Markup Of House Appropriations Bill For Social Security

    The Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that has jurisdiction over legislation to fund the administrative operations of the Social Security Administration will markup their share of the FY 2023 appropriations at 5:30 on June 23.

    This may not matter much. Sixty votes are needed to break a filibuster in the Senate. This means that Senate Republicans can, and almost certainly will, prevent passage of a bill until after this November's elections. If things go as now expected, Republicans will control at least the House of Representatives beginning next January. Also, both Republicans and Democrats would each continue to have an effective veto over appropriations in the Senate. The President would continue to have a real veto as well. In other words, this markup session would be very, very important if there were no filibuster in the Senate but there is a filibuster so this markup may have little value other than giving some idea of the priorities that Democrats have. We have some suggestion that Social Security isn't regarded as a priority. The Appropriations Committees have been busy holding hearing concerning appropriations for various agencies including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Park Service, etc. but no appropriations hearing in either the House or Senate on Social Security.

    By the way, to give you an idea of the process for this markup, the Chair of the Subcommittee, Rosa DeLauro (who is also the Chair of the full Committee), will come up with what is known at the "Chairman's Mark" -- her proposal for what the Subcommittee should do. Members of the Subcommittee can then vote on proposals to modify the Chairman's Mark. The Chairman's Mark isn't released to the public until a few hours before the markup session.