The Final Countdown: Just One Week Left for the Senate

The last days of legislation before the Senate recesses for the midterm elections are upon us. A bevy of bills remain unresolved – and many of them will stay that way at least until lawmakers return for the lame duck session. Will the upper chamber fill this final week with real legislative work, or will they take a knee and ride out the clock?

One thing that must be pointed out is that anything the Senate does that requires further contribution from the House will have to wait. While the upper chamber has work to do this week, the lower recessed on Wednesday, September 16, and, like the Senate, won’t be back until November 9. When they come back, they’ll have a short five-week span after the election – the timing of which brings about its own potential pitfalls – to handle all remaining year-end priorities.

Will Athletes Get a Sporting Shot in the Senate?

That said, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is reportedly looking to make the most of the remaining days. Lawmakers convene at 3 p.m. this afternoon and, following the leader's remarks, will debate and ultimately hold a final vote on the Protect College Sports Act of 2026. This bit of legislation would protect the NCAA, the governing body for college sports, from antitrust lawsuits, establish caps on both revenue sharing and fees charged by agents representing student-athletes, and require colleges to provide medical coverage for the athletes and guarantee any scholarships for ten years so students can finish their degrees when their playing days are over.

It’s a bipartisan effort, with both Republican and Democrat co-sponsors, but it’s far from universally loved. The NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the AFL-CIO have all pushed back on it.

In response to opposing remarks, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) admitted it wasn’t perfect. “Not everyone got everything they wanted. Frankly, I didn’t. And neither did my counterpart, Ranking Member Maria Cantwell,” he said, name-dropping his co-sponsor from across the aisle. “But this is what legislating means. It means Republicans and Democrats listening to each other and finding middle ground. It means compromising to reach an agreement. It is the way our founding fathers designed the legislative process for the good of the whole.”

Should it pass in the Senate, however, it still won’t be a done deal. After Election Day, this bill would still have to go to the House, which has already failed multiple times to pass a different version of it.

AI and the Price of Information

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and President Donald Trump plan to meet with AI industry leaders on Tuesday. Meanwhile, back in the Senate, Republicans are eyeing Wednesday for an initial vote on the Ratepayer Protection Act, according to a report from Politico.

The bill, as it exists presently, doesn’t force states to regulate data centers, but it does require they “consider” policies that require them to shoulder any increased cost for electricity. Some states already do – but some do not. What does that mean for your electric bill? Well, when power consumption skyrockets – as it generally does when a data center opens – the surge in demand pushes up standard rate prices for everyone in the region. As well, when the grid itself has to be upgraded to accommodate higher demand, that cost is spread out on everyone’s bill as well. In states that charge it all to the tech companies, residential and smaller commercial rates won’t rise quite so much, if at all.

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This, too, is a bipartisan bill – and massively so in the House, where it passed 417 to three on September 16. Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) tried to get the bill passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, but Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) blocked the effort.

“The president wants it. House Democrats and Republicans want it. Consumers want it. The business community wants it,” Husted said on the 10-Minute Drill podcast. “They just had to not object to it, and it would be on the president’s desk. It would have already been signed, and we would have a law in the land that requires states to force data centers to pay their own way when it comes to electricity. But the Democrats blocked it, so I’m not going to give up on it," Husted argued, somewhat overstating what the bill actually does.

While it won nigh-unanimous support in the House, it’s unclear as of yet just how many Senate Democrats will support it. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), for example, lambasted the bill as “an effort to rescue Husted’s campaign.”

Lame Ducks and Legislative Leftovers

That’s probably all the Senate will do this week – if the initial vote goes well for the Ratepayer Protection Act, a final vote might occur by Friday – or it might not. Pretty much everything else will be simply laid down and picked back up again on November 9. But, as previously mentioned, that timing brings issues of its own.

The current stopgap spending bill will expire on December 11, and full-year bills for 2027 still aren’t done. This one has a real deadline, but even that doesn’t guarantee progress. Depending on how the midterms go, it could well result in just another continuing resolution.

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The annual defense authorization bill and a deal to extend FISA’s lapsed surveillance authority remain on the Senate’s long to-do list, as do a major cryptocurrency bill and possible energy and infrastructure permitting reforms. And finally, there are still 27 Trump nominees who have cleared their committee hearings and are just waiting on a final confirmation vote.

If Republicans hold both the House and the Senate, they may not feel much pressure to complete anything beyond government funding and the nominations. If, however, Democrats retake one or both chambers, the pressure is on – and that pressure will come equally from both sides of the aisle. The GOP will want to get as much done as possible before losing the majority, and Democrats will likely push as hard as they can to postpone until they get the upper hand in January. That’s the double-edged sword of pushing things past Election Day. It buys the majority time to clear the midterms without these issues weighing heavily on the results – but it also risks any real chance of success should they lose anyway.