Six Month Continuing Resolution Introduced

While the official version from the Government Printing Office has yet to be printed, the House Rules Committee, the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee have all announced that HJ Res 117, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2013, was introduced yesterday. The House Rules Committee will meet tomorrow to prepare the rule for the floor consideration of this bill; it will likely be a closed rule with no amendments.

This will be a six month long continuing resolution providing funding through March 27, 2013 {§106(3)} with a slight increase (0.612%) in funding across the board with additional funding in some specific, non-controversial areas.

CFATS Extension

The CR will extend the CFATS program through the same date and it will receive the same general funding increase as the rest of the government. This means that the program dodged a funding cut as both the House and Senate versions of the Homeland Security spending bills would have cut the CFATS spending; by 50% in the House version.

Cybersecurity Spending

The CR will increase spending on the NPPD Infrastructure Protection and Information Security account to $1.17 Billion (it was $1.11 Billion in HR 5855). The increase is going to the Network Security Deployment and Federal Network Security accounts. All other cybersecurity spending will be at the standard increase set by the CR.

Moving Forward

All news reports that I have seen assume that this is a done deal with agreement of the leadership of both the House and Senate. We should expect to see a House floor vote on the measure on Thursday and the Senate shortly thereafter.