美众议院拟通过持续决议维持政府运转至12月，NDAA谈判延后

Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts, radio, news. This is your weekly Washington policy pulse on the Balance of Power podcast. I'm Joe Matthew. Every Monday, Bloomberg Intelligence senior policy analyst and friend of the show, Nathan Dean, shares his weekly call on upcoming catalysts in the nation's capital. Listen for the most recent and relevant policy research from our team at Bloomberg Intelligence. Now with today's installment, here's Nathan Dean.

Good morning and good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the Washington Policy Pulse. My name is Nathan Dean. I'm a senior policy analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. Want to say thank you for those of you who are listening to us via the Balance of Power podcast. We always appreciate you listening. Today is August 31st, the last day of August. Uh it's 10:01 a.m. The House is back. August recess is over, at least for the House. and they have one thing to do before they decide to try and say we're done for the rest of at least for the before the midterms and that is to try and get a continuing resolution passed.

So just in terms of the House calendar is they are scheduled to be here this week then they have a 10 another 10-day recess uh for Rashana and a couple of the other holidays. Um but if you ask the folks over at the House Republicans their goal this week is to get the government resolution passed the continuing resolution passed uh that keeps the government funded until December 11th. They get this done Tuesday night.

Hopefully, they have a hearing on Wednesday or Thursday and then they wash their hands and they say, "Right, we're out." Uh, and they don't come back until after the election. The reason being is for all 435 members of the House, every day they spend here in Washington is another day that somebody back home is campaigning against them. And the idea here is is that there's really not much on the legislative calendar for the House to do.

Now, this continuing resolution that keeps the government open through December 11th. Uh, the Senate has already passed it. It's now the House's turn. House is going to try and do this tomorrow night. They're going to try and do this under suspension of the rules, meaning you need a 2/3 majority. There is still a little bit of a hiccup related to something called the hemp loophole. Uh if you're in the marijuana space, it's it's it's certainly a big deal.

U right now there's a delay uh for this loophole. It delays it until December. Um I honestly think they'll just say great, you know, let's fight this in December because look, neither party wants a shutdown before the elections and you certainly don't want to have a shutdown uh occurring when you can kick the can into a lame duck period. So, I think all said then and done, the House will pass this tomorrow. Uh, and then they'll say, "Great, we're done."

Um, there are a couple of other things that they are looking at not doing just to keep in mind. Uh, there's this Russian sanctions bill. Now, if you have attended our calls in the past, you know that we've talked about the Senate passage of this bill. This would give President Trump the ability to levy up to 100% tariffs on countries that do business with Russia, uh, namely India, China, Turkey. Um, but it's not tariffs.

It's a tool for President Trump to give tariffs. Now, this bill passed the Senate. It already actually had 90 votes in the Senate, overwhelmingly bipartisan. Uh because the idea here is that a future Democrat president would also have the ability to do this. Um but there is some hesitation amongst the Democratic House side to about this idea of giving President Trump more powers. Long story short is I don't think they're going to deal with it now.

They're going to try and figure it out in the lame duck session and see what actually happens there. Uh there are a couple of House hearings this week. None of which are worthy worthwhile I think are really pointing out except the House Oversight Committee is going to have a Jeffrey Epstein hearing that involves Lean Black that's scheduled for Thursday. Uh I'm not sure if Mr. Black is going to attend or not, but you may see some headlines, but we're not covering it's it's Epstein related.

Um but since it involves Apollo Global Management's co-founder, I I just wanted to high uh highlight it. Um, something that is going to be taking place at the staffer level this week is negotiations over the National Defense Authorization Act. Now, I've talked about this in the past about the NDAA, the importance of it. You obviously when it comes to government funding and expenditures, it's really key for the defense industry.

Negotiations are taking place. The House has passed a bill. The Senate has passed a bill. They're not the same bill, but the negotiators are coming back together. So, I think what will happen here is is that they'll essentially agree on language now that the government funding has been extended to December 11th, they'll come back in the lame duck and they'll get it done. So, if you're trying to model out the NDAA from a defense spending perspective, you know, I I I think you're just going to have to see somewhere where they fall between the two, but you'll get a deal probably after the election and then it'll go forward and then you'll be good for the rest of the year.

Um, still no word on that provision though that would require uh any defense uh department uh contractor to get permission from the DoD in terms of buybacks or dividends. Uh that's in the Senate bill. It's not in the House bill. Remember, I think I've read it said in the past that my reading of that uh is fairly broad and that if you're a company like Bank of America and you have an ATM on a branch or if you're Sedexo and you're providing ketchup packets, you could be covered by this as well.

Um, I know that the Senate is aware of this, so I presume that they're looking at this, but uh, again, I'll keep you, uh, in line on that. Uh, just a couple of other things just to keep on your radar. Nothing really that crazy or that material, right, is on Friday, President Trump signed an executive order opening up and allowing farmers and ranchers to do their own food processing. Now, our analyst, Jen Partis, is looking at this.

Um, the feedback from the cattle industry was actually not that positive. the National Cattleman Beefs Association uh spoke out against this and essentially said, "Look, if you want to lower beef prices, uh don't allow foreign folks to come in. Don't allow this food processing, but allow people to grow their herds. Uh this is very impactful at the Tyson's if you were to see structurally changes over the long run, but this is the problem is because look, it's great to say you can do your own food processing, but there are certain standards.

There's health standards. There's you need to have a plant. I mean, look, it's not like you can just go out there and say, "Look, I'm going to dramatically change the brief the price of beef by saying that uh, you know, a rancher that has his own uh uh farm but no facility is going to be able to say, "Okay, I'm going to change it." So, it's symbolically I think it's something that they keep in mind. But, uh, long story short is is that it would take a long lead time for that to have any actual impact.

And the same thing can be said about the Venezuela deal. So, let's talk about the Venezuela deal for a minute. So, Friday night, President Trump announced that there was a deal in place for the United States to take an ownership stake in certain Venezuelan oil refineries. Now, we actually had a couple of emails about this over the weekend. Uh Vince Piaza, our energy analyst, and Justin Theresy, our policy analyst, put out a note actually yesterday morning.

And the cross to note is essentially is there are going to be litigation challenges to this. still early, too early to tell what the impact of those litigation challenges are going to be because of we haven