Rules Committee Publishes 1 Month Continuing Resolution

Over the weekend, the House Rules Committee published a committee draft of a bill that would serve as a 31-day continuing resolution. The bill, entitled “Continuing Appropriations and Border Security Enhancement Act, 2024”, would extend current government spending at a reduced rate through October 31^st, 2023. Current spending rates would be reduced by 8.1285 %, except for defense, veterans affairs, and disaster relief. The bill would also include two Divisions related to border control and immigration.

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet this afternoon on formulating a rule for the consideration of the bill.

Bills Introduced – 01-16-18

Yesterday, with the House and Senate back in Washington after the long Martin Luther King Holiday weekend, there were 30 bills introduced. Of these, one may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HJ Res 125 Making an extension of continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2018, and for other purposes. Rep. Frelinghuysen, Rodney P. [R-NJ-11]

A copy of HJ Res 125 is available on the House Rules Committee site and that Committee will hold a hearing on the continuing resolution (being considered as an amendment to HR 195 as amended by the Senate) this afternoon. The bill would extend the current continuing resolution (that expires Friday night) until February 16^th. It includes a number of special funding provisions to make passage more palatable, including an extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Rule Approved for Short Term CR

This afternoon the House Rules Committee met, in part, to approve the rule for the consideration of HJ Res 123, the Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018, a short term continuing resolution extending the current CR (PL 115-56) until December 22^nd, 2017. The Committee approved a closed rule with one hour of debate and no amendments.

I had noted in an earlier post that the extension date might be extended to December 30^th, but that was not done. This means that there will only be two weeks before Congress will have to take action again on the FY 2018 spending. At this point, it looks like that next bill will be another CR until sometime early next year. If that happens, Congress will likely take a two-week recess for Christmas.

Committee Hearings – Week of 12-03-17

With the end of year holidays fast approaching the Congressional hearing calendar is getting light. There are two hearings this week that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog; the Continuing Resolution and a cybersecurity hearing.

CR

The House Rules Committee Hearing that I mentioned yesterday has been postponed until today with the House leadership trying to work out the political bugs in its consideration. This would lead to a vote in the House tomorrow and the Senate on Friday. Any further slippage could cause some problems since the current funding runs out at midnight on Friday.

This CR (HJ Res 123) will only kick the can down the road a piece. The leadership still needs to come up with a deal to fund the government for the rest of the year. Speaker Ryan’s problem is that he is trying to find a Republican-only-bill that can make it past the Democrat’s filibuster in the Senate.

Grid Cybersecurity

On Friday the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing on “Examining the Role of the Department of Energy in Energy Sector Cybersecurity”. Only one witness is scheduled; Bruce J. Walker, Assistant Secretary, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Department of Energy. This is going to be more of a policy type discussion rather than addressing the nuts and bolts of cybersecurity issues.

Bills Introduced – 12-04-17

Yesterday with both the House and Senate back in Washington after a real 2-day weekend break, there were 28 bills introduced. Of those, one may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HJ Res 123 Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2018, and for other purposes. Rep. Frelinghuysen, Rodney P. [R-NJ-11]

The official version of this continuing resolution (CR) is currently available. It would extend the current continuing resolution (PL 115-56) from December 8^th, 2017 to December 22^nd, 2017. It also addresses the lack of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for the first quarter of FY 2018.

The House Rules Committee will meet this afternoon to formulate the rule to consider this bill. It will almost certainly be a closed rule with limited debate and no floor amendments. The bill will be considered on Wednesday to allow the Senate time to take up the bill before the Friday current Friday deadline.

There is a news report that the expiration date on this CR may be changed to December 30^th. That change would be addressed in today’s Rules Committee Hearing.

Committee Hearings – Week of 12-04-16

The House and the Senate are both in Washington for what could be the last week of the 114^th Congress. As you would suspect, the hearing schedule is light, but there is one hearing on transportation security that might be of interest to readers of this blog.

