Late this afternoon the House Rules Committee
announced
an emergency meeting this evening to consider
H
Res 361, which modifies the House Rules for consideration of a continuing
resolution or debt limit bill before October 1
st. It also addresses
the House action to be taken on HR 2642, the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs
Act of 2013
as
adopted by the Senate. The resolution was adopted in a
party-line vote.
Modifying House Rules
Section 1 is a pretty standard change to
House
Rules when a statutory deadline approaches. In this case the deadline is
September 30
th and the rule {Rule XIII, clause 6(a)} is the
requirement that it takes a 2/3 vote to a consider a rule, joint rule, or the
order of business on the same day it is presented to the House. This rule would
be waived only for a rule concerning a continuing resolution or a debt ceiling
bill. This would allow for a continuing resolution to be considered right up to
the deadline of midnight on the 30
th.
I think that a debt ceiling bill was included so that an aggressive
debt ceiling bill could be offered to the conservative members of the
Republican Caucus as an incentive to vote for a continuing resolution that does
not defund Obamacare.
HR 2642
Another sop to the conservatives is one of the least
productive legislative moves that I have ever heard of. Back in July the Senate
approved an alternative version of HR 2642 that removed virtually every
conservative program included in the bill. This is a fairly standard occurrence
and usually the House either accepts the new version (not too often lately) or
demurs and requests a Conference Committee to iron out the differences between the
two bills.
In this case, however, the resolution, if passed would
accept the Senate version of the bill, but make two “minor” amendments and send
it back to the Senate for concurrence in the amendments. The first amendment
would remove the Senate language and re-insert the earlier House version (including
chemical
security and chemical safety provisions). The second little amendment would
be the addition of HR 3102 (a bill recently passed in the House that drastically
cuts funding for food stamps) as a new title in HR 2642.
There might have been a slim (very slim) chance that the
Senate might have gone along with the re-insertion of the original House
language, but there is no way that the Senate is going to concur with the insertion
of HR 3102; the food stamps program is a favorite of Democratic lawmakers. As I
see it there are only three possible responses:
• No action by the Senate and no
agriculture department authorization bill for FY 2014 (most likely in my
opinion);
• Declining the House Amendment and
requesting a Conference Committee be appointed; and
• Concurring in the House vote but
re-substituting the Senate language for the entire bill (a bit of tit for tat).
This will almost certainly pass on a straight party line
vote when it comes up tomorrow.
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