Rules Committee Hearing on FY 2015 Spending Bill

Late this evening the House Rules Committee announced that they would conduct a hearing on HR 83. That bill had passed in the House and then in the Senate with amendments. The hearing tomorrow will introduce substitute language that will turn the bill into the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015.

The bill will provide funding for the bulk of the Federal Government through September 30^th, 2015. DHS is dealt with in Title L of the bill; providing spending authority for that department only through February 27^th. The CFATS program is never specifically mentioned in Title L, but the way that Title is written will extend the current CFATS authorization (which currently expires on Thursday night) through the same date.

This bill will come to a floor vote in the House on Thursday and possibly the same day in the Senate. I expect that we may see a short (2 to 4 day) continuing resolution come to the floor in the House tomorrow to avoid a chance of an inadvertent shutdown of the federal government Thursday at midnight.