WE HAVE SOME EXCITING NEWS: A new (election) year, a new speaker, and now a new name for this newsletter! Starting on Jan. 8, this newsletter will become “Inside Congress” to align with our companion “Inside Congress Live” blog, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t yet. FOR SCHUMER, WHAT’S OLD IS NEW Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last summer laid out an ambitious agenda for the latter half of the Senate in 2023 that included artificial intelligence, a farm bill, rail freight reform, marijuana banking, a long-term FAA reauthorization, prescription drug pricing legislation and more. It’s now 2024, and that agenda remains mostly unfinished. Schumer isn’t backing away from it, though — even in an election year. Schumer told POLITICO in a recent interview that he still hopes to address that ambitious to-do list, much of which got left behind as Washington descended into spending fights, a leaderless House and brutal negotiations over the border and Ukraine funding. As the new year dawns, he’s still hoping to instill a miraculous injection of energy into the otherwise snail-paced Senate. "We have a lot of good bipartisan bills — they're not at the magnitude of what we passed [last Congress] — that are working through the Senate," Schumer said late last month. "We're going to push hard and persist and try to get some of them done.” Narrowed ambitions: The majority leader knows this Congress isn’t going to be like the last, where Democrats held the House, Senate and the presidency. With that trifecta, Democrats managed to pass sweeping bills such as the bipartisan infrastructure deal and the Inflation Reduction Act. Working with a Republican House imposes different limitations, particularly since the speaker can be jettisoned with just a handful of GOP defections — making cross-aisle compromises politically risky. Another obstacle is the lackadaisical election-year calendar, calibrated to allow members time in their home states to campaign. Members are slated to be gone all of August and October, with many weeks off in the months leading up to those breaks. “They're hard in an election year,” Schumer said of his wishlist items. “But you know, that means that [there are] Republicans who want some accomplishments and are willing to work with us.” Blame game: Schumer said the Senate’s lack of progress last year was due to more than just the big complications in government funding and supplemental spending packages. He said “the debt ceiling took up a huge amount of time in May and June — and not just floor calendar time, but mental space time.” “Then we get to the last session here, we have three things that were our focus, two of which we accomplished: Tuberville and the [National Defense Authorization Act], which took a lot of time,” Schumer added But Schumer insisted last year wasn’t entirely a flop for the Senate. He cited implementation of policies passed last Congress as a 2023 accomplishment — as well as the fact that the Senate was successful in blocking the House from undoing any of that work. “We managed to prevent — even with the bad instincts of the hard right in the House — the worst things from happening,” Schumer said. — Ursula Perano and Burgess Everett GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Wednesday, Jan. 3, where we are counting the days when Congress is back. BORDER BATTLE SHAPES UP Dozens of House Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, gathered on the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas this afternoon to promote the House Republicans' border plan, also known as H.R. 2, just hours after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed their visit to reporters on Capitol Hill. House Republicans, Schumer said, would be better off supporting the bipartisan border talks now taking place in the Senate as part of the effort to pass a sprawling national security supplemental funding bill. “It's very nice that they have a trip to the border,” Schumer said Wednesday after presiding over a brief pro forma session. “But the only way to solve this is here, working in a bipartisan way with Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats and House Democrats to get it done.” Whether anything gets done in the Senate remains an open question: Negotiators met again Wednesday afternoon but, again, did not emerge with a deal. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) cast doubt on whether a proposal could come together by the time the Senate returns to session next week. "We will continue to work to get something done,” he said. “But I think it's not smart to put timelines on it given the fact that we have not been able to get something to our colleagues by this point.” Border line: Johnson said during a news conference Wednesday in Eagle Pass, Texas, that any supplemental funding package has to include strong border security provisions. He did not specify which provisions, which could become tricky since any Senate deal is likely to fall short of what H.R. 2 sets out. “If President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin by defending America’s national security,” he said. He later added: “Our position is very clear. … We want to get the border closed and secured first, and we want to make sure that we reduce non-defense discretionary spending.” Johnson’s office later gave Huddle this statement: “Unlike Senate Democrats who broke for the year having taken no legislative action whatsoever to address the border crisis, the House passed legislation over seven months ago that would have helped solve the problem already. The Speaker was proud to spend the day showing the country the results of the Democrats’ refusal to take the crisis seriously and hopes that Senate Democrats were watching.” Adding to the drama is the upcoming split appropriations deadlines, with some agencies shutting down Jan. 19 and the rest on Feb. 2 if no deal is reached. Some GOP hard-liners want H.R. 2 passed as part of any such deal. A reporter asked the assembled group of GOP lawmakers to raise their hands if they’d be willing to shut down the government over border security measures. Replied Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas): “We’re not in a classroom — we’re not going to do show of hands.” — Daniella Diaz with an assist from Ursula Perano
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