Senate Sends CR to President

Yesterday, shortly after action was complete in the House, the Senate passed HJ Res 123, Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018, by a largely bipartisan vote of 82 to 14. The 14 Nays included 6 Republicans and 7 Democrats (and 1 Independent). The CR would extend the current spending (at FY 2017 rates) until December 22^nd, 2017.

No procedural votes preceded the consideration of the bill indicating that a strong deal had been achieved to ensure passage of the bill. The 30 minutes of debate allocated for the bill only drew two speakers; one of which spent the time praising his home State of Alaska; 8 minutes of the ‘debate’ went unused.

The Congress now has an additional two weeks to try to come up with a final spending deal for FY 2018. There has been some discussion in the press of potentially seeing an additional CR carrying the current spending over until January.

Bills Introduced – 11-14-14

The Senate was already on the way home for the weekend but the House introduced 18 bills yesterday. Only two of those may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 5712 - To authorize the Private Sector Office of the Department of Homeland Security to improve private sector engagement in protecting the homeland, and for other purposes. Sponsor - Rep. Clawson, Curt [R-FL-19].

HJ Rest 129 - Appointing the day for the convening of the first session of the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress. Sponsor - Rep. McCarthy, Kevin [R-CA-23].

The current title of HR 5712 is written broad enough to cover a number of potentially interesting possibilities. I suspect that this may be the last mention of the bill in this blog, however.

HJ Res 129 is a procedural resolution that was introduced and passed yesterday in the House. It would set January 6^th as the first date for the new Congress. Typically the Senate will meet to swear in new members and then adjourn until the State-of-the-Union. The House will meet that day (a Wednesday) and have a couple of additional days in session taking care of mainly procedural matters before heading back home.