Senate Passes HR 3547

This afternoon the Senate passed HR 3547, the newly named Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014 by a bipartisan vote of 72 to 26. The House amendment to the bill that was agreed to by the Senate today will provide for funding of the federal government until the start of the 2015 fiscal year on October 1^st.  

The President has until midnight Saturday to sign the bill to avoid another federal funding fiasco like we saw last fall. There have been no indications that he has even considered vetoing this bill.

Section 536 of the bill will extend the current CFATS program through October 4^th.

House Passes HR 3547

This afternoon the House passed HR 3547, the newly named Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014 by a strongly bipartisan vote of 359 – 67. The large bulk of the Nay votes came from Republicans. In fact, the bill would not have passed if it were not for the Democrats voting in favor of the bill; their Yea votes outnumbered those of the Republicans voting for the bill.

The bill, which will provide funding for the remainder of the fiscal year now goes to the Senate where it will most likely pass on a vote Friday afternoon or Saturday.

In an earlier vote today the Senate extended the current continuing resolution funding until Saturday midnight.

NOTE: Corrected references to bill number to HR 3547 1-19-14 10:00 am CST

Senate Passes HJ Res 106

As expected earlier this afternoon the Senate passed HJ Res 106, a three-day continuing resolution, by a vote of 86 – 14; a strongly bipartisan vote. This bill will continue the current funding of the Federal government through Saturday. Without the bill the government would have had to enter another federal funding fiasco this evening at midnight.

The House is currently voting on the resolution (H Res 458) that would provide for its consideration this afternoon of HR 3547. The amendment to that bill that will be considered this afternoon will provide for the funding of the Federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year. It would also continue the authorization of the CFATS program through October 4^th, 2014.

The Senate would be expected to vote on the new version of HR 3547 on Friday or Saturday.

Rules Committee Adopts Closed Rule for HR 3547

Yesterday afternoon the House Rules Committee adopted a closed rule for the consideration of HR 3547, the bill that will become the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014. There will be one hour of debate and a single up or down vote on the bill. Since the deal for this bill was worked out by the respective appropriations committees it is likely that the bill will receive enough bipartisan support to pass.

Rules Committee Hearing Set for FY 2014 Spending Bill

Today the House Rules Committee announced a hearing tomorrow afternoon to develop the rule for the consideration of the Senate amendment to HR 3547 that was the Space Launch Liability Indemnification Extension Act. Instead this bill will be used as the vehicle for the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014.

A Rules Committee print of the new version of the bill is available. To make it somewhat easier to find items of interest (to readers of this blog any way) the DOD portion is found on pages 200 – 364 and the DHS portion on pages 601 – 711. Selected individual agency coverage starts on the pages indicated below:

• TSA, 613; Surface, 615;

• Coast Guard, 619;

• NPPD, 632;

• FEMA, 634; and

• General Provisions, 656

Of specific interest to readers of this blog, the bill contains the obligatory language extending the §550 authorization of the CFATS program through October 4^th, 2014 at §536.

Initial indications are that the deal between the chairs of the two Appropriations Committees that put together this bill will hold for expedited action this week. With the Rules Committee hearing set for Tuesday, the House should vote on Wednesday or Thursday and the Senate on Thursday or Friday. If the House does not vote by Wednesday on this bill, look for another short term continuing resolution to allow another try at making a grand deal.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 1-12-14

Well Congress will be back to work with a vengeance this week. There are a number of interesting hearings coming, two spending bills and maybe the introduction of a stand alone CFATS authorization in the House. The hearings include cybersecurity, intelligence, transportation and another DHS nomination.

Transportation

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is starting the surface transportation reauthorization process off with a full committee hearing on Tuesday. Looking at the witness list it doesn’t look like there will be any specific look at chemical transportation issues, but the topic of crude train hazards could rear its ugly head. That discussion would focus on concerns of affected parties not on any solutions.

The hearing web page does have a link to a nice summary document of the reauthorization coverage; again, no specific mention of chemical transportation issues.

