MORE CONGRESS: Democrats will bring the bipartisan deal to raise spending caps and the debt ceiling for a vote on the House floor Thursday before lawmakers break for a lengthy August recess. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) made the announcement early Wednesday and it is expected to be the final vote for members on Thursday. The Senate will likely take up the package next week before they break for their own recess a week later than the House. The vote comes as conservatives make noise and try to push Trump to oppose the bill given the spending increases in the package. Including spending cuts in the bill, the package increases spending by $320 billion over the next two years, leaving some conservatives frustrated as they ready to go home to their districts for August. On the other side of the aisle, it remains to be seen how many progressive Democrats will vote against the package due to the $738 billion in defense spending, a figure that some believe is too high for them to swallow. However, as Niv Elis and Cristina Marcos report, House Democrats received the package well at a caucus meeting Wednesday morning. "We had a whole presentation from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on how good this deal was, how far above expectations it was, what a great negotiator our Speaker is. No one stood up at all to oppose it," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a progressive who intends to vote for it. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of the defense spending increases, announced Wednesday that he'll vote for the package, pointing to the $100 billion increase in domestic spending. > House Dems kumbaya: Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are scheduled to meet Thursday to address simmering tensions within the House Democratic Caucus after the two engaged in an intraparty feud over the vote on the border supplemental package in late June (The Wall Street Journal). After the vote on the Senate's $4.6 billion border supplemental, which was supported by most centrist House Democrats and panned by progressives for not having tight enough restrictions on what the administration can and can't do, Pelosi dismissed Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) for not having "any following" and for only being four votes. Ocasio-Cortez intimated that Pelosi's targeting of "the squad" was based on race before walking those remarks back. Additionally, House Democrats have taken issue with Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, particularly for claiming that Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) took votes that "enable a racist system" and described centrist Democrats last month as "new Southern Democrats." Since then, however, Pelosi and other House Democrats have rushed to the side of the four progressive members over Trump's tweet telling them to "go back" to where they came from. Three of them were born in the U.S.; Omar was born in Somalia. 
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> Saudi Arabia: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is rife with tension over how much pressure to put on the Trump administration to get tough with the Saudis. The conflict is threatening to harm the bipartisan nature of the committee's work as Chairman Jim Risch (R-Idaho) is set to put two bills forward to deal with the Riyadh situation, one from Risch, the other from Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the committee's ranking member. The move sparked backlash from Democrats who argued it violated a deal Menendez and Risch made on how to handle the Saudi legislation. Moving forward without Menendez's backing would break a long-standing committee tradition of the chairman always securing the ranking member's support before voting on a bill. One aide described the standoff as "World War III" (The Hill). > FAA Commissioner: The Senate voted to confirm Stephen Dickson, a former Air Force pilot and Delta Air Lines executive, to lead the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday by a 52-40 vote that broke along party lines. The post had been vacant since January 2018 and led by former acting chief Daniel Elwell, a former American Airlines pilot. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said Dickson was "highly qualified to lead the FAA," pointing to his past experience (The Associated Press). *** 2020 POLITICS: The battle between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) escalated Wednesday when Biden and his team hit the New Jersey senator for labeling him the "architect of mass incarceration" after he released a criminal justice plan earlier in the week. Biden panned Booker during a stop in Detroit, saying that the New Jersey Democrat "knows that's not true," adding that most of the incarceration happened before the 1994 crime bill that Biden supported was written. He then turned the tables on Booker, calling out his tenure as mayor of Newark and the city's "stop and frisk" policy. "If you look at the mayor's record in Newark, one of the provisions I wrote in the crime bill, patterned and practice of misbehavior, his police department was stopping and frisking people, mostly African American men," Biden told reporters. "The Justice Department took action against them, held the police department accountable. … If he wants to go back and talk about records, I'm happy to do that, but I'd rather talk about the future." Shortly after, Biden's team expounded upon his remarks, noting that 90 percent of those incarcerated are in state and local prisons and adding that the "absurdity" of Booker's remark is "obvious." They added that they are responding to Booker now because of the short amount of time Biden will have to do so in next Wednesday's debate in Detroit (The Hill). Politico: Cory Booker is all out of love. The Associated Press: Biden says he's not relying on Obama as "crutch" in 2020 bid. The Hill: Sanders campaign accuses Biden of "continued lies" about "Medicare for All." The Atlantic: Julián Castro's pressure to be "the Latino candidate." 
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> The Club for Growth, a conservative super PAC, is coordinating with the largest pro-Trump super PAC on ads attacking the 2020 Democratic contenders in a sign that the fiscally conservative group has warmed to Trump after fiercely opposing his 2016 presidential bid. As Jonathan Easley writes, the anti-Democratic ads have nothing to do with fiscal conservatism, the group's founding principle, and instead focus on issues important to the liberal electorate, such as Biden's record on race. The group has not committed to spending on Trump's behalf yet for the general election, although David McIntosh, the group's president, said in an interview they would likely spend against the eventual Democratic nominee. The Club for Growth is deeply frustrated by exploding spending and deficits in the Trump era, but the group blames Democratic and Republican lawmakers, saying that the Trump White House has made a good faith effort to reduce spending but has been railroaded by Congress. Trump has signaled his support for a spending bill that conservatives warn would add trillions of dollars to the deficit. Josh Kraushaar: Democrats throwing Trump a political lifeline. Reid Wilson: Inside the progressive hunt for vulnerable House Democrats. | 
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