This week: Congress returns to anniversary of Jan. 6 attack

Lawmakers are returning this week as the nation nears the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, where a pro-Trump mob temporarily interrupted the counting of the Electoral College results. 

After leaving Washington for an extended holiday break, the Senate will return on Monday. The House is out of session until next week. 

Nearly a year after the attack, congressional leaders and President Biden are announcing plans for how they will commemorate the first anniversary of the riot, which forced lawmakers to evacuate the House and Senate chambers as they were trying to formally certify Biden’s 2020 election victory. 

Biden and Vice President Harris will speak at the Capitol as part of a series of events organized by Democrats. 

Though the House will be out of session, Pelosi told members in a letter late last week that there will be a moment of silence on the House floor, as well as time for lawmakers to share their memories of Jan. 6 and a conversation with historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham. 

There will also be a prayer vigil for House and Senate lawmakers at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday. 

“These events are intended as an observance of reflection, remembrance and recommitment, in a spirit of unity, patriotism and prayerfulness,” Pelosi wrote in the letter to her members.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) also wrote a USA Today op-ed urging Americans to lower their flags to half staff at 2:11 p.m., when the Capitol was first breached, and raise them again at 8:06 p.m., when the Senate reconvened. 

The anniversary comes as a House special committee tasked with investigating the attack is plowing forward with its probe. 

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the select committee, told CNN on Sunday that it believes it is “in a good place” to start the process of drafting its report. 

“We will meet and establish a timeline for the production of the report because there’s some legislation that we hope to recommend with this report that Congress needs to adopt so that what occurred on Jan. 6 will never happen again,” he said.

Thompson also said that the committee wanted to hear from sitting lawmakers, including Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), about then-President Trump’s movements on Jan. 6. 

Build Back Better

Democrats are trying to find a way to revive the Build Back Better legislation, a central pillar of Biden’s legislative agenda, as they return to Washington. 

Democrats’ hopes of a quick vote on the sweeping climate and social spending bill, tagged at roughly $2 trillion when it passed the House, ran into a wall late last year when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said that he wouldn’t vote for the bill. 

Senate Democrats have made changes to the House legislation in order to win over Manchin, but, in a “Fox News Sunday” interview last month, the West Virginia senator made it clear that it hadn’t been enough.

“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” he told guest host Bret Baier. “This is a ‘no’ on this legislation.”

But Democrats and the White House are vowing to plow forward. 

Schumer has vowed to bring the spending legislation up for a vote and force senators to go on the record. 

“Senators should be aware that the Senate will, in fact, consider the Build Back Better Act, very early in the new year so that every Member of this body has the opportunity to make their position known on the Senate floor, not just on television. We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act — and we will keep voting on it until we get something done,” Schumer said in a “Dear Colleague” letter sent on Dec. 20. 

Schumer added during a press conference in New York on Sunday that “BBB is extremely important … so we are continuing to work to get BBB done.”

One option floated by Democrats is to scale back to the bill to include fewer priorities but funded for a longer period of time. One of Manchin’s key criticisms of the bill so far has been that it would end up costing trillions more because the programs would likely be extended. The White House has said it would pay for any extensions. 

Democrats also still need to get large swaths of their bill by the parliamentarian, who offers guidance on if it complies with the strict rules governing what can be included because Democrats are using reconciliation to get the legislation around the 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has rejected three immigration proposals from Democrats, with a growing number of senators in the caucus signaling that they would support voting to overrule her. 

Voting rights

Schumer is vowing to bring voting rights legislation back up for a vote and if — as expected — Republicans block the legislation from getting the 60 votes needed to open debate also force a vote on changing the Senate’s rules. 

“Rules changes are on the table,” Schumer said on Sunday. 

To change the rules, Schumer either needs the support of 17 GOP senators or unity amongst all 50 Democratic senators. The first, Democratic senators acknowledge, won’t happen, and they don’t have the buy-in from every member of the Senate Democratic Caucus yet. 

Democrats are exploring a range of options when it comes to changing the Senate’s rules. One option would get rid of the first 60-vote threshold that currently needs to be met for most legislation to be debated on the Senate floor, but leave in tact a second 60-vote hurdle to end debate and bring legislation to a final vote. 

Other, more far-reaching options, would change the filibuster to a talking filibuster where opponents could slow down legislation for as long as they could hold the floor, but then a bill would only need a simple majority to pass the Senate. 

Democrats are also debating creating a carve out from the 60-vote hurdle for voting rights legislation, but leaving it in place for other bills, or changing the requirement from needing 60 “yes” votes to advance to 41 “no” votes in order to prevent a bill from moving forward. 

Nord Stream 2 sanctions

As part of an agreement worked out between Schumer and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the Senate will vote by the end of next week on sanctions related to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which carries natural gas from Russia to Germany. 

In exchange for a vote on Cruz’s legislation, the Texas Republican agreed to drop his hold on dozens on a slate of Biden’s nominees, with the Senate confirming dozens before they left town for the year in December. 

Cruz will need the support of at least 10 Democratic senators to pass his bill. A source familiar with his thinking previously told The Hill that Cruz believes he’ll get enough support for the legislation to be sent to the House. 

Nominations

The Senate will start its week on Monday night voting on Gabriel Sanchez’s nomination to be a judge for the 9th Circuit. A vote on confirming Sanchez is set for 5:30 p.m., after the Senate got the nomination over an initial hurdle before wrapping up work last month.