House Accepts Senate Amendment to HR 933

This morning the House accepted the Senate amendments to HR 933 by a largely bipartisan vote of 318 – 109. With almost a week to spare Congress avoided the dreaded ‘government shut-down’ with hardly any political theatrics.

This bill extended the authorization of the CFATS program until October 4, 2013 and reduced the funding for the program by about $20 million, leaving the Sequester to further reduce the ISCD spending on the program.

HR 933 Passed in Senate

Today the Senate adopted the alternative language for HR 933 from the Senate Appropriations Committee (S Amdt 26) by a bipartisan vote of 70-29 (1 not voting). Then, after approving a cloture motion on the full bill, an agreement was reached allowing a vote on the bill this afternoon. HR 933, Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 (the new name of the bill) passed by another bipartisan vote of 72 – 26 (1 again not voting). No additional amendments were approved.

According to the House Majority Leader’s web site the bill will be considered by the House tomorrow morning (after one-hour of debate and no amendments allowed) under a unanimous consent agreement. The House will either agree to the Senate amendment (3/5 majority required under unanimous consent rules) or the bill will go to a probably very quick conference committee as an apparent agreement between the chairs of the two appropriations committees has already been reached in favor of the new language in the bill.

This bill (or short term continuing resolution) will have to pass by next Wednesday midnight to avoid a ‘government shut-down’.

Senate Approves First Cloture Motion on HR 993

Yesterday the Senate voted to close debate on the amendment in the form of a substitute from the Senate Appropriations Committee for HR 993. The 63-35 vote sets up votes on Amendment #26 to HR 933 this morning, including another cloture vote. A parliamentary move by Sen. Reid (D,NV) would allow a final vote on HR 933, Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, early Thursday.

If the Senate, as expected, passes HR 933 on Thursday morning, a vote under suspension of the rules could occur as early as Thursday afternoon in the House, though a Friday vote is probably more likely. Acceptance of the Senate language by the House would allow the two chambers to start their scheduled Easter Recess this weekend. Otherwise, Congress will have to stay in session to work out their differences to avoid a dreaded ‘government shutdown’ at midnight next Wednesday when the current continuing resolution expires.

To recap, the current Senate language for HR 933 that is expected to pass will include a reauthorization of the CFATS program through October 4^th, 2013, but would significantly reduce funding for that program, even before the Sequestration further reduces spending across the board.

Senate Appropriations Substitute Language for HR 933

The Senate Appropriations Committee published the text of the amendment that will be offered as a substitute for the recently passed HR 933, the Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013. Among other things this substitute language would change the title of the bill to Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013. The reason for the change is that three additional full spending bills have been added to the bill, including Homeland Security.

CFATS Extension

As you might expect this is a large documents, 587 pages, so I haven’t had a chance to look at it too closely yet, but I did note that §537 of Division D would extend the current CFATS authorization until, October 4, 2013 [Typo corrected 0710 CST, 3-13-13].

Explanatory Remarks

I have spent a little more time looking at the ‘Homeland Security Explanatory Remarks’ document that was also published on the Committee web site. This provides detailed guidance to federal agencies that is not quite a full legal requirement. Remembering that those agencies have to come back to the Committee next year for funds (actually later this year, hopefully) agencies have to be extremely careful in their failure to comply with these unofficial requirements.

At this point, I’ll just provide a list of the ‘remarks’ that I think reader’s might find interesting. Full comment on these may come in a later post.

TWIC Reader Rule: The Department, and in particular the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), is directed to take all necessary action to expedite the completion and publication of a final rule governing the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) reader requirement.

Chemical Security: Congress directed the Coast Guard and the National Protection and Programs Directorate to complete a planned Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to harmonize chemical security responsibilities established by the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) regulations and Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) regulatory programs no later than March 30, 2012, but the agreement has not been finalized. The MOU is to be completed expeditiously. The Deputy Secretary is also directed to continue semiannual reporting to the Committees on these matters as outlined in Senate Report 112-74.

Moving Forward

A report over at TheHill.com notes that the debate on the substitute language for HR 933 will begin today and that it appears that an agreement is in place to allow floor amendments to the bill. This could get interesting over the next week or so.

Rules Committee Reports Closed Rule for HR 933

This evening the House Rules Committee, in a pair of predictable party-line votes, reported a closed rule for the consideration of HR 933, the Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013. There will be no amendments made from the floor and only one editorial-correction amendment made by the Rules Committee. There will be one hour of debate and then the vote.

With three weeks until a ‘potential government shutdown’ it seems unusual for the Republican leadership to resort to a closed rule on a spending bill. In the last Congress they made a very big point about open debate on spending bills. Perhaps they don’t remember their complaints about the closed rule spending bills in the 111^th Congress.

One would normally expect a party-line vote on a bill like this, but I suspect that there will be a number of Republicans that will vote against the bill because they will feel that the bill does not reduce spending enough. Whether there will be enough Republican nayes to defeat the bill remains to be seen.

If it does survive the House vote it won’t be considered as written in the Senate.

NOTE: The official version of this bill is not yet available from the GPO. We are still publicly working off of the Rules Committee Print.

Bills Introduced – 03-05-13

We are starting to see the spending bills that would provide for keeping the government in operation for the remainder of the fiscal year. Two were introduced yesterday:

S 444 Latest Title: A bill making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Collins, Susan M. (R,ME)

HR 933 Latest Title: Making appropriations for the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other departments and agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Rogers, Harold (R,KY)

These first two bills start with DOD spending. Presumably S 444 will be similar to HR 993 (that I briefly covered last night) in that it will adjust the DOD spending base so that the sequestration won’t be quite so painful. It is not yet clear that S 444 will also be the Senate vehicle for the FY 2013 CR for the remainder of the government.

It is odd that Sen. Collins is the sponsor for S 444 since she is not the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee. She is, however, a well-known consensus builder, so that could be the reason she was chosen to be the author of this bill.

NOTE: S 444 will never actually make it to the House. All spending bills must ‘originate’ in the House. It could be voted upon in the Senate at some point and then the language substituted into a House originated bill like HR 933.

Rules Committee Hearing on HR 933, FY 2013 Continuing Resolution

As I predicted yesterday (no great analytical skills required) the House Rules Committee will be holding a rule hearing tomorrow afternoon on HR 933, the Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013. Division C of that bill would be the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 with Title VI dealing with the Homeland Security Department.

HR 933 and CFATS

A real quick review of the Rules Committee Print of the bill shows that §1609 would continue the authorization for the CFATS program through October 4, 2013. I don’t see any provisions of the bill that would drastically reduce the funding for the CFATS program as had been proposed by the House Appropriations Committee last year.

More details on the bill to come.

The Hearing

The Rules Committee will formulate the rule for the floor consideration of the bill. I am quite sure that this Rule will continue the open rule status for spending bills that we saw in the 112^th Congress. This means that some relatively small number of amendments will be posted to the Rules Committee site by the time the hearing starts, but more amendments will be allowed to be proposed on the floor as the reading of the bill continues.

Given the way the bill is crafted, most of the amendments will be on the military spending side of the bill. The amendments for the Homeland Security title will be fairly limited because that section mainly continues existing funding at the FY 2012 rate (which will be subject to reductions for the sequester).