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Weekly Washington Policy Pulse: Iran Defense Bill, GOP Retreat, DHS (March 9, 2026)
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So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business IBM
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Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, Radio News this is your weekly Washington Policy Pulse on the Balance of Power podcast. I'm Joe Matthew. Every Monday, Bloomberg Intelligence, senior policy analyst and friend of the show, Nathan Dean shares his weekly call on upcoming catalysts in the nation's capital. Listen for the most recent and relevant policy research from our team at Bloomberg Intelligence. Now with today's installment, here's Nathan Dean.
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Welcome to the Bloomberg Intelligence Washington Policy Pulse. My name is Nathan Dean. I'm a senior policy analyst in Bloomberg Intelligence in the Washington, D.C. bureau. We want to say thank you. For those of you who are joining us via the Balance of Power podcast, we always appreciate you listening. And again, if we can ever be of service, please don't hesitate to reach out. My email is endean10loomburg.net now, what I'd like to do today is just let's first talk about the House GOP retreat that's taking place in Miami. So the Senate is in this week, the House is out this week, and the House Republicans are having their annual retreat down in Miami. Now, there are a couple of questions and a couple of key things to keep in mind of this retreat. And the first is really President Trump's statement over on Truth Social this past weekend where he said that he was not going to sign any type of legislation unless the SAVE Act. Remember, this is the bill that regarded voting choices and citizen, citizen, sorry, citizenship requirements for voting, etc. Now, President Trump threw a couple of additional provisions in that True social Truth Social statement. He threw in a couple of additional provisions that were in the SAVE Act. But there's been this debate over the SAVE act of whether or not they have what's called the talking filibuster versus the filibuster versus getting rid of the filibuster. And President Trump over the weekend said, look, I'm not going to sign any type of legislation until the SAVE act is dealt with. Now, the SAVE act has enough votes, probably, actually probably enough votes to get past the House. Look, we're not handicapping this. So I haven't really looked at it all that much, but it doesn't have the votes to pass the Senate. It certainly doesn't have the votes to pass, get the 60 votes to get past the filibuster. So what Senator Mike Lee out of Utah has suggested is rather than having the filibuster, they get back to this idea of a talking filibuster, meaning that you, as soon as people stop talking, you know, that's when the vote can entail. So rather than an indefinite block by one senator, that senator or somebody else would have to go onto the floor and continue to talk, and then eventually you would have a vote after this. Now, Senator, the majority leader, Senator John Thune, has not supported this either. He has not supported getting rid of the filibuster, nor has he supported getting rid of the talking filibuster or embracing the talking filibuster idea, because the Democrats could effectively just junk up the rest of the calendar. You can have amendments, you can have additional questions, you can have different things. And the Democrats could effectively have a lot of questions attached to this, including questions that certain parties wouldn't want to be on the record. So Senator Thune has not supported this idea at all. So enter President Trump, who said he's not going to sign any legislation unless the next bill is the SAVE Act. Well, that obviously does a lot of things. You can't confirm Senator Mark Wayne Mullen to be the next DHS secretary. You can't confirm Kevin Moore to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. You can't pass the crypto bill. If there were to be an agreement on this, if President Trump actually stays true to this, it effectively blocks the calendar and it really slows things down. Now, for what it's worth, under the Constitution, the Senate can actually pass a bill. The House can pass a bill. Congress can pass the same bill. It can go to the president's desk. And if President Trump doesn't sign it within 10 days and Congress is still in session, then it does become law. So there is a way that laws can still happen if President Trump doesn't sign a bill. But a long story short is that we do think the more bigger impacts of President Trump's plan, if again holds true, is that it would actually slow the process down. We don't think that the SAVE act, and again, we're not handicapping this, we're not writing about this, but we don't see the filibuster going away anytime soon, because if the filibuster goes away, then it goes away. If the Democrats have both the House and the Senate and the presidency four years, six years, eight years, 10 years, 12 years from now. And you know, this is why Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin, back when the Democrats were trying to get rid of the filibuster, this is why the Republicans were very supportive of Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin's statements at that time. So that's going to