Beltway Buzz - July 14, 2017

Greetings from hazy, hot, and humid Washington, D.C. Here is your Beltway Buzz.

McConnell Delays August Recess, Vows Health Care Vote "Next Week." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced on Tuesday that he is delaying the August recess by two weeks in order to enable the Senate to attend to matters that are becoming increasingly urgent. In particular, after Senate Republicans released a new version of the Affordable Care Act repeal/replace effort on Thursday, July 13, McConnell remarked that he intends to set a vote on the bill sometime next week. Besides health care, there are a number of other hot items on the horizon, including the Fiscal Year 2018 budget, the National Defense Authorization Act, and tax reform. The federal government will shut down on October 1 if a new funding bill is not passed, and the nation's borrowing limit must be raised no later than early October to prevent a possible governmental default. As if all this weren't enough, McConnell has indicated that he hopes to address the increasing backlog of unconfirmed nominations to important posts. Adding two more working weeks to the schedule may hardly make a dent in the task at hand, but at least it shows that there is recognition within the Senate that time is quickly running out. (Hat tip to Stephanie A. Smithey, Timothy G. Verrall, and Richard C. Libert.)

Joint-Employer Hearing and Legislation. On Wednesday, July 12, the House Education and the Workforce Committee held a hearing on the joint-employer issue and its impact on job creation. This hearing (along with probably half a dozen hearings on the issue over the last two years) will help to serve as the legislative record for the introduction of a bill to codify the pre-BFI (2015) "direct and immediate control" standard. We are also told that the bill will go beyond the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and make changes to the joint-employer standard in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as well. Expect the bill to be introduced sometime in the next few weeks.

DOL/NLRB Nominee Hearing. The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing yesterday on Patrick Pizzella's nomination to be Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and on the nominations of William Emanuel and Marvin Kaplan to be members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The committee will vote on the NLRB candidates on July 19, but no date has been set for committee...