House Passes HR 2642

Earlier today the House passed HR 2642 in a nearly party-line vote. The Republican leadership had removed the sections of the bill that dealt with Democratic-favored programs like the food stamp program to try to pull enough Democratic votes to pass the bill and avoid the embarrassment associated with the earlier failure to pass HR 1947. It did not work; no Democrats vote ‘Yea”.

It turned out that it wasn’t necessary as there were only 12 conservative Republicans that voted against the bill; not nearly enough to kill it. The final vote was 216 – 208.

I still need to take a look at the three chemical safety and security provisions that were added to the bill in a future blog post, probably this weekend.