House and Senate Pass Amended HR 1363

Very early this morning the House passed on a bipartisan recorded vote of 348-70 (28 Republicans voting in opposition) the Senate amended version of HR 1363. The provisions for the Department of Defense spending for the remainder of the fiscal year government funding cuts from the original bill were removed and $2 Billion dollars of budget reductions from the funding rates found in the current Continuing Resolution (Public Law 111- 242) were added to the bill. None of those reductions came from the budget of the Department of Homeland Security.

As with the original bill this bill would extend the expiration of the current CR until April 15^th. This would also extend the §550 authorization for the CFATS program until that date.

House Passes HR 1363 - DOD Funding and 1 Week CR

This afternoon the House passed HR 1363, the FY 2011 DOD spending bill and 1 week continuing resolution extension on a nearly party line vote of 247 to 181. Six Republicans voted against the bill and 15 Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

A report over at TheHill.com states that “White House said Thursday that Obama would veto the bill that would fund the military through September and the federal government for one week”. It is not clear that the President would even get the chance to veto the bill as it is unlikely to pass in the Senate.

In addition to continuing funding for the government until April 15th, it would also extend the current CFATS authorization until that date.

Rules Committee Hearing on HR 1363

The evening the House Rules Committee met to formulate the rule under which HR 1363, the DOD FY 2011 funding bill – 1 week CR, will be debated on the floor of the House. The folks over at TheHill.com are reporting that the bill will be voted upon tomorrow providing enough time for Senate consideration on Friday.

The bill will come to the floor under a closed rule with no amendments allowed. Four amendments were offered in the Rule Committee hearing and were voted down on a straight party line vote. One amendment would have stripped the DOD spending portion of the bill, making this just a one week extension of the current CR. The two of the other amendments would have dealt with military matters; forcing an immediate pull-out of Afghanistan and prohibiting US ground troops in Libya. The fourth amendment would have allowed the local government of the District of Columbia to fund abortions with District raised tax monies.

If there is an agreement on a full FY 2011 spending bill before this bill comes to a vote tomorrow (always a remote possibility) the is still a way that this bill could be amended to make that agreement possible. There is the standard provision for allowing a motion to recommit the bill to committee for a directed amendment.

HR 1363 – DOD Appropriations and New CR

The Republicans in the House came up with a new tactic on the FY 2011 spending controversy. They have introduced HR 1363 which is a spending bill for DOD for FY 2011 and contains a section that extends the current Continuing Resolution for another week. If this passes any future possible shut downs of the Federal government would not affect the military as this bill would provide their funding through the end of the fiscal year.

DHS Spending in CR

The DHS portion of the CR looks like it would be essentially the provisions of HR 1 (the dead spending bill put forward earlier this year by the Republicans in the House). I looked at the details available for those parts of the DHS spending that particularly pertain to the chemical security community and the TSA Surface Transportation Security numbers (§ 376) are identical to the HR 1 provisions. Interestingly the part that would fund both CFATS and CERT (National Protection and Programs Directorate - Infrastructure Protection and Information Security - §378) would provide more funds than budgeted in HR 1 ($859,000,000 vs $805,965,000). There is no explanation of why.

The CFATS extension is not specifically mentioned, but again, because of the way the resolution is worded, the CFATS §550 authorization would be extended until April 15th as well.

The House Rules Committee has not yet schedule a hearing to prepare a rule for this bill. It may be scheduled later today for a hearing tomorrow.