Monday, May 1, 2017

HR 244 – FY 2017 Continuing Resolution

News reports (here for example) last night indicate that Congressional negotiators had reached agreement on a final spending bill for the remainder of FY 2017. A quick look at the House Rules Committee web page show that HR 244, the Hire Vets Act, is going to be used as the vehicle for the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017.

The 1665-page text of the revised bill can be found here. More importantly, for detailed explanations of the provisions of the bill the Rules Committee has provided links to the explanatory statements for each of the Divisions of the bill. The Division of specific interest to readers of this bill (with link to the explanatory statement) are:

• Department of Defense Appropriations ACT, 2017 (Division C)
• Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2017 (Division F)
• Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017 (Division K)

These explanatory notes contain a huge number of references back to House and Senate comments on the bill. These refer back to 114th Congress Committee Reports on the original appropriations bills that form the basis for each of the Divisions. I have previously commented on some of those spending bill reports when there were items of specific interest (see the table below), where I have not, I am providing links to the report.


House
Senate
DOD
DHS
THAD


The Rules Committee is scheduled to meet on HR 244 on Tuesday to develop the rule for the consideration of this bill. Since the negotiations have been so involved, there is no chance that the Rules Committee will provide for anything but a closed rule on this bill. There will be limited debate (probably 1 hour) and no amendments authorized. The final House vote on the bill will probably come Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday. If things go well (an increasingly big IF) this should get to the President well before the Midnight Friday deadline.


More on specific provisions in later posts…. It is a lot of reading.

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