Transportation Security

The Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday on “Assessing the Security of Our Critical Transportation Infrastructure”. This hearing will focus on surface transportation. The witness list includes:

• John Roth, Inspector General, DHS;

• Chief Neil Trugman, Interim Chief of Police, Amtrak

• Mr. Chris Spear, President and CEO, American Trucking Association

• Mr. Tony Straquadine, Manager of Commercial and Government Affairs, Alliance Pipeline;

• Mr. Tom Belfiore, Chief Security Officer, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Obviously, nothing will come of this hearing this session, but the information will carry over to help shape how the staff deals with transportation security issues in the next session. As is usual, watching the questions is more important than listening to the testimony.

On the Floor

The only thing currently of specific interest to readers of this blog to be scheduled to be voted on in the House and Senate this week is the Continuing Resolution to continue funding the government past the current FY 2017 funding that expires on December 9^th. The current ‘plan’ is to pass a short-term measure to carry the current funding rate some time past the Trump inauguration to allow the new President to have input on the final FY 2017 spending bill.

The House Majority Leader does note that the current schedule of items to be considered under suspension of the rules may not be complete. We will have to watch for changes on a daily basis. I half expect HR 6381, the DHS ‘improvement’ bill, to be added to the list.

Bills Introduced – 09-24-15

Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in session for the first time this week, there were 37 bills introduced. Of those three were of potential interest to readers of this blog:

HR 3598 To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to enhance the partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the National Network of Fusion Centers, and for other purposes. Rep. Barletta, Lou [R-PA-11]

S 2080 A bill to amend title 49, United States Code, to enhance pipeline safety, to provide communities with access to improved information concerning the equipment and operations of pipeline facilities, and for other purposes. Sen. Peters, Gary C. [D-MI]

S Amdt 2680 to HJ Res 61 Making continuing appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, and for other purposes. Sen. Cochran, Thad [R-MS]

It will be interesting to see the differences between HR 3598 and HR 3503 that I reported on earlier this week.

It is interesting that the junior Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is the author of this pipeline safety bill.

As expected the first continuing resolution amendment to HJ Res 61 failed its cloture vote yesterday. This new version does not contain the Planned Parenthood defunding provisions. A cloture vote is scheduled for Monday evening. This will then go to the House for a vote on Tuesday or Wednesday.

NOTE: Because of DC travel restrictions yesterday for the Pope’s visit the GPO has not yet made the Congressional Record available for Wednesday’s Senate Session. There may be a bills introduced blog post later today for any bills of interest that may have been introduced on Wednesday.

Bills Introduced – 01-10-14

With only the House meeting in Washington yesterday there were 15 bills introduced and three of them were of potential specific interest to readers of this blog; addressing DHS Authorization, cybersecurity and funding the federal government. Those bills were:

HR 3846 Latest Title: To provide for the authorization of border, maritime, and transportation security responsibilities and functions in the Department of Homeland Security and the establishment of United States Customs and Border Protection, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Miller, Candice S. (R,MI)

HR 3847 Latest Title: To require the Secretary of Homeland Security the responsibility to develop and provide to the Secretary of Health and Human Services risk-based, performance-based cybersecurity standards for the Federal information technology requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the healthcare.gov website, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Barber, Ron (D,AZ)

HJ RES 106 Latest Title: Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Rogers, Harold [KY-5]

This will be my last mention of HR 3847 since it is a federal government IT security bill and as such does not address control system issues. I point it out here because it will almost certainly get considered quickly in the House and might even get Senate consideration; a real oddity for cybersecurity legislation.

Continuing Resolution

The official text of HJ Res 106 is already available from the GPO; hardly surprising given its topic and the fact that it is a one page bill. It simply extends the expiration date of the current spending law (Public Law 113–46) from January 15^th until January 18^th. This is being done to give the appropriations negotiators from the House and Senate time to work out the final details of a spending bill that will continue to the end of the fiscal year. The way this bill is written it also specifically extends the CFATS authorization through January 18^th.

CFATS Authorization

I’m hearing rumors that there will be a CFATS Authorization bill introduced this week by House Homeland Security Chairman McCaul (R,TX). I have yet to see a copy of the bill but I have heard that it will be a two year authorization taking it out of the spending bill authorization process. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing this bill that reportedly is going to be introduced Thursday.

Bills Introduced – 10-5-13

Both the House and Senate were in session in a relatively rare Saturday session yesterday, but not much was achieved. I was surprised to see that 25 bills had been introduced in the House; all were spending related, but none did anything to resolve the current standoff. Twenty-four of them are worth mentioning for their particularly innovative level of political silliness.

