removal … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for June 5, 2023: A return to normalcy

TOP LINE The debt limit crisis mercifully is over, for now, without the Senate as much as cutting into its three-day weekend. The institutional conditions that enabled the drama, however, remain. For now, it’s back to business on the urgent matters of the day like messaging bills about appliances. We’ll be waiting for the stalled … Continued

First Branch Forecast

The House’s new Statements of Disbursements with Improved Metadata Disclosure

In a win for government spending transparency, the House is publishing highly detailed information about the money it spends on itself. The Clerk of the House just released the latest House Statements of Disbursements — ​​which catalog every penny spent by every person in the House of Representatives — with new metadata (or entity identifiers).  … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for May 30, 2023: The debt limit agreeement

TOP LINE Appropriations bills’ markups, scheduled to begin last week, have taken a hiatus awaiting the outcome of the topic du jour. It’s not clear that House Republicans would have been able to pass those bills individually. This week: the deal that Pres. Biden and Speaker McCarthy have reached to raise the debt limit scrambled the … Continued

First Branch Forecast

First Branch Forecast for May 22, 2023: The plan for Congress’s funding in FY 24

TOP LINE Government accountability requires both structural mechanisms and personal will. By moderately decreasing funding levels for the Legislative branch, House appropriators preserved most of the structural accountability capacity of Congress in their FY 2024 spending package. Individuals, however, continue to dodge holding peers accountable. The US Capitol Police is allowing former acting chief Yogananda … Continued