Bills Introduced – 3-6-24

Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in Washington, there were 47 bills introduced. One of those bills will receive additional attention in this blog:

H Res 1061 Providing for the concurrence by the House in the Senate amendment to H.R. 4366, with an amendment. Granger, Kay [Rep.-R-TX-12] Text here.

This is the spending bill that was passed yesterday in the House.

Mention in Passing

I would like to mention in passing an interesting bill that was introduced Rep Cleaver (D,MO):

HR 7561 To reduce the pay of Members of Congress when a mass shooting occurs in the United States, and for other purposes. Cleaver, Emanuel [Rep.-D-MO-5]

There have been any number of pieces of legislation over the years that would have automatically reduced the pay of members of Congress, but these have generally been efforts to encourage Congress to deal with passing a budget or spending bills in a timely manner. While Congress has failed to act on any of a number of controversial gun control measures over the years, it is hard to pin upon Congress specific responsibility for any given mass shooting event. While this has no chance of being considered in a Republican controlled Congress (and admittedly little chance in a hypothetically Democratic controlled Congress) this still reflects the level of concern about gun violence in many members.

House Passes H Res 1061 – First Minibus for FY 2024 Spending

This afternoon, the House took up H Res 1061, describes as a resolution “Providing for the concurrence by the House in the Senate amendment to HR 4366, with an amendment.", making this the vehicle for the first FY 2024 minibus that I described on Monday. While we will not know for sure until the language for H Res 1061 is published but this should be the language released by the House Appropriations Committee on Sunday.

After just a bit more than the scheduled 40-minutes of debate a recorded vote was demanded. The vote was subsequently held and the bill passed by a bipartisan vote of 339 to 85; the Republican vote was 132 to 83.

While the vote was on H Res 1061, the bill that will go to the President (if the new language is accepted in the Senate) will be HR 4366. That bill started out in the House as the Military Construction spending bill. On November 1^st the Senate passed the bill after adding Senate language  for the ARD spending (S 2131) and THUD spending ( 2437) bills. The revised bill provides compromise language for those three spending bills and adds language for CJS, EWR, and IER spending bills. The remaining six spending bills are due to be similarly considered before March 22^nd.