HR 3247 thru HR 3258 Latest Title: Making continuing appropriations for all departments and agencies of the Federal Government, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Grayson, Alan  (D,FL)

HR 3259 thru HR 2370 Latest Title: Eliminating the debt ceiling for a period defined, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Grayson, Alan (D,FL)

The CR Bills

For brevity’s sake I’m going to refer to these as the CR bills and the Debt Limit bills. The CR Bills are 12 nearly identical bills offering really ‘clean’ CRs as an option for getting the government re-started. Each is two sections long and provides spending authority based upon 2013 spending levels with sequestration. The only difference between the two bills is that the first is for 30 days and the last is 365 days with the ones in between being for a period 30 days longer than the earlier bill in the series.

These are not nearly written in the ‘proper’ format for a CR and miss a lot of the legislative gobbledy-goop that covers all of the appropriate programs and loopholes. For instance the CFATS authorization extension language is missing.

Various lawyers have made the argument to me that providing funding for the program {which these bills would under the ‘each project or activity for which budget authority was provided‘ language in§2(1)} is sufficient authorization to keep CFATS running, but legitimate arguments could be made that it would not necessarily include all of the limitations on that authority provided in the §550 language. Significant changes would still require regulation changes with the publish and comment requirements, but that might be the only restriction on such changes. Remember though, legitimate arguments are the stuff that civil suits are made of.

The Debt Limit Bills

I don’t spend too much time in this blog talking about the debt limit because it doesn’t usually have any direct impact on chemical safety, security or cybersecurity, so I’ll just touch briefly on this last series of bills introduced yesterday, the debt limit bills. These bills are not yet available from the GPO (or Thomas for that matter) so we can’t be sure that they are a similar set up to those that Rep. Grayson proposed for the CR bills, but titles and the number certainly suggest that they are.

Moving Forward

Grayson is not a member of the Appropriations Committee or the Ways and Means Committee (that considers Debt Limit matters) and is a Democrat so there is no chance that any of these bills will receive any consideration in Committee or make it to the floor of the House. This will be the last mention that these political grandstanding bills will get.

Bills Introduced – 10-02-13

Yesterday the Congress was, for the most part, limiting its work to issues related to the current appropriations stand-off. Only 13 bills were introduced in both houses and all but one of them related to spending. Of those only two appear that they might be of specific interest to readers of this blog; HR 15 and SJ Res 23.

HR 15 Latest Title: Reserved for the Minority Leader. Sponsor: Rep Pelosi, Nancy  (D,CA), Rep Garcia, Joe (D,FL)

SJ RES 23 Latest Title: A joint resolution making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Cruz, Ted (R,TX)

I would bet that each of these proposals provide a way out of the current stand-off that have some unique aspects to them. Whether either will ever get officially considered is another question since the both come from members of the minority party in their respective house of congress.

The other spending measures that have been introduced and either passed or rejected yesterday in the House are limited in scope and of no specific interest to readers of this blog. I would like to think that the Republican leadership was proposing/passing these bills to ensure that the relatively non-controversial programs (and in at least some cases, favorite programs of many Democrats). Unfortunately, I’m afraid that they are being used to make sure that the Democrats in the House, the Senate and the President get their ‘fair share’ of the public blame for the continuing shutdown of the Federal Government.

BTW: I noted in a post on October 1sth that the GPO would not be printing legislation until this fiasco was over. I was mistaken as yesterday they made copies of HJ Res 67 and HJ Res 68 available on their web site. So this is one portion of the GPO operation that continues to operate during the government shutdown.

Bills Introduced – 09-30-13

While the House and Senate were considering their options on HJ Res 59, two other alternative continuing resolutions were introduced. There were no other bills of potential specific interest to readers of this blog introduced yesterday. The two alternative CRs were:

HJ RES 67 Latest Title: Requiring reaffirmation of the Affordable Care Act and making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Crawford, Eric A. "Rick" (R,AR)

HJ RES 69 Latest Title: Making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Reed, Tom (R,NY)

Neither Crawford or Reed are members of the Appropriations Committee so it is extremely unlikely that either bill will get serious consideration.

