Eric Cantor Releases The House Legislative Agenda For June

Legislative Activity

House Appropriations Action

On Friday, May 31, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) released the House legislative agenda for June which includes consideration of four FY 2014 appropriations bills: Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA); Homeland Security; Defense; and Agriculture. The MilCon-VA (H.R. 2216) and Homeland Security (H.R. 2217) bills are both on the House schedule this week, while the Agriculture and Defense Appropriations Subcommittees will mark up their bills on Wednesday, June 5.

Anticipated Senate Appropriations Action

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) intends to release her committee’s 302(b) allocations in the coming weeks and anticipates a markup of the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs bill in mid-June. In the meantime, the appropriations subcommittees will continue FY 2014 budget request hearings this week.

Sequestration Amendments

Following the recent emergency legislation that enabled the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to transfer funding within its programs in order to avert furloughs and prevent the closure of 149 contract towers, lawmakers have been calling for Congress to provide other agencies similar flexibility. Particularly in the Senate, a number of measures have been proposed that would give federal agencies varying degrees of flexibility to allocate funds across budget accounts. None of these proposals have secured sufficient bipartisan support to move forward as a stand-alone bill, in part because the White House and Democrats continue to push for a full sequestration replacement package. However, we anticipate that floor amendments will be offered during House and Senate consideration of FY 2014 appropriations bills.