Review - More on New Minibus Spending Bill

Looking at the House and Senate Appropriations Committees web site, the CJS-EWR-IER spending bill I described earlier today is a joint effort of the two committees. Thus, the bill is being treated by the leadership of the two houses as a conference bill. That means that the bill will probably come to the floor in the House under a closed rule, with limited debate and no floor amendments. The Senate leadership will attempt to consider the bill under similar circumstances.

The Republican fringe could still block the Rule being considered this evening with three votes in the Rules Committee. Or they could block the rule on the floor of the House (where Democrats would be expected to vote against the rule on general principles, though that is not a requirement). In either case the bill could be brought to the floor under suspension of the rules where the supermajority requirement would be met with votes from Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Both appropriation committee web sites (House and Senate) provide background information on the bill. They provide links to bill summaries for each of the three Divisions and tables of the congressional earmarks (called ‘Community Project Funding’ on the House page and ‘Congressionally Directed Funding’ on the Senate page). The Senate page provides links to the Joint Explanatory Statement for each Division. Those statements explain the spending allocations supporting the bill, as well as the differences between the language in the Division and in the two original spending bills for the Division. The Senate Appropriations Committee also provides a press release from Sen Murray (D,WA), the Ranking Member explaining the support of the Democrats for the minibus.

 

For more information on the supporting documents, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/more-on-new-minibus-spending-bill - subscription required.