be one thing they're going to discuss at the retreat. Another thing they're going to discuss is this idea of another reconciliation bill. So we talked about this last week. Think of the reconciliation one big beautiful bill, part two. Now Speaker Johnson, just to give you the current status of play, Speaker Johnson on Friday said that they are going to talk about this and they're going to try and come together on a reconciliation bill. Now we are at 20% chance of a bill passing this year and I'm still at that 20% chance. Look, they're going to try. But a broad bill has the problem of this is that if you have a bill that goes out there and says look, we're going to have increased defense spending, we're going to have some Obamacare changes, we're going to put some tariff languages in there, next thing you know, every single thing gets added to it and you have a massive bill that you have to find offsets for economic growth will pay for some of it but you got to find cuts. And if you're cutting Medicaid for example, or Medicare or any type of health care relation, well, we have an election in a few months, it's going to be very difficult. Oh, by the way, the House of Representatives also only has a 1 margin person vote at the moment. And so getting all these individuals on board on all the same plan when there's all these deficit hawks in here and you get the idea is that it's going to be extremely difficult. Now look, if you were to make it a very small narrow reconciliation bill, maybe tied to Iranian defense spending for example, then yeah, that's feasible. But again, if it's a small bill, people are going to say well wait a minute, why can't I attach this, why can't I attach that? And next thing you know it blows up and it becomes this massive trillion dollar spending package which again a lot of people, the one big beautiful bill is not all that popular right now amongst the American people. Republicans may not want to see this going forward. Now you will hear statements from Chairman Arrington, the Budget Committee that he wants to do this, but also you have Chairman Jason Smith, the House Ways and Means Committee saying this is not going to happen. So there's still a lot of disagreement here. And for what it's worth, there's not a lot of discussion about, you know, what's going on in the bill at this point. So I talked a little bit about Iran's defense supplemental package. Want to give you an update on that as well. So we are waiting for the White House to release what their ask is in terms of defense spending or a supplemental bill for defense spending. Now, the Pentagon put out a there was Bloomberg News reports that the Pentagon is asking for about $50 billion. Now, Wayne Sanders, who if you watched last week, you saw Wayne come on and talk about it, Wayne put out a note talking about what would be in that $50 billion ask. So if you want to talk about like defense contractors, like, you know, General Dynamics and Lockheed and so forth like that, if you want to see specifically what type of missiles that money would go to, certainly talk to Wayne. We can get you a copy of that note. But we're still waiting for the White House's ask. I've heard 500 billion, I've heard 150 billion. We just really don't know. But the reason why we're bringing this up is because when this bill comes out or when this ask comes out, then the question is, are we going to do this via reconciliation? Are we going to do this via regular order? Now, there have already been some Democrats who have said on the record that they would be in favor of a defense supplemental spending package. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for example, came on Bloomberg TV on Friday and said she'd be okay with this. And look, I think for what it's worth, you know, a $50 billion ask or $100 billion ask, that's not much for the Democrats to really get all that concerned about. And even though you saw every single one of them, except for just a handful vote for the War Powers resolution that came out last week, this is a little bit different. It's an easier vote. It's a patriotic vote, supporting our troops, etce. But the reason why I bring it up is because when that bill comes, every lobbyist is going to be like, wait a minute, I need to attach something, I need to attach something. And we've already heard folks in the over at the House Ag Committee saying about attaching $15 billion in aid to the Iran defense supplemental bill. So if you're tacking on $15 billion of that and $25 billion of something else, then that $150 billion bill gets all that much bigger. Now, the note that I put out on the terminal this morning essentially just said for that $15 billion in farm aid, I think it gets done this year. I don't know if we have anybody on the call who's really focused on the farming markets, but I think it gets done. Our colleague Alexis Maxwell has some really good research about how farmers are really struggling at the moment. And I think, you know, this comes on the heels of a $12 billion announcement that the Trump administration made the tail end of 2025. I think you'll see another $15 billion. Some of the folks on the House Ag Committee have said we need 50 billion, but I think people are talking about that $15 billion number. So let's move away from the House retreat in Miami and let's move towards the DHS shutdown. Because if you flew through Houston yesterday or if