Rules Committee Reports Closed Rule for HR 933

This evening the House Rules Committee, in a pair of predictable party-line votes, reported a closed rule for the consideration of HR 933, the Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013. There will be no amendments made from the floor and only one editorial-correction amendment made by the Rules Committee. There will be one hour of debate and then the vote.

With three weeks until a ‘potential government shutdown’ it seems unusual for the Republican leadership to resort to a closed rule on a spending bill. In the last Congress they made a very big point about open debate on spending bills. Perhaps they don’t remember their complaints about the closed rule spending bills in the 111^th Congress.

One would normally expect a party-line vote on a bill like this, but I suspect that there will be a number of Republicans that will vote against the bill because they will feel that the bill does not reduce spending enough. Whether there will be enough Republican nayes to defeat the bill remains to be seen.

If it does survive the House vote it won’t be considered as written in the Senate.

NOTE: The official version of this bill is not yet available from the GPO. We are still publicly working off of the Rules Committee Print.