Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office announced today, via Twitter, that the House will cut its recess short to return and pass the state aid bill.
Pelosi's office tweeted Tuesday:
I will be calling the House back into session early next week to save teachers' jobs and help seniors & children #FMAP
Lawmakers would most likely return Monday or Tuesday to vote on the package, which made it through a key procedural vote in the Senate earlier on Tuesday, with 61 senators voting to advance it.
Democratic leaders' decision to call the House back into session reflects a sense among their leadership that the $26 billion package couldn't wait until September for final approval. The leaders debated the plan this afternoon after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) publicly suggested they might need to return.
House leadership would certainly be in bounds to request that the Senate stay in the entire month of August to pass the hundreds of bills that the House has passed that are currently languishing, but that's probably not likely.
That said, getting the package finalized and to the President's desk as soon as possible is critical. According to Joel Packer, Executive Director, Committee for Education Funding, who spoke on a conference call with reporters just after the vote, the school year begins before Labor Day in the majority of school districts around the country. Getting this money out there now could prevent those districts from going through the hassles of laying off, then rehiring, staff.