Senate Approves [New] Continuing Resolution FY 2012

Today the Senate approved HR 2055, the [New] Continuing Resolution FY 2012 by a much more nearly party-line vote of 67-32. Having said that, the bill would not have passed (a 3/5 majority was required under the unanimous consent process) were it not for the 16 Republicans that voted for the bill. It’s interesting that the Republican House needed Democrats to pass the bill because of defections. In the Senate only one Democrat (and one Independent) voted no, so the Dems needed the votes because of the closer division that body.

So we did pass the necessary FY 2012 spending bills before Christmas. Of course, in less than three weeks the FY 2013 budget process will be getting started. Of course we still need to see what was in that lengthy bill that the Senate shipped to the President; patience.

Continuing Appropriations Continuing Saga

Yesterday the House passed HR 2055, the [New] Continuing Resolution Act of 2012 by a bipartisan vote of 296-121. Bipartisan is kind of a tricky word here, more Democrats (149) than Republicans (147) voted in favor of the bill. The Senate will take up the bill today under a unanimous consent agreement so no cloture vote is necessary.

To keep the government operating through today, both the House and the Senate approved H. Joint Res. 94 yesterday. That resolution amended the existing Continuing Resolution Act of 2012 by extending the expiration date until midnight tonight. The form of that amendment also extended the CFATS program for the same time period.

Politics

Before the House adjourned for the weekend yesterday they also passed H. Joint Res. 95, another amendment to the current Continuing Resolution Act of 2012, that would re-extend the deadline of that measure until Friday, December 23^rd. This was done just in case the deal on HR 2055 fell through in the Senate. The Senate is not currently scheduled to take up this second Resolution.

Now what I just described for these two resolutions does not exactly track with what I reported in yesterday’s blog. Thursday night Chairman Drier (R,CA) explained (at least three times) that the reason for a short term continuing resolution was the need to get the formal copy of the cobbled-together bill properly prepared for the President’s signature. If that had truly been the case, then HJ Res 94 would have been for more than one day.

An alternative explanation of the purpose of the two part resolution process would be to force the Senate to act today on HR 2055. A full week extension would have allowed for more wheedling, politicking, and deal-making in the Senate. This would also account for why the two resolutions were not brought to the floor of the House until after HR 2055 passed.

The lack of listing H. Joint Res. 95 on the unanimous consent agreement kind of supports this thinking. That would only be true though if the Senate leadership had such a low opinion of the average Senator that they thought they wouldn’t be aware that the House passed the second resolution.

Moving Forward

Oh well, the debate in the Senate today should be short. The Unanimous consent agreement only allows for 15 minutes of debate.

I still haven’t had a chance to closely look at the bill for chemical- and cyber-security provisions. Yesterday was a travel day and it’s hard to read to read while you are driving.

BTW: HR 1540, the DOD authorization bill, passed Thursday in the Senate and should be on the President’s desk.

House Rule for HR 2055

I mentioned in last night's blog post that there were some strange sounding provisions in the Rule that the House Rules Committee adopted last night for the consideration of HR 2055. After I got to bed the Committee staff finally (it was a long night for them, I hope they get overtime pay, probably not) go the tule posted on the web site. Those odd-ball provisions do not really concern the considetation of HR 2055, but deal with HR 3672, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2012, and H. Con. Res. 94, a resolution dealing with that bill. Those games are interesting (if you're a political junky), but not really germane to this blog.

There are two interesting additions to the rule that do apply to HR 2055, the first authorizes consideration of a continuing resolution today and the second provides for same day consideration of a bill (well, some specific type bills including HR 2055) under a rule. Both are essentially waivers of current House Rules to allow Congress to actually complete action on the spending bills before the end of the first session of the 112th Congress.

The conintuing resolution should be a short term, probably a week, resolution, but that is not specified in this rule. Chairman Drieer (R,CA) explained last night that the 2200+ page document submitted by the Conference Committee is not a documant that can really go to the President. Glancing at the documents on-line it is clear that they are a hodgepodge of printed documents with hand written corrections and modifications. It could take a couple of days to get the final document in a proper state for the President's signature. And the bill can't go into effect until the President signs it.

The 'same day' provision in the rule will allow the House to consider HR 2055 today and is necessary because the Rule was published (even agreed to) after midnight this morning. Actually, House Rules {clause 6(a) of rule XIII} do provide for same day consideration, but it requires a 2/3 vote to authorize that consideration. The leadership, probably correctly, decided that they could not guarnatee a 2/3 vote so they waived the Rule.

HR 2055 – The [New] Consolidated Appropriations Act 2012

The 112^th Congress is getting to be the experts in last minute deals. Apparently the Senate was not interested in the new language in HR 3671 that the House drafted. A deal was then brokered on language more acceptable to the Senate and still reasonably acceptable to the House. So to make it easy to get it passed in both houses of Congress they had the Conference Committee for HR 2055, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012, substitute the new appropriations language for the Senate amendment to HR 2055. Who says that there are no creative people in Congress (well more likely their staffs)?

As with HR 3671, the two divisions of this bill (out of a total of 9) that will probably contain provisions of the most interest to the chemical- and cyber-security communities are Division A (DOD) and Division D (DHS). This bill has an identical Division D, Title V, §540 that would extend the CFATS authorization until October 4, 2012.

NOTE: I have never understood why Congress doesn’t just change that date to reflect the end of the fiscal year like almost everything else in the appropriations bills. It would result in a four-days-less-than-a-year extension when they did it, but those four days are meaningless without the appropriations that take effect on October 1^st.

I’m glad I didn’t waste any time today (waste in hindsight) reviewing the details of HR 3671 as it is now dead in the dusty files of the Library of Congress.

As I write this the House Rules Committee is finishing up their rule hearing, which started at 11:45 pm EDT. The rule is a closed rule (as with the standard post-Conference Committee rule), but it includes a couple of interesting details which I’m not sure that I understood from the part of the discussion that I heard. It will be interesting to read the rule.

In any case Chairman Drier (R,CA) noted that he expected the debate on the rule on the House floor to begin at about 10:00 am EST tomorrow morning.