Why it Matters

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's May 20 markup touches issues ranging from congressional gridlock over duplicative federal programs to a brewing fight over whether Congress should block Washington, D.C. from ever implementing a congestion toll. Tucked alongside those fights are a bipartisan push to fix a retirement benefits error affecting Customs and Border Protection officers, and a reauthorization of the board tasked with unsealing decades-old civil rights murder records.

Chair James Comer Jr. (R-KY) is bringing five substantive measures and several postal naming bills to the full committee on Wednesday, May 20, at 2:00 p.m. in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building. Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA) leads the minority.

The D.C. congestion toll fight

The most politically charged item is H.R. 8801, introduced by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) just days before the markup. The bill would flatly prohibit any congestion toll in the District of Columbia, using Congress's constitutional authority over D.C. law to preempt local action before it begins.

In March 2026, Mayor Muriel Bowser released a long-delayed, Council-mandated congestion pricing study that had been sitting in her office since July 2021. The study found that charging drivers up to $10 per day or $0.60 per minute to enter downtown D.C. could raise as much as $345 million annually. Bowser declared the plan "deeply flawed" and said she had no intention of implementing it, citing downtown D.C.'s continued recovery from telework trends and federal workforce reductions. She also noted that Congress would "likely come down hard" on any such effort. Transportation advocates pushed back, arguing the study's findings on congestion reduction and revenue generation were compelling.

Fixing a CBP retirement error

H.R. 8844, introduced by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) with bipartisan support, would correct an administrative enrollment error that has denied certain CBP officers the enhanced "6c" retirement benefits they were promised when hired. Those benefits include an earlier retirement age and a higher annuity multiplier. The Senate previously passed a companion measure, S. 727, introduced by Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), which the Congressional Budget Office scored as allowing affected officers "to retire with a more generous civil service retirement benefit." The Senate passage creates a clear path for the House to act.

Cold case records

H.R. 3087, introduced by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), would reauthorize and strengthen the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, which oversees the release of government documents related to unsolved civil rights-era murders. The bill extends the board's authority from seven years to eleven, grants it power to reimburse state and local governments for digitizing records, establishes a presumption that records should be public, and strips certain privacy protections from documents created before 1990.

On May 12, just eight days before the markup, the board published a Federal Register notice announcing it had received 7,664 pages of records from the National Archives, the Justice Department, and the FBI related to two civil rights cold cases. A prior version of the bill passed the Senate with co-sponsorship from both Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a rare pairing that signals the measure's viability under the current Republican majority.

Preventing future duplication

H.R. 8096, the Duplication Scoring Act of 2026, was introduced by Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), a committee member. It would require the Government Accountability Office to analyze major legislation for overlap with existing federal programs already flagged in GAO's annual duplication reports, then notify the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the relevant committee when duplications are found. The CBO could include those findings alongside standard cost estimates. The bill fits neatly within the broader government efficiency push that has dominated Republican messaging since early 2025.

The committee will also take up three postal naming measures: H.R. 3350, naming a Tustin, California facility after Ursula Ellen Kennedy; H.R. 4662, naming a Glendale, California facility after Paul Ignatius; and H.R. 8669, naming a Bronx, New York facility after former Rep. Eliot L. Engel.

The full committee memo and notice are available on Congress.gov.

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