HR 22 Amended and Passed in the House

Today the House completed three days of consideration of HR 22. Instead of the originally intended 29 amendments, the House considered 117; passing 73, rejecting 35 and had 9 withdrawn from consideration after debate. The bill passed by a largely bipartisan vote of 363 to 64 (58 Republicans voted nay). After passage of the bill the House insisted on their amendments to HR 22 and requested a conference with the Senate.

Of the nine amendments that I originally identified as being of potential interest to readers of this blog, three were not considered (Lipinski, Esty, and Jackson-Lee), one (Lynch) was rejected on a near party-line recorded vote and the remaining five were adopted by voice vote.

Neither the House nor Senate will be in Washington next week (Veterans Day Recess), so it would normally be almost two weeks before the first conference committee meeting. The current surface transportation authorization runs out on November 20^th so we may see conference committee meetings (out of the public eye) next week to work out the differences.