HR 4378 Passed in Senate – FY 2020 CR

Yesterday the Senate passed HR 4378, the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2020, and Health Extenders Act of 2019 by a bipartisan vote of 81 to 16. The Senate first took action on an amendment proposed by Sen. Paul (R,KY). That amendment would have reduced the spending rate during the duration of the CR by 2%. That amendment failed by a slightly closer margin of 24 to 73. The bill now goes to the President for signature.

There is an interesting article over at TheHill.com about the current prospects for getting spending bills done before this CR runs out on November 21^st, 2019. With the impeachment process having begun, I see little hope that an agreement can be reached on the more controversial programs (the Wall and immigration) so that a DHS spending bill can be passed. I suspect that we will go into 2020 facing a similar situation to that we saw earlier this year. The only question in my mind, how much of the government will be included in the shutdown this time.

Pundits have been pontificating that the impeachment move by Rep. Pelosi (D,CA) will put an end to legislative efforts in Congress. That is a gross, oversimplification {that is what pundits do, as opposed to gadflys like myself (GRIN)}. Controversial legislation will suffer (DHS spending would be a good example), but much of the legislative effort in Congress deals with either uncontroversial matters or matters where little actual action is being taken. Those measures will continue to make their way to the President’s desk.

HR 4378 Passes in House – FY 2020 CR

On Thursday the House passed HR 4378, the FY 2020 continuing resolution by a somewhat bipartisan vote of 301 to 123. The bill was debated in the House for 42 minutes, but not a single voice was raised in opposition to the bill. The bill will probably be taken up in the Senate next week.

As I noted in an earlier post, this relatively lengthy ‘clean CR’ appears to have been negotiated to acceptance with the approval of the Senate leadership. It remains to be seen if there will be enough Republican votes for the bill in the Senate to push the bill to the floor for consideration. The lack of any speechified opposition to the bill in the House probably indicates that most of the votes were pro forma opposition to a CR and not a stand for a shut-down of the federal government.

The big question remains; will Trump sign the bill if it is presented to him. The answer to that will have to wait until he makes his final decision when the bill actually lands on his desk. Trump’s political capriciousness is becoming legendary.

Bills Introduced – 09-18-19

Yesterday with both the House and Senate in session there were 48 bills introduced. One of those bills will receive additional attention in this blog:

HR 4378 Making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2020, and for other purposes. Rep. Lowey, Nita M. [D-NY-17]

This 43-page bill is the ‘clean continuing resolution’ that the House leadership is proposing to use to continue funding for the federal government (at the current funding rate) until November 21^st, 2019. The House Rules Committee was originally scheduled to take up ‘the bill’ on Tuesday, but that was canceled when it became apparent to the leadership that the Senate Republicans would have significant objections to some of the provisions of the bill. Presumably, and agreement has been reached that HR 4378 is ‘acceptable’ to the Senate leadership (and the President? No one knows for sure about that).

The Rules Committee will take up the bill this morning and provisions were made in H Res 558 (§3) to allow for consideration of the bill on the same day as the rule was adopted by the Rules Committee. Same day consideration of bills is not normally allowed by House rules.

OOOPS - Corrected date in post title to reflect date the bills were introduced - 09-20-19 0630 EDT