September 26, 2017 – 5:32 p.m.

The legislation providing a 6-month extension of expiring Federal Aviation Administration funding and tax authorities, which failed to pass the House last night under expedited procedures, will return to the House floor later this week for a re-vote that only requires a simple majority.

The bill also contains targeted tax relief for hurricane victims (a new cost estimate says that will total $5.4 billion in lost Treasury revenue) and a provision allowing the use of private flood insurance alongside public flood insurance. A full section-by-section summary of the bill is here.

The House Rules Committee has approved a special procedure that allows the bill (H.R. 3823) to come to the floor without any amendments being offered except (1) a technical amendment to the hurricane tax relief title that will be adopted without a separate vote, and (2) one amendment offered by the Democratic leader or her designee that must abide by all House rules (germaneness, etc.) and all budget rules and limitation. (The minority does not have to reveal the amendment in advance of its being offered.) The bill will be debated for one hour (40 minutes controlled by the Ways and Means Committee and 20 minutes controlled by the Financial Services Committee).

The plan appears to be to debate the procedures for H.R. 3823 and the underlying bill itself on Wednesday evening and then hold the vote on passage of H.R. 3823 on Thursday. (The House will not be in session until 4 p.m. on Wednesday – Republicans are holding an all-day closed-door retreat to get their act together on tax reform as the big announcement comes from the White House.) The House often does this – wait to pass a bill until right before a deadline (in this case the expiration of the current aviation authorization on September 30) – in order to leave the Senate as little time as possible to consider the bill . There won’t be enough time for the Senate to amend the bill except by unanimous consent, and the House will almost certainly head home for the weekend right after passing H.R. 3823, so the bill will be presented to the Senate on a “take it or leave it” basis.

There was much discussion in the Rules Committee on the shortcomings of the bill identified by the Democrats on the panel, particularly how Democrats had identified 21 tax provision  that could provide relief to hurricane victims but the bill only includes five. However, Democrats did not offer any amendments to the rule to allow any other amendments to the bill to be made in order, and the rule passed the Rules Committee by a party-line vote of 7 to 3.