Interestingly, because of the shutdown the public will not get a chance to see either of these bills published until after they become redundant because the GPO is closed down for the duration. Fortunately (a touch of sarcasm here) Congress is unaffected; their funding continues to allow them to operate.

House Insists on Its Amendment

The House Rules adopted H Res 368 to finish out the consideration of HJ Res 59 for today. The resolution states that the House insists on its latest amendment to the CR and requests a conference with the Senate to resolve the differences between the two latest versions of the bill.

The House is currently debating that resolution for an hour (ending no later than about 12:37 am EDT) at which time it will vote upon and almost certainly pass the resolution. That will effectively put an end to any efforts to prevent a federal government shut down this year.

It remains to be seen how long it would the conference committee to come to some acceptable common ground between the two factions and then send a revised HJ Res 59 back to both houses for a vote.

House Rules Committee Addresses HJ Res 59 a Third Time

Earlier this evening the House Rules Committee approved H Res 367, the latest effort of the Republican leadership to craft an a version of HJ Res 59 that would be acceptable to the Republican’s conservative base and might pass muster this evening in the Senate.

House Rule

The latest move would vacate Saturday’s House amendments to the Senate amendment to HJ Res 59 and then put into place new language at the end of the Senate version that would:

• Changes end date to December 15^th, 2013 {§138};

• Delays individual mandate requirements of Obamacare one year {§141}; and

• Removes the government contribution to the health insurance for Congress, its staff, the President and his staff and the political appointees in the executive branch {§142}.

It appears relatively obvious that the leadership accepts at face value Sen. Reids’ assertion that no modification of Obamacare will pass the Senate. Section 2 of H Res 367 provides that the currently approved waiver of House Rules with respect to the restrictions on the same day action on a House Rules Committee rule is extended to October 7^th, 2013.

Floor Action

The House took up H Res 367 this evening and passed it on a nearly party-line vote (6 Republicans voted no) of 225 to 204. A short time later on a slightly more mixed vote (12 Republicans voted no and 9 Democrats voted yes) the House passed the newly revised language of HJ Res 59 on a 228 to 221 vote. The Senate subsequently voted to table consideration of the Republican amendment the expected party-line vote of 54-46, effectively dropping the matter back into the House.

It is remotely possible that the House might take the matter up again tonight; they recessed after the earlier vote instead of adjourning. In fact, the House Rules Committee just announced that it was holding another meeting tonight at 10:30 EDT.

Senate Rejects House Amendments to HJ Res 59

As expected, this afternoon the Senate rejected the House Amendments to HJ Res 59 by a straight partly-line vote of 54-46. The House Rules Committee has already announced that they will meet this afternoon at 4:15 to determine how the House will respond to the Senate vote. The full House will be able to take up the CR as soon as the Rules Committee publishes their rule.

If the House concurs with the Senate’s amendment then there will be no shut down of the government at midnight. If the final vote doesn’t take place until 1:00 am (or 4:00 am for that matter) it will not make any difference as that will still be today by congressional conventions as long as there is no adjournment.

Bills Introduced – 09-29-13

The House was busy yesterday with spending issues. Not only did they amend and re-pass the continuing resolution they also introduced a number of other bills related to how spending should be accomplished in the coming months. Two of those bills might be of specific interest to readers of this blog.

HR 3210 Latest Title: Making continuing appropriations for military pay in the event of a Government shutdown. Sponsor: Rep Coffman, Mike (R,CO)

HR 3213 Latest Title: Making appropriations for all departments and agencies of the Federal Government for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Grayson, Alan (D,FL)

HR 3214 Latest Title: Making continuing appropriations for personnel critical to national security during a Government shutdown. Sponsor: Rep Gallego, Pete P. (D,TX)

The alert reader will note that I listed three bills not two. I’ve included HR 3210 which also passed last night because I can now list the author of the bill and a GPO copy of the bill as introduced is now available. This saves me a blog post.