you were flying through Houston Hobby Airport, you may have seen the lines that the TSA sickouts have begun. And there was a four hour wait getting into Houston Hobby Airport. My colleague who just flew down from New York said that it was only an hour to get through Newark this morning just to get on the shuttle. The TSA line was actually longer than the flight from Newark to D.C. and so the sick outs are beginning. The TSA sick out is what resolved the shutdown in 2018-2019 when the TSA hit 10% sick out. That's when you started seeing three hours at O', Hare, four hours of LaGuardia, etc. The sick outs are actually increasing. And so while there hasn't been any substantial negotiations over the DHS tactics, if you will, related to ice, I do think that's going to pick up next week. So stay tuned. And unfortunately, if you're flying between this week and next week, make sure that you get to the airport extra early. And remember, if you're flying in from the United States, Global Entry is not open. From what? From at least anecdotally I can tell Global Entry is still not open. So TSA precheck is open. Global Entry is not. So again. But I think the DHS shutdown gets resolved probably mid next week, if not the week after that. Finally, let's talk a little bit just on the calendar. I want to talk about the midterms in a second. But for the last of the stuff that's happening at the moment, the Senate is most likely going to vote on its housing bill this week. This is the one that we've talked about in the past that would ban corporations from investing in single family homes. The way that it actually works at the moment is if you're a fund and you own more than 350 homes, you would be subject to this ban. But there's a lot of exemptions in here for build to own. There's one language in here related to disposal, meaning that if you were to build something and you would have to, if you're building a rental community, for example, you would have to dispose of it after seven years. That is somewhat of a hiccup. But the House in particular is not happy with the Senate plan. Senate plan came out, it actually includes a provision to ban a central bank digital currency up until 2030. But it came out from the Senate, Senate side from both the Tim Scott, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, also Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member. So if you imagine, if you have Tim Scott on the same side of Elizabeth Warren, this is a pretty bipartisan bill and it actually passed cloture 84 to 6. Now, a couple of those senators have said they voted for it, but they had other issues. But this most likely will pass the Senate. The White House has said they want to pass the Senate bill. So then it goes to the House. And the House is not happy whatsoever because they're getting jammed up here. So I expect some more hiccups. The House saying, look, we don't like this, we don't like this, we don't like this. Ultimately think this bill passes. Now, there may be some tweaks to how that institutional ban works. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some negotiations on that. But eventually that passes. Now the reason why that's important because next they'll be able to turn to crypto and they got to get the crypto bill done sooner rather than later because the legislative window is quickly closing. And that's one of the reasons why every lobbyist and every policymaker is trying to attach stuff to either reconciliation bills or whatever. Because if you have the housing bill that passes, the crypto bill that passes, let's say the DHS shut down bill passes, that could be it until September 30th. I mean, you have three bills. I mean, don't get me wrong, you can name some, you're going to name some post office and stuff like that, but that's it really. I mean, there's probably four or five bills that are going to pass before the midterms and then that's it. And so legislative calendar dries up and you're done. So again, that's one of the reasons why everybody's trying to attach stuff to these bills. Now, the last thing I want to do is I want to share my screen and I want to show you just the current state of play for the midterms because we're starting to get questions on that. Okay, so let me go ahead and share my screen. We're going to bring up now, this is WSL election. These are the prediction markets. And so as we go through, you know, just keep in mind these are prediction markets. These change, but we have the poly market and we have the Kalshi prediction markets for both the control of the Senate and the House. Now, on the Senate side right now, the prediction markets are 55% and a 52% chance of the Republicans keeping the Senate. This is a very good race for the Republicans. Most of the states that we're talking about that are in play are states that either Republicans previously held or President Trump did well in. You know, just as a rule of thumb, remember, one third of the Senate is up for reelection at any election or any given, you know, every two years, it's one third of the Senate. This should be a fairly easy election for the Republicans to keep. But as we'll talk about in a minute, you're starting to see some issues here. Now just let's talk about the House, though. You can see here, Kalshee, 84% chance the Democrats take the House. Polymarket, 84% chance. You know, and if the Democrats do take the House, it's only going