Tuesday April 23, 2013

House Judiciary voted out the Billings bill, S. 31, unanimously today. It should appear on tomorrow's House Calendar under Notice; then it could be acted upon Thursday and Friday.
The Senate Appropriations Committee continues to plod through the budget bill in hopes of finishing it by tomorrow; I'm not sure if that's going to happen now.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Although there has been little to report on our priorities in the last month we did see final passage of H. 431, the foreclosure mediation bill. Tomorrow I expect that the House Judiciary Committee will endorse its version of S. 31, the “Billings” bill. I’m pretty sure that we’ll see final passage this year although it is likely the Senate will initially refuse to concur and ask for a committee of conference. The bills are not too far apart. The House version has the support of all the parties that testified both for and against the bill as introduced. So things are pretty close to resolution. We’ll see.

Right now the major items in the way of adjournment are taxes and the budget. we’re still hoping for the end of the session on Saturday May 11^th. It could run into the following week. The Senate Appropriations Committee initially hoped to complete work on its version of the budget last Friday. Well, they missed that deadline and will probably take until Wednesday to finish its work. Again, we just wait and see.

Thanks for reading. I’ll let you know tomorrow if S. 31 comes out of committee.