The Grayson bill, Fiscal Sanity Act of 2013, is a full year continuing resolution that is short, sweet and incomplete. All real CRs follow a pretty standard format with a lot of necessary legislative gobbledygook. This bill deals with funding the federal government for FY 2014 and deals with the debt ceiling for all of 2014 in three short (two pages) sections. Unfortunately that doesn’t get the job done. For example, there is no language explicitly extending the CFATS authorization. Fortunately, since Grayson is not a member of the Appropriations Committee and is a Democrat to boot, there is no way that this bill will ever see the light of day; political grandstanding at its worst.

The Gallego bill has not yet been received/published by the GPO so it is not clear just exactly who is ‘critical to national security’. It could even include CFATS inspectors. I suspect that the bill will give the DOD and DHS Secretaries authority to decide who is critical. That would be an interesting last minute decision process to watch.

We’ll have to wait and see when it is printed. 

BTW: If the government shuts down on Tuesday, we probably won’t see an official version until after the fiasco is over.

House Passes Both Amendments to HJ Res 59 and HR 3210

Late Saturday night the House passed both amendments to HJ Res 59, dumping the ball back in the Senate’s court. Amendment #1 which did not include the Obamacare language passed by a slightly bipartisan vote of 248 to 174 with 17 Democrats voting with all of the Republicans on the amendment. Amendment #2, which was identical to the first amendment with an additional section postponing the Obamacare implementation one year, lost two Republican and 15 Democrat votes to pass by a vote of 231 to 192.

It is still not clear how the slightly contradictory versions of language for HJ Res 59 would actually operate. Both bills specifically replaced the Senate language in the bill. The second amendment did not modify the bill as revised by the first amendment. I suspect, however, that is what the parliamentarians will decide happened in effect, so it will look as if the first amendment never actually took place.

The interesting part of the vote is that the 17 Democrats that joined the Republican majority on Amendment #1 could be enough votes to offset a conservative vote against a Senate bill that removed just the Obamacare delay. . It depends on just how many Republicans that would put their political principals above shutting down the government.

HR 3210, the military pay bill that I described late last night, passed by a unanimous vote. It should also be able to pass in the Senate on Monday, so at least the military folks would have some guarantee that there pay would continue even if the House and Senate can’t get together on a funding bill by Monday midnight.

House Rules Committee Rule for 2nd Consideration of HJ Res 59

The House Rules Committee approved H Res 366 a rule for the consideration of HJ Res 59 as amended by the Senate. This resolution provides for the House to choose between two versions of substitute language for HJ Res 59 and the consideration of HR 3210, the Pay Our Military Act; a bill designed to ensure that military members and critical DOD civilians and contractors would continue to get paid if the government is shut down by the failure to approve a FY 2014 spending bill.

The Solomon Decision

Both of the proposed substitute languages {the Paulsen (R,MN) and the Blackburn (R,TN) amendments} proposed by the rule would, according to the Rules Committee web site:

• Repeal the Medical Device Excise Tax;

• Amend the expiration date of the CR to be December 15, 2013;

• Make a technical change to the Eisenhower Memorial Commission provision; and

• Add a new provision to extend the authority for the U.S. to issue Special Immigrant Visas.

The Blackburn Amendment would have the added effect of postponing the implementation of Obamacare for one year.

It looks like the leadership believes that Paulsen amendment may be an acceptable (to the Democrats) alternative to shutting down the government. Allowing it to be considered first would allow some Democrats to vote for the adoption of the language. It certainly won’t be acceptable to the conservative faction of the House that is trying hardest to kill Obamacare. If enough Democrats vote for the Paulsen amendment to overcome the objections of the conservative faction of the Republican Party then this could pass.

What I am not clear on is whether or not the passage of the Paulsen Amendment would stop the consideration of the Blackburn Amendment. If it does, then the bill would go to the Senate and Sen. Reid and company would have to decide if they want to shut down the federal government. They would probably blink and pass the bill since their most vehement objection would have been removed.

If the Blackburn Amendment comes to a vote it would probably pass. If the Paulsen Amendment were not in the picture, it would certainly pass on a straight party-line vote. The question would be how many moderate Republicans would vote against it after supporting the Paulsen Amendment.

If the Paulsen Amendment is passed and sent to the Senate the Speaker is going to face some loud calls for his resignation from the right. The conservatives will have been defeated in one of their most dearly held fights by the action of the Republican leadership. The remainder of this term would be a very tense and trying time for the Republican caucus.

