Welcome back from the Thanksgiving holiday! The House and Senate are both in session this week. The big items on the agenda for the remainder of the session are government funding and the National Defense Authorization Act. House Democrats will also elect their new leadership team
House Democratic Leadership Elections
After November election results made clear Republicans would have a slim majority in Congress next year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) each announced they would not seek reelection as the top three Democrats in the House. The announcements kicked off a flurry of quiet campaigning within the caucus to form a new leadership team for the first time in two decades.
Current House Democratic Caucus Chair, Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D- N.Y.), quickly secured support to succeed Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House and is unopposed for Minority Leader. Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) has lined up the votes for Minority Whip, and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) locked up the third-ranking slot as House Democratic Caucus Chair. There are four additional races to be decided on Wednesday.
NCA has established good relationships with leadership on both sides of the aisle, including presumptive Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Republican Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.). Congressman Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.), featured in a recent Club Director, is running to lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Government Funding Expires December 16
Among the top priorities for the remainder of the legislative session is an omnibus spending measure to fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2023. The stop-gap continuing resolution keeping the government open expires at midnight on December 16. In addition to the compressed timeframe, negotiations have yet to be fully engaged or even get to an agreement on the top line numbers to guide discussions. Election year uncertainty about government funding isn’t out of the ordinary, but with a change in party control of the House, it can make negotiations a bit more complicated. I would expect another week-long continuing resolution to allow additional time to reach an agreement prior to the Christmas holiday.
Respect for Marriage Act
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division was expected to have released a proposed rule to update overtime threshold regulations by now, but there has been no indication of when it will be published. According to the Unified Regulatory Agenda, the proposed rule was supposed to have been ready for publication in October, but there has been little information on its status. The current salary threshold is $35,568 for potential exemption from overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that was set in 2019. Labor organizations have argued that the administration has the authority to increase the threshold to more than $82,000, but the Department of Labor is not expected to be that aggressive. The Obama Administration increased the threshold to $47,476 in 2016 only to be invalidated by the courts in 2017. NCA discussed the overtime threshold with Department of Labor officials prior to the rulemaking stage and filed a response to the request for information on the impact of a change in the threshold.
In addition to the overtime threshold, the Labor Department is expected to release regulations to change the way prevailing wages are calculated and expand reporting requirements for businesses using so-called “persuaders,” who are consultants employed to monitor or persuade employees on collective bargaining or labor disputes. NCA has not weighed in on these regulations, but they are important in the overall labor-management regulatory landscape.
Thursday Webcast: 2022’s Private Club Challenges and Lessons Learned
On December 1, at 2 p.m. ET, join NBC Sports’ Rick Coffey and a panel of top club leaders, including Colin Burns, Michael McCarthy, and Brad Shupe as they talk about the top five challenges 2022 brought to their clubs and how they faced each one—and what they learned along the way that’s preparing them for 2023 and beyond. This will be a very valuable webcast. Register here.