The House and Senate are in session this week.

Co-authored by Luke Hogg, the program coordinator for FreedomWorks Foundation.

FreedomWorks is proud to announce that our bill of the month for December 2019 is the Small Business Prosperity Act of 2019, H.R. 4947, introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). The Small Business Prosperity Act would amend the tax code to make permanent the tax benefits pass-through businesses under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

The House and Senate are in session this week.

This week, Congress passed a short-term continuing resolution (CR) that funds the federal government through Friday, December 20. In recent years, funding the federal government has become an exercise in governing by crisis. Everyone in Congress knows these deadlines exist, but congressional leadership uses them to force members to vote for either CRs or omnibus spending bills packed with other legislative items that have nothing to do with funding the government. If members don’t vote for these bills, leadership says, the government will shut down.

The House and Senate are in session this week.

The House and Senate are in session this week.

The First Step Act has seen success since its passage in December 2018, but much more work remains to be be done at the federal level on criminal justice reform. Several bipartisan bills have been introduced to bring second chances to the formerly incarcerated, including the Fair Chance Act, S. 387 and H.R. 1076; the Clean Slate Act, H.R. 2348; and legislation to expand apprenticeships, H.R. 4369.

Budget process reform has been a frequent discussion in the halls of Congress, with members from both sides of the aisle realizing that something needs to be done to address this problem. In fact, even the disastrous Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 created the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform to explore ways to fix the broken process and make recommendations for consideration in the Senate. Unfortunately, the joint select committee wasn’t able to produce formal recommendations.