DHS Nominations

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a business meeting on Tuesday. According to the agenda they will be discussing the nominations of Susanne Spaulding to be Under Secretary of DHS for NPPD and John Roth for DHS IG. Ms Spaulding is holding the acting job of Under Secretary while Rand Beer was acting Secretary. Now that he has moved to the White House, it looks like she will get the job full time.

Terrorism Intelligence

Under the heading of you can’t protect against what you don’t understand there will be an interesting open intelligence hearing held by the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday. Since this is an open hearing don’t expect much in the way of intel details especially since the witnesses; two former congresscritters of note and a retired Army general, are more politically oriented than intelligence analysts.

Those witnesses are:

• Honorable Joe Lieberman, former Connecticut Senator

• Honorable Jane Harman, former California Congresswoman; Director, Wilson Center

• General (Ret.) Jack Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army

Cybersecurity

The Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies (whew these subcommittee names are getting long) Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a mark-up hearing on Wednesday looking at HR 3696, the National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2013.

As I noted in an earlier post, this is a fairly comprehensive critical infrastructure cybersecurity bill with broad bipartisan support. Cybersecurity bills have had a tough road to travel with nothing of significance getting to the White House. This bill may have a chance to complete the trip if it gets to the Senate floor by July 4^th. This is the first step on that journey; there won’t be any delay’s on Wednesday.

Spending Bills

As I mentioned in yesterday’s bill introduction post HJ Res 106 is a three-day continuing resolution. It will set the stage for the consideration of a bill that isn’t quite yet finished later this week. The current deadline is January 15^th, but HJ Res 106 will extend that to Saturday. The House leadership is taking quite a chance on this short term resolution as it will be considered under suspension of the rules (vote scheduled for Tuesday) which requires a 2/3 vote margin to pass. The Democratic leadership is on-board for the short term extension so it should pass as long as no one upsets the fiscal conservative Republicans too much in the meantime.

Since we haven’t seen the final bill being crafted by the two Appropriations Committees (it will probably be introduced on Monday or Tuesday), it is hard to judge how smooth that consideration process will be. Right now there doesn’t appear to be any discussion/threats of another federal funding fiasco so maybe things will work out for a final vote in the Senate on Saturday.

CFATS Extension

Also mentioned yesterday is the possiblility of CFATS extension bill introduction from Rep. McCaul (R,TX), probably on Thursday. It appears that the House Homeland Security staff has touched all of the appropriate bases on the bill, but no one seems interested in talking about what they have been told. McCaul has been doing a good job lately with bipartisan bills so this one may have a chance of passage.

Unfortunately, the big impediment to passage in the House is not the votes, but rather the committee conflict with the Energy and Commerce Committee (and to a lesser extent the Appropriations Committee) over who will be responsible for overseeing the program. One would expect a bill from the Homeland Security Committee Chair to cut out the other two committees and that might stop the bill from ever getting to the floor.

It will be interesting to see how McCaul tries to finesse that problem.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 11-17-13

Both the House and Senate will be back in session today. While there are a number of hearings scheduled for this week only three appear to be of specific potential interest to readers of this blog: they include medical software, FirstNet and DHS confirmation hearings. And it looks like the Senate may actually consider the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, S 1197.

Medical Software

The Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing tomorrow looking at “Federal Regulation of Mobile Medical Apps and Other Health Software” and HR 3303. As I mentioned in my blog post about that bill, there is nothing currently in the bill that would extend FDA regulatory authority to software security issues. There is an outside chance that this will come up during this hearing.

BTW: There is a nice background document on the hearing web site, but no mention of software security issues.

FirstNet

The Communications and Technology Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold an oversight hearing on FirstNet and the Advancement of Public Safety Wireless Communications. No witness list is currently available.

DHS Confirmation

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote tomorrow on the nomination of Jeh C. Johnson to be the Secretary of DHS. While there has been some controversy about the background of Mr. Johnson, this vote coming so soon after his appearance before the Committee probably means that a favorable vote will be forth coming.

