Senate Appropriations Floods the Field with Hearings

The Senate Appropriations Committee has announced a packed schedule of hearings to explore President Biden’s FY24 budget proposal. Spanning the breadth of the 12 appropriations subcommittees, Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Vice Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) have crammed 33 hearings into the next 10 weeks.

The announcement of this schedule mirrors statements from earlier this year by Murray and Collins, who have pledged a return to “regular order” and a more open process for consideration of appropriations legislation this year. The Senate did not vote on a single stand alone appropriations bill in either of the past two years.

We will have to wait to see whether the two new leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee can deliver on this pledge. Recent practice has seen the minority party often force the Senate to run the clock on procedural timelines for debates and votes, often taking days or weeks for consideration of bills - even uncontroversial ones. Raising the debt ceiling and potential debates on the war in Ukraine and the economy are also likely to take up a lot of floor time.