If the Paulsen Amendment fails, the Speaker will clearly and publicly place the blame on the Democrats if the Senate does not concur (and it won’t) with the Blackburn version of HJ Res 59. Whether that blame will stick won’t be clear until a year from now when the next congressional elections role around.

HR 3210

This bill, introduced by… hmm there is no introducer’s name that I can find on the House Rules Committee web site, oh well. This bill would insure that military pay would continue if a continuing resolution doesn’t pass before October 1^st or if any time this year the government is left without funding. It specifically requires meeting the payroll for active duty military (and Guard and Reserve personnel on active duty) and Coast Guard on military duty. It would also require meeting the payroll for selected DOD (and DHS for Coast Guard) civilian and contractor personnel who are directly supporting military operations. The Secretaries would determine who would be ‘selected’ and report that back to Congress.

This is a motherhood and apple pie bill and should pass with some bipartisan support, though the support from Democrats will be grudging.

H Res 366 Passed in House

As I finish writing this blog post I notice that the House has completed their one-hour debate on H Res 366 and just passed the bill. The vote tally was not yet available on House Clerk’s web site but I suspect that it was a fairly straight party-line vote. The final result for HJ Res 59 will probably be done by midnight.

Bills Introduced – 9-27-13

While the Congress is still in deep disagreement on the 2014 spending program they do continue to be hard at work drafting new legislation proposals. There were three bills introduced yesterday that might be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 3202 Latest Title: To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to prepare a comprehensive security assessment of the transportation security card program, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Jackson Lee, Sheila (D,TX)

HR 3208 Latest Title: To clarify that certain natural gas facilities are not subject to the Natural Gas Act. Sponsor: Rep McKinley, David B. (R,WV)

HJ RES 66 Latest Title: Making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Reed, Tom (R,NY)

TWIC

The bill from Rep. Jackson-Lee is almost certainly a direct (though certainly delayed) response to the Government Accounting Office recommendation made in a Congressional Hearing on May 8^th. It will be interesting to see what gets included in this bill.

Natural Gas

I’m not sure what the purpose of this bill is; there is nothing on Rep. McKinley’s web site about the bill. I suspect that it deals with exportation of natural gas, but we will just have to wait and see.

Another Continuing Resolution

This is another conservative Republican alternative Continuing Resolution. It would continue the current sequestered spending limits until December 15^th (and extends the CFATS authorization to that date). It delays Obamacare funding for one year instead of killing Obamacare; so it is an attempt at compromise, probably not enough though. Rep. Reed is not a member of the Appropriations Committee, so it is unlikely that this will get to the floor, but it has already been printed by the GPO so it is possible that it could reach the floor of the House.

Senate Passes Short-Clean Version of CR

Early this afternoon the Senate moved forward to amend and then pass HJ Res 59, Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014. The cloture vote to end debate on the un-amended bill came first and it was not close, 79 to 19. Next came the vote on the Reid Amendment (SA 1974) which, as expected, was a straight party-line vote, 54 to 44 (two Republicans not voting). The final vote on the bill had the same result.

The bill now goes to the House for action. Nothing will be done today as the House has already adjourned and is scheduled to meet tomorrow at 10:00. They did not take up H Res 361 so that will probably be the first order of business. Then I expect HR 2642 to come up. Neither is currently listed on the Majority Leader’s web site.

There may be a House Rules Committee hearing today (not too likely) or early tomorrow on HJ Res 59, but only if the Republican leadership has figured out what they can accomplish.

Remember there is always the possibility of a new short-short term CR to keep things going while the internal Republican debate continues.

Reid Introduces Clean CR Amendment to HJ Res 59

As expected yesterday (which was administratively changed to 9-24-13 in the Congressional Record for the Senate) Sen. Reid (D,NV) introduced an amendment (SA 1974) in the form of a substitute for HJ Res 59, Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014. The new language would extend FY 2013 funding levels until November 15^th, 2013. This would also extend the CFATS authorization to that date.

The cloture vote for stopping debate on HJ Res 59 is currently scheduled for Friday morning. Vote on the Reid amendment (and others) will take place after that vote.