On July 30, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s scheduled mark up of legislation (H.R. 5616), to reauthorize the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) at a $20 million level from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2015, was postponed indefinitely.

Although no official reason was given as to why the bill was pulled from the agenda at the last minute, apparently the Republican members of the committee had planned to offer a number of crippling amendments. These included cutting the authorization level for the NHPRC in the bill to $10 million and limiting eligibility and the scope of projects the NHPRC could fund.

For example, days before the hearing Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced H.R. 5865, the “Stop Wasting Archive Grants Act of 2010.” The bill would prohibit the Archivist of the United States from making “grants to preserve or publish non-Federal records.”

On July 1, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and the National Archives had cleared the bill by a vote of 6–1.

The Senate has already passed a bill (S. 2872) to reauthorize the NHPRC at a $10 million for fiscal years 2010—2014 (S. Rept. 111-213).