Earlier today, the Senate passed a four-bill “minibus” by a vote of 92 to 6. The package includes FY2019 Agriculture, Transportation and Housing Urban Development, Financial Services, and Interior appropriations bills. As noted yesterday, this means that the Senate has now cleared seven of the 12 spending bills. The House has passed its versions of the Interior and Financial Services bills.
While the House is now enjoying its five-week long August recess, the Senate still remains in session this week and appears to be on track to pass a four-bill spending package by Friday. The measure will include Senate versions of two House-passed bills– Interior and Financial Services– as well as the Agriculture and Transportation-Housing Urban Development bills. If the Senate approves the four-bill vehicle, it will have cleared seven of the 12 spending bills for FY2019, while the House has adopted six to date.
While each chamber continues to make progress on its own versions of bills, potential stumbling blocks to bills being signed into law remain. For example, while the two chambers are currently trying to reach an agreement on an already-adopted package of three bills– Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction-Veterans Affairs– progress has been halted because the two sides cannot agree on the amount of money that is available for each bill.
In addition, President Trump earlier this week tweeted that he would advocate for a government shutdown if he does not get what he wants on “border security.” This comes after Republican Congressional leaders earlier stated that they would not support such a move. It remains unclear what the president ultimately wants.
To counter the House Republican proposal to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA), the House Democrats today will introduce their own version of a reauthorization bill. The Democrats’ package, the Aim Higher Act, will serve as their messaging document moving forward. It is not expected to move through the legislative process.
A number of documents related to the legislation are available:
The House Republicans’ bill, the PROSPER Act, was passed by the Education and the Workforce Committee late last year but has not yet come to the floor for a vote as the committee chairwoman has not been able to generate enough support for its passage.
After three days of debating amendments on the floor, the House passed this morning a spending package that includes the FY2019 Interior and Financial Services appropriations bills. This morning’s action means that half of the 12 annual spending bills have now cleared the House.
On a related note, the last of the House appropriations bills, the Homeland Security funding bill, is scheduled to be marked up in subcommittee today. The markup is expected to be contentious as a result of a number of controversies, such as those surrounding family separations at the border and the Administration’s push for funding for a border wall.
After an all-day markup, the FY2019 House Labor-HHS-Education bill was cleared by the Appropriations Committee last night. The committee’s adoption of the bill means that 11 of the 12 spending bills have cleared the House Appropriations Committee; the Senate committee has cleared all of its bills.
The 13-hour markup was contentious at times, with heated debates on a number of issues, including child separation. Of the roughly 50 amendments offered and debated during the session, a significant number of them focused on child separation practices at the border.
Although the bill has now cleared the committee process, it is unclear at this point whether it will see floor action in the near future.
A copy of the bill is available here and the accompanying report is available here.