The Senate will return later this afternoon for the last week of legislative business for the summer work period. Notably, a package of kids’ online safety and privacy bills is on a glidepath to passage early this week. Specifically, the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act — which includes the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) — overwhelmingly cleared the first procedural vote by an 86-1 vote late last week, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) being the lone vote in opposition. A final vote on the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act is currently scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Off the floor, Senate appropriators will mark up the remaining five fiscal year (FY) 2025 spending bills on Thursday before the chamber gavels out for the August state work period: Labor-HHS-Education, Financial Services and General Government (FSGG), Energy-Water Development, Defense, and Homeland Security.
- Programming note. The House will not be in for legislative business as previously scheduled this week. Leadership had originally targeted this week for consideration of the House Labor-HHS-Education funding bill, but there are still several outstanding disagreements on the Republican side that have brought the chamber’s appropriations process to a halt. When lawmakers return next month, a top priority will be passing a short-term government funding bill before the September 30 deadline given how far behind Congress is in the appropriations process.