House continues work on FY 2011 spending into early Wednesday morning

After rejecting four amendments to further cut Defense Department spending, the House continued its consideration of amendments to H.R. 1 late Tuesday night, but largely debated several amendments and postponed roll call votes on them until later in the week.

The House did reject one amendment by voice vote from Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) that would have cut Defense Department research and development. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) argued that "This is the line item that funded the Internet," and Quigley did not ask for a recorded vote.

Several other Defense-related amendments will be held tomorrow, including one that would end consideration of different engine variants for the F-35 aircraft, and another that would eliminate a $400 million Afghanistan restructuring fund. A third would eliminate $1.5 billion used to fund Iraqi police and other security forced in that country.

By midnight, the House was about halfway through H.R. 1, but several hundred additional amendments were introduced Tuesday, and presumably many of these will be taken up later in the week.