Too Many Mistakes Today

I guess it just happens when you try to do too many things at the same time; you just make stupid mistakes. I was in too much of a hurry this morning to get to a meeting and in too much of a hurry at lunch to check things properly. Mea Culpa. Congress has adjourned until June 2nd (Tuesday Week) for their Memorial Day Recess not Monday afternoon as was printed in Thursday’s Congressional Record Daily Digest. The Daily Digest does not report what is on the legislative calendar for the House on June 2nd, but HRes 474 has been reported and will probably be considered. That would mean that HR 2200, the TSA Authorization Bill would be under consideration. As of this afternoon the Rules Committee Report is available for HRes 474 (House Report 111-127). Next week, plenty of time before June 2nd, I’ll take a look at the reported version of HR 2200 and the proposed amendments in a blog where I won’t be in a hurry. Again, pardon me for looking stupid, but it has been a crazy hurried day.

HR 2200 on Fast Track – 05-22-09

I love to be able to say “I told you so”. I said that HR 2200, the TSA Authorization bill, was on a fast track for passage in the House and even I underestimated how fast. Yesterday the House Rules Committee held an ‘Emergency Hearing’ on HR 2200 and reported H.Res. 474 as a rule to expedite a hearing before the House. The full House of Representatives is scheduled to debate the bill today for one hour. A vote may be allowed to take place this afternoon or early evening depending on how long Speaker Pelosi intends to keep the House in session before it short Memorial Day Recess. I have been partially on vacation this week so I missed the publication of the Homeland Security Committee Report (Report 111-123) and the printing of the latest version of the bill, that reported by the Committee (HR 2200RH). Both are available on the GPO web site or at Thomas.loc.gov. Unfortunately, when the House Rules Committee does one of these resolutions to allow for early consideration of a bill, their report is not published or publicly available until after the debate is over. This is unfortunate since this is the only place that one would be able to find copies of the amendments that will be allowed to be discussed and/or considered in today’s debate. The only good thing is that bills considered under these rules typically require a 2/3 majority to pass. If they don’t achieve that on the day of early consideration they can be brought back up again in the course of regular consideration where they will only require a majority vote to pass. I expect that if it comes to a vote, it will pass. Sometime next week we will be able to look at what the House passes today (in all likelihood) in some detail before it is considered by the Senate. Given the interest in the Senate Homeland Security Committee to get a DHS authorization bill done this year, I would not be surprised to see this get swift consideration in that body as well. OOPS. Update a 10:25 The House is not meeting today, it recessed for the long weekend last night. That means that this bill will be considered early next week. The House is actually schedule to reconvene on Monday evening, but will probably not get to work until Tuesday.

HS Committee Passes HR 2200 in Bipartisan Vote

Yesterday the full House Homeland Security Committee marked up the version of HR 2200 reported out of the subcommittee last week and adopted the revised bill in a near unanimous vote (22-Yes, 1-present, 0-No), extending the record of bipartisan support for this bill. As early as next week the Committee Report on the bill should be reported to the full House, opening the door for a floor vote anytime there after. Because very few of the large number of amendments made to this bill in either the subcommittee or full committee hearings were read into the record we will not be able to tell for sure what HR 2200 actually contains until we see the amended version of the bill in the House Report. Most of the amendments made today were done on voice vote with little or no opposition. There were a few amendments that drew ‘perfecting’ amendments from the opposite side of the aisle. The votes on most of those issues were on the record and were closer to a party line vote. For example an amendment to require DHS to add current Gitmo Detainees to the Do Not Fly List was countered with an amendment to the effect that this should only be done after the President determines their ‘final status’. This was the most rancorous discussion during the hearing, but even that did not rise to the current level of bipartisan ‘debate’ seen on so many issues lately. This authorization bill still seems to be on the fast track for passage in the House. The broad (if some times grudging) support this bill received in these two markup hearings seems to indicate that this will have little problem passing a vote in the full House.