Senate Amends and Passes HR 3055 – First Senate Minibus

Yesterday the Senate passed an amended version of HR 3055, the first Senate FY 2020 spending minibus by a bipartisan vote of 84 to 9. They first adopted 48 amendments including the substitute language offered by Sen. Shelby (R,MS); only one amendment considered was rejected.

None of the 49 amendments considered specifically addressed chemical safety, chemical security or cybersecurity concerns. Forty-five of the amendments were considered en bloc [pg S6311] under the unanimous consent process with no debate.

Next week the House may consider the Senate version of the bill. When they do, they will probably ‘insist’ on their version. A conference committee will then take up the two versions and try to work out a compromise version. There is a slight chance that this will happen before the current continuing resolution runs out on November 21^st.

It seems unlikely that the full 12 spending bills (four were included in the Senate version of HR 3055) will be passed by the 21^st. This means that we will likely (depending on the President) see another continuing resolution to keep the government working past that date. Various news reports (see here for example) claim that the CR under consideration behind closed doors will continue into next year.