Beltway Buzz, September 27, 2024

Gone Till November. This week, the U.S. Congress—once again—agreed to a continuing resolution (CR) to avoid a shutdown of the federal government. Funding for the government was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on September 30, 2024, but pursuant to the terms of the CR, funding will continue through December 20, 2024 (happy holidays, congressional staffers!). With their mission accomplished (or avoided), legislators have headed home to hit the campaign trail. Congress is not scheduled to return to Washington, D.C., until the week beginning November 11, 2024.

Vote on NLRB Chair McFerran’s Nomination Slips. The U.S. Senate recessed this week without holding a vote on the renomination of Lauren McFerran to chair the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This is good news for the business community, as the Board has taken a dramatic shift in favor of organized labor under McFerran’s watch, and her potential confirmation would result in a Democratic majority on the Board through August 2026. However, the post-election “lame duck” session of Congress will present another opportunity to vote on McFerran’s nomination. Of course, the results of the November elections—both for the White House and Senate—will likely factor into how Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) handles any potential vote on the nomination in November or December.

Leading Republican Urges Administration to Intervene in Ports Labor Dispute. As the Buzz recently discussed, the collective bargaining agreement covering approximately 25,000 dock workers at multiple ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast is set to expire on September 30, 2024. The business community and at least some members of Congress are nervous that the strike could have catastrophic ripple effects in the U.S. economy. This week, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, encouraging them to invoke provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act to avoid a work stoppage. The letter states that the Biden administration “shows no urgency to avert a potential strike and the economic ramifications for American families” and argues that the “administration seems more interested in cementing its ‘pro-union’ legacy rather than being pro-worker.” The Buzz hopes that cooler heads will prevail and that the parties can come to an agreement to avoid a work stoppage.

Harris Would Gut Senate Filibuster Rule. In an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio this week, Vice President Kamala Harris stated that she would support abandoning the U.S. Senate’s legislative filibuster rule to pass legislation codifying the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in Roe v. Wade. (In 2017, Harris was one of more than sixty senators who signed a bipartisan letter addressed to then–Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and then–Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer that encouraged them to “support our efforts to preserve existing rules, practices, and traditions as they pertain to the right of Members to engage in extended debate on legislation before the United States Senate.”) Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) referred to this as “an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea,” and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) expressly stated that he would not endorse Harris’s presidential candidacy as a result. Sinema and Manchin understand that once the filibuster rule is broken for one bill, it will be broken for all bills. Indeed, if the filibuster is broken to codify Roe v. Wade, it is foreseeable that organized labor will demand that it be broken to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

House Republicans Seek Rescission of NLRB Election Rules. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution (H.J. Res. 203) to rescind the NLRB’s so-called Fair Choice–Employee Voice rule, issued July 26, 2024. The rule takes away secret ballot union elections from employees that had been established under a 2020 rule. While the resolution is unlikely to gain much traction in the remaining weeks of the 118th Congress, it helps keep the issue front and center should Republicans gain control of the Board.

Hello Girls! This week, the U.S. Senate passed the “Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2023.” The bipartisan bill instructs the secretary of the treasury to design medals in honor of the more than 200 women who served as telephone operators in the Army Signal Corps during World War I. Dubbed “Hello Girls,” the bilingual operators helped connect 26,000,000 calls for the American Expeditionary Forces during the war. “Signal Corps Operators wore Army uniforms and Army insignia always, as well as standard-issue identity disks in case of death, and were subject to court martial for infractions of the military code,” the bill’s text reads, but they were later denied veteran status and benefits because they were considered civilian employees by the U.S. Army. In 1977, then-President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that retroactively acknowledged the military service of individuals—including the Hello Girls—who “rendered service to the Armed Forces of the United States in a capacity considered civilian employment or contractual service at the time such service was rendered.” This week’s legislation, which now heads to the U.S. House of Representatives, honors the Hello Girls “[f]or their role as pioneers who paved the way for all women in uniform, and for service that was essential to victory in World War I.”