to be by, I would imagine, 15 to 20 seats. The cook Political Report is who I rely on. They are some of the best in the business in terms of predicting individual seats. But remember, this is a good election for the Democrats when it comes to the House of Representatives, because if you've heard me on this call before, I've said it, I've said it before and I'll say it again. You know, think of US politics as like a car driving down the street with, you know, guardrails on both sides. It never stays to the center. It always goes left, right, left, right, left, right. And generally the first election after a presidential election, it swings back to the other side. And so the Democrats have a really decent chance of taking the House here. So but let's go back to the, let's go back to the Senate and let's talk about these state level races real quick. Look, we got Georgia. Senator Ossoff is an incumbent, you know, reelection going after Reelection, you can see that the predictive markets, 80% chance for Senator Ossoff in both cases. Maine, you have the incumbent, Susan Collins is facing a very competitive Democratic challenge. They haven't had their primary yet, but you can see 71% chance for the Democrats in Maine. This is one of the seats that the Democrats would have to take up if they had a chance of taking the Senate. Remember, The Republicans have 53 to the Democrats 47. And there's two independents that caucus with the Democrats. But Maine is one of those seats that they have to win. And right now the prediction markets say that Senator Collins is in trouble. Now Senator Peters is retiring in Michigan. Michigan obviously has a Democratic governor, you know, but President Trump has had a lot of strength there recently. The markets are giving an 81% chance of Democrats. So that's two seats that if you take the prediction markets, the two seats, Senator Thom Tillis is retiring, but the governor, Senator, Governor Cooper is running on the Democratic side. 80%, 83 per chance. Chance. That's three seats. So if you presume that those three. And again, I'm just going off the prediction markets, if you presume those three, now you're at a 50, 50 and you need one more seat if you're the Democrats. Now you have New Hampshire. Now you have an incumbent Democrats most likely to keep that seat. That doesn't change to 50, 50. This is the seat that you have to watch. And this is Alaska. I know everybody's been talking about Texas. We'll talk about that in a second. But you can see here the Democrat, Mary Peltola is a very strong candidate going against the incumbent Dan Sullivan. Alaska, very much an independent state. Think of Senator Murkowski running as an independent. Alaska has its own tariff issues, 55 to 46, 52 to 48. Essentially it's a coin flip. That's probably the race that you have to watch to see if the Democrats have a chance of taking the Senate. Everything else, Ohio, Senator Sherrod, former Senator Sherrod Brown is trying to get back into his seat. You know, the Republicans again, you can see here on the polymarket side, 57 to 40. But then go back to Texas for all the news headlines you've seen of Texas, Representative Talarico and so forth. Is this the chance the republic, the Democrats take Texas, Polymark it and Kalshee don't believe, you know, they have 63 to 64. So you know, Minnesota, 90% chance the Democrats retain the seat. Senator Ricketts gets his seat back. Florida obviously going to go Republican. But again, that is really that seat in Alaska is the one that you have to watch if you want to see a chance of whether or not the Democrats take the Senate. A lot of stuff that can happen between now in fact the the main primary, for example, has been resolved on the Democratic side. But again, it's one of those things that you have to keep in mind. So I'm going to stop there. I want to say thank you because we ran several minutes over but you know, we wanted to give you a taste because we're starting to think more about the elections. I'll have more thoughts on what the elections actually mean. I'm going to put that out in the terminal later. This in terms of what does it mean for policy and what it means for the certain sectors. But wanted to give you a taste. This is all at WSL election. We have another one called WSL Predict and I just want to pull it up at the moment just to leave you with one last thought because they bring in the Kalshi contract of when the Iran conflict will be over by and in the contract that says will the US Iranian ceasefire be by April 30, 2026. Last week it was at a 65% chance the conflict be over by April 30. Right now it's at 46% and it's dropping. I want to stop there, say thank you very much for attending. We really appreciate it. If we can ever be of service, please don't hesitate to reach out and we will talk soon.
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Our thanks to Nathan Dean, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Policy Analyst, bringing you the latest installment of his weekly Washington Policy Pulse. For more from BI or to join this call live each week you can email Nathan@ndeanlumberg.net that's NDE a nloomburg.net and come back to the podcast later today for the latest edition of Balance of Power.
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So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business.
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