The Rules Committee to hold Hearing on HR 2608 – FY 2012 CR

The House Rules Committee web site today announced that they would be holding a hearing on Monday afternoon at 5:00 pm to prepare the rule for the consideration of HR 2608, the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012. The rules for two other bills are also scheduled to be considered at the same time;

• H.R. 2681 — Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act of 2011; and

• H.R. 2250 — EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011.

It looks like the Rules Committee is planning on approving a closed-rule for the House debate on HR 2608. The web pages for the other two bills provide a link for instructions on how to submit amendments for floor consideration. There are no such instructions linked to the HR 2608 hearing page. Nor is there a deadline for getting amendments to the Committee for consideration during the hearing. Of course, amendments would violate the ‘DEAL’ made to get the two bills passed in the Senate and hopefully the House.

Confusion in the Staff

I noted in an earlier blog posting there is a certain amount of confusion to be expected next week because the two ‘continuing appropriations’ bills passed by the Senate last week had the same title. We can see evidence of that confusion in the staff of the Rules Committee. On their page listing bills to be considered next week they list HR 2017, the (short-term) Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 as a bill to possibly be considered under a rule. HR 2017 was passed yesterday in the ‘whole’ House. It will be HR 2608, the other (middle-term) Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012.

Procedural Problem

Because clause 6(a) of House Rule XIII requires a two-thirds vote to consider a rule on the same day it is reported from the Rules Committee, a Committee hearing on Monday means that the rule resolution and HR 2608 cannot be brought to the floor before Tuesday. Last week there was an approved House Resolution, H. Res 409, that would have allowed for same day consideration of a Rule concerning continuing appropriations for FY 2012. That rule expires tomorrow.

This is cutting things a little tight, providing the appearance that the government is once again at the brink of a shut down. The House Republican leadership obviously thinks that they have the votes to pass this bill (probably with substantial Democratic support to off-set the inevitable Republicans that won’t be satisfied with the spending cuts). They are almost certainly correct, but short deadlines give people bargaining positions that they wouldn’t normally have.

This could have been easily been avoided by having the House Rules Committee meet today since the House wasn’t formally out of session. The House could have then considered the rule Resolution any time on Monday; easing the appearance of a last minute move to avoid a shutdown.

Oh, that’s right; that would not be practical. It would have deprived too many people of their political theater; the casting of stones at political appointments for their temerity in providing for the potential shutdown of the Federal government. Oh, my!

By the Way

Oh, did I mention that the House passed HR 2017? They did; the entire session of the House today lasted a grand total of 6 minutes 11 seconds according to the Clerk of the House web site. And that included a prayer and the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The actual consideration of HR 2017 took a total of 24 seconds. Only two representatives were named as being present; Rep. Harris (R,MD) who was appointed Speaker Pro Tempore for today; and Rep. Culberson (R,TX) who managed the ‘debate’ on HR 2017; so many owe so much to so few....

Senate Passes HR 2017

Reading the Daily Digest of the Congressional Record this morning it looks like the Senate passed the DHS Spending bill, HR 2017 with the amendment that I discussed in an earlier blog. Actually Sen. Reid (D,NV) used HR 2017 as the vehicle for a very short term continuing resolution to give the House time to consider the revision for HR 2608 that was also passed last night.

Short and Very Short CR

There is only one difference between the two bills that I can see at first glance. That is in §106(3) the end date for the CR is October 4^th, 2011 for HR 2017 and November 18^th, 2011 for HR 2608. The October 4^th (a week from today) date is the deadline for the House to pass HR 2608. The November 18^th date is the deadline for Congress to pass the regular spending bills for FY2012.

For the chemical security community §129 of both bills provides for the extension of the §550 authority for the CFATS program to the date specified in that §106(3) discussed above. Its interesting that this was included in HR 2107 since that authority already had an expiration date of October 4^th, 2011. This is really just a measure of how automatic the extension of CFATS has become; the staffers that drafted Senate Amendment 666 (conspiracy nuts and ‘end of days’ nuts note that number) did not realize that this was not necessary; they just automatically included it.

Oh, just to make things really confusing there is one more identicallity (that may be a made up word); both bills will be known as the ‘Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012’.

No DHS Appropriations Bill

One final point, HR 2017 was used by Sen. Reid as the ‘vehicle’ for the short term spending extension because a House passed bill was needed. The Constitution requires spending bills to originate in the House. Of course, it could have been any House passed bill, it did not need to be a spending bill; just look at HR 2608.

This does create an interesting problem. There is now no DHS spending bill for the Senate to take up and pass. There are two options. First the House could pass another spending bill (oh wouldn’t that be fun), or the Senate could take another House passed bill and tack their version of HR 2017 passed in Committee onto that bill. This could be done either as an amendment (to another spending bill for example) or as an amendment in the form of a substitute (effectively killing the original House passed bill). It will be interesting to see how this is handled.

HR 2608 Update – Continuing Resolution

HR 2608, the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012, will continue to be considered in the Senate on Monday. Popular news reports on Friday that the Senate voted down the bill were not technically correct.

The Senate on Record

In an interesting parliamentary move, Sen. Reid (D,NV) allowed the Democrats to have a symbolic vote against the House approved version of the short term continuing resolution. The actual vote was on a motion to table a proposed amendment to the House version of the bill. The amendment was proposed by Sen. Reid and it made a minor technical change to the House language. So a vote in favor of the motion to table was politically, but not technically, a vote against HR 2608 as amended by the House.

The final tally was 59-36 (page S5922). This vote allowed Democrats (and a number of Republicans) to voice their displeasure with the House version without actually killing further consideration of the bill.

Next Move

Having established, for the record, that the Senate does not agree with the House, the Senate will next consider an amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR 2608 that was proposed by Sen. Reid. The language in Senate Amendment 656 (pages S5954-6) is essentially the same as HR 2608 except that it removes mention of the two ‘rescissions’ that House Republicans put in to off-set the increased FEMA emergency spending in the bill.

NOTE: SA 656 does include the same §130 extension of the CFATS authorization until November 18^th that was found in the House version of the bill.

Debate will resume on the amendment to HR 2608 on Monday at 4:30 pm (EDT) with a vote on a cloture motion to begin at 5:30 pm and it could be a lengthy vote. Additional amendments to the bill may be subsequently considered. There is a 5:00 pm Monday filing deadline for such ‘secondary’ amendments.

If/when the Senate passes an amended version of HR 2608 it will have to go back to the House for approval. The House is currently scheduled for essentially pro forma sessions on Monday and Friday (though there are some tentatively scheduled Committee hearings), but that schedule could be changed relatively quickly.

For the vast majority of governmental operations Congress has until midnight Friday to complete work on this bill to avoid a possible shutdown. FEMA may (probably will) run out of money sooner because of the numerous and large-scale flooding events this year.