House Passes HR 5895 – FY 2019 EWR Spending

Today the House completed consideration of HR 5895, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies (EWR) Appropriations Act, 2019. The House passed the bill by a somewhat bipartisan vote of 235 to 179 (23 Democrats voting AYE and 16 Republicans voting NAY). The version of the bill debated, amended and passed by the House included language from HR 5894, and HR 5786; essentially combining three of the twelve annual spending bills.

As I have noted earlier, the Senate will not actually take up the language passed in the House today. Instead they will substitute the language from S 2975 that was recently reported in the Senate and amend that language. Then a conference committee will be formed to work out a compromise between the two versions of the bill.

If this process can move forward for this bill, then there is a chance that for the first time in recent history we may have spending bills to the President before the end of the fiscal year ends and will not need a series of continuing resolutions leading to a post-election omnibus bill. If this bill does not move forward (and it is the least controversial of the spending bills) then we will again be forced to hold our collective breaths again, waiting to see if intermediate compromises can be worked out to get interim funding approved.