House Begins Consideration of HR 5894, FY 2024 LHH Spending

Yesterday, the House began consideration of HR 5894, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024. This is the first time in a number of years that the House has considered an LHH spending bill because of the controversies (both ways) surrounding various abortion provisions typically included in the bill.

The House took up 78 of the 146 amendments listed in Part B of H Rept 118-272. None of the amendments were of specific interest there. Fifty-one of the amendments passed yesterday. One of those amendments was an en bloc amendment incorporating 51 of amendments listed in the report. Fifteen of the amendments considered still have recorded votes pending.

The House is scheduled to resume consideration of the bill today. There is a good chance that there will not be a final vote on the bill because of some Republican opposition to abortion language.

Review - HR 6363 Introduced – ‘Ladder’ CR

Yesterday, Rep Granger (R,TX) introduced HR 6363, the Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024. Colloquially known as a ‘Ladder CR’, the bill continues current funding for some programs (of the Federal Government through January 19^th, 2024 and through February 2^nd, 2024. It also includes a section that extends the termination of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 2018’ through February 2^nd.

Moving Forward

The House is scheduled to take up HR 6363 under the suspension of the rules process today. Most observers had expected it to be first up on the agenda to allow, if it passed, the Senate time enough to consider the bill under regular order if necessary. Instead, the House moved directly to the consideration of H Res 864 (the rule for the consideration of HR 5894 (removed from paywall), the FY 2024 LHH spending bill) and then proceeded to consider HR 5894. This may indicate that there are not enough votes to achieve the supermajority required under the suspension process.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-6363-introduced - subscription required. 

Committee Hearings – Week of 11-12-23

This week, with both the House and Senate in session and the latest funding deadline set for Friday midnight, there is a modest hearing schedule in the both houses. For the purposes of this blog, there are three hearings of interest (all in the House); a homeland threat hearing and two rules hearings.

Homeland Security Threat

On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland”. The witness list includes:

Alejandro N. Mayorkas, DHS,

Christopher A. Wray, FBI, and

Christine Abizaid, DNI

This will be a high-level overview, so do not expect a lot of details (which would be classified in any case). Cybersecurity will be touched upon, but the major focus will be on threats from Iran and China.

Rules Hearings

Today, the House Rules Committee will meet to craft the rules for the consideration of two spending related bill for possible floor consideration on Tuesday. Those two bills are:

HR__ – Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024, and

HR 5894 - Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

With the Republican 11 having three votes on the Committee, this hearing will be the first major test of Speaker Johnson’s first attempt at crafting a continuing resolution. TheHill.com reported on Saturday about the opposition of Rep Roy (R,TX) to this plan. If his two fringe cohorts join him in voting against the rule, this CR will go nowhere.

Tomorrow, the Rules Committee will take up two other bills:

HR 5893 - Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

HR 5961 - No Funds for Iranian Terrorism Act

On the Floor

The current schedule in the House lists three of the four bills mentioned above as “Possible Legislation Considered Pursuant to a Rule”, the odd man out is the CR. Some sort of CR needs to be signed by the President before Friday midnight to prevent a government shutdown this weekend. If the CR rule is approved today, then it will almost certainly be first up on the agenda tomorrow.

Interestingly, HR 4820, the THUD spending bill that the House considered (but did not complete) last week is back on the schedule for this week. Like HR 4664, the House considered a full slate of amendments, but failed to conduct a final vote on the bill. In both cases there was some Republican opposition to provisions in the bill, and it only takes four Republican nays to kill the bill. It will be interesting to see if an additional amendment is considered on the floor to get this bill to move to completion, or if some other deal has been made.

Review - HR 5894 Introduced – FY 2024 LHH Spending

Last month, Rep Aderholt (R,AL) introduced HR 5894, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024. There is no report from the House Appropriations Committee on this legislation, instead the Committee staff has published an explanatory materials document, reflecting the fact that the Committee has not held a markup hearing on the bill.

There are no cybersecurity mentions in the bill, but the explanatory document does outline cybersecurity spending and discussions. There are three mentions of spending for chemical emergency response in the bill and multiple discussions on the topic in the explanatory text.

Moving Forward

The House Rules Committee announced yesterday that they would hold a rules hearing on this bill on November 13^th, 2023. To date, 326 amendments have been proposed for consideration during this rule development hearing. None of the amendments are of specific interest here. With this hearing on Monday, the House could start consideration of the bill on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

 

For more details about the provisions of the bill and the Committee’s explanatory text, including cybersecurity spending and CBRN response issues, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-5894-introduced - subscription required.

Amendment Announcement for HR 5893 and HR 5894 – FY 2024 CSJ and LHH Spending

Yesterday, the House Rules Committee announced the amendment deadlines for two additional spending bills:

• HR 5893, the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations (CJS) Act, 2024, and

• HR 5894, the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations (LHH) Act, 2024

The amendment deadline for HR 5893 is Monday, November 6^th and the deadline for HR 5894 is Friday, November 3^rd.

These were the last two appropriations bills introduced in the House (on October 6^th). Neither bill has been marked up in Committee, so no report is available. Technically, the two bills were just referred to the Appropriations Committee for consideration last week. Typically, appropriations bills are ‘written’ by the Committee with hearings by the appropriate subcommittee and the full Appropriations Committee. They are usually first published as reported versions of the bill with the committee report published at the same time. That process was not followed in the case of these two bills.

I will have brief reports on the two pieces of legislation later this week.

The Rules Committee also published a meeting notice for tomorrow to formulate the rule for the consideration of three other spending bills, HR 4820 – THUD, HR 4821- IER spending, and an as of yet unnumbered spending supplemental for Israeli security.

Bills Introduced – 10-6-23

Yesterday, with the House meeting in pro forma session, there were 29 bills introduced. Two of those bills will receive additional attention in this blog:

HR 5893 - Making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes. Rogers, Harold [Rep.-R-KY-5]

HR 5894 - Making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes. Aderholt, Robert B. [Rep.-R-AL-4]

There was some question if members of the House could introduce legislation without a Speaker. That has apparently been resolved. Obviously (now), bills can be introduced. Apparently though, the bills introduced cannot be referred to committees for consideration.

As a side note, there are now 25 bills listed as having been introduced on October 3^rd in the House that were not listed on the morning of October 4^th. This includes the now infamous H Res 757, Declaring the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant. The engrossed text of that resolution is now available. It is amazing that a single line of text, without preamble, justification, or explication, could so disrupt the operation of the Congress of the United States.

Rules Committee to Meet on HR 5895 – FY 2019 EWR Spending

The House Rules Committee will meet twice this coming week (Tuesday and Wednesday) to formulate the rule for consideration of HR 5895, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019. The version of the bill that will be affected by the two rules (general debate and amendment consideration) will include language from HR 5894 (Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2019) as Division B and HR 5786 (Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019) as Division C.

The date for the submission of amendments to be considered by the Rules Committee has passed. A total of 173 amendments were submitted for all three divisions of the bill. Only one of the amendments may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

Division A, #59, Soto (D,FL) – Increases funding to the Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) program by $1,000,000 to further facilitate the Department of Energy’s effort to secure the nation’s energy infrastructure against all hazards, reduce the risks of and impacts from cyber events, and assist with restoration activities.

The amendment would take the $1 million from the DOE salary and administration account; decreasing that account to $279.5 million. It would increase the CESER account to $147 million.

The bill is currently scheduled to come to the floor of the House on Thursday.