By , ,
Published December 23, 2015
The House Appropriations Committee did not finish writing the long-term Continuing Resolution -- the agreement reached late last week by President Obama, House Republicans and Senate Democrats - until after midnight Tuesday morning.
The text was posted around 2 am.
Failing to post the bill before midnight means, that according to the "three day" rule, the House cannot debate the measure until Thursday.
In addition, it is unclear whether the House will put this issue before the Rules Committee Tuesday or Wednesday. The Rules Committee structures debate on the floor and the bill must go to Rules first before putting the overall issue on the floor.
There is some dispute as to whether what is now online is actually the "final" version of the bill. For all intents and purposes, it is. But it has not been printed yet by the Government Printing Office. So spacing and pages could change.
Some folks will try to make a big deal out of this.
Of course there's another wrinkle. Late last Friday night and early Saturday morning, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, multiple senior floor staff and leadership aides all indicated that the CR the government is now operating under ran until 11:59:59 pm Thursday, and rank and file GOPers were told late Friday night that the interim bill only ran for a "few days."
Fox is now being told that the current CR is actually a week long CR, expiring at 11:59:59 Friday.
Bottom line is that no one in the House truly knew what they were voting on when this issue came up for a vote around 12:15 Saturday morning.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/short-term-cr-details-emerge-ahead-of-long-term-vote