S 1197

According to the Congressional Record, the Senate is scheduled to vote on a cloture motion to allow the Senate to proceed to consideration of S 1197. As I noted earlier this bill has a number of cybersecurity provisions. It’s original consideration was held up by the general disagreement between the Republicans and Democrats on spending issues. I’m not sure what has changed, but it would seem that Sen. Reid (D,NV) thinks that he has enough votes to move this bill forward.

If it passes (and it probably will if the cloture vote succeeds) it will then be tacked onto the House Bill (HR 2397) which probably means another spending conference committee. Many of the same folks will be on that conference as are on the budget conference that is trying to iron out differences between the Senate (read Democrats) and House (Republicans) so that a final 2014 spending bill can be put together.

This move by Reid may signal that there is at least some agreement between the conferees on defense issues.

HR 3273 and HJ Res 89 Passed in House

As I suggested in my earlier post, the House Rules Committee published a rule for the consideration of HR 3273, HJ Res 80, and HJ Res 90 that called for a limited debate with no amendments. Also as expected, the House took up HR 3273 and HJ Res 90 and passed both pieces of legislation; HR 3273 by a party-line vote and HJ Res 90 by a unanimous vote.

It is obvious that the leadership expected this type of a vote. As part of the rule for the consideration of these bills, they put in an interesting parliamentary maneuver. Once HR 3273 and HJ Res 90 were passed a provision of H. Res. 373 {§3}, the rule for these bills, kicked in and directed the Clerk of the House to include HR 3273 as a part of the language of HJ Res 90 when it was prepared for transmission to the Senate.

The idea behind this maneuver is that the Senate could not afford to ignore HJ Res 90 without angering too many people; paying the Federal employees that are currently working through the fiscal fiasco is just the right thing to do. Of course there is nothing to stop the Senate leadership from doing to HJ Res 90 what they did to HJ Res 59, strip out the language that offends them, pass it and ship it back to the House.

House Rules Committee Hearing on Latest Shutdown Solution

As I write this the House Rules Committee is meeting to discuss the latest proposal to end the current fiscal fiasco. They are formulating a rule for the consideration of:

HR 3273, the Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth Working Group Act of 2013; 

HJ Res 89, the Excepted Employees’ Pay Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014; and

HJ Res 90, the Federal Aviation Administration Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

I expect that the rule will call for limited debate with no amendments (a closed rule). There is a good possibility that HR 3273 will make it to the floor today, though it is not currently listed on the Majority Leader’s web site.

HR 3273

This bill calls for the formation of a ‘bicameral committee’ of ten members of each house of congress. It would be known as the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth. This Working Group would recommend {§2(b)}:

• Overall levels of discretionary spending, including for the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2014;

• Changes in the statutory limit on the public debt; and

• Reforms in direct spending programs.

The Working Group would meet daily until it made its recommendations by a majority vote of the membership representing each house. The legislative language included in that recommendation would be referred to the appropriate Committees in the House for immediate consideration.

This looks like it might be an acceptable face saving way for both sides to the current standoff to proceed to a more reasonable conclusion. We’ll have to see how it pans out.

HJ Res 89

HJ Res 89 would provide funding for Federal employees currently working during the funding fiasco. They are currently working without provisions for getting paid.

HJ Res 90

HJ Res 90 would provide funding for the Federal Aviation Administration at FY 2013 (with sequestration) funding rates through December 15, 2013.

HJ Res 59 Introduced – FY 2014 CR

HJ Res 59, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014, was introduced yesterday as I predicted in my earlier blog post (no real prognostication skills required). The official copy will not be available until later in the morning, but a Appropriations Committee Draft is available.

Generally speaking the CR will continue funding at the 2013 sequestered level with a few minor exceptions that don’t deal with chemical safety, security or cybersecurity. That funding is extended until December 15th, 2013{§106(3)}.  The CFATS program is extended until the same date {§122}.