The House will vote next week on a measure naming a meeting room of the Capitol Visitor Center after Gabe Zimmerman, the Gabrielle Giffords staffer who was slain in January's shooting in Tucson.
The measure, H.Res. 364, was sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democratic National Committee chairwoman who is among Giffords's closest friends on Capitol Hill. It will come up on Wednesday under fast-track rules requiring a two-thirds vote for passage, according to a weekly schedule released Wednesday by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-Va.) office.
Zimmerman became the first congressional aide killed in the line of duty when he was shot in January by alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner at Giffords's constituent event in Tucson.
"It is fitting and appropriate to have a permanent memorial in the Capitol for the first House staffer to die in the line of duty," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement. "I am pleased that we have been able to work with Mr. Zimmerman's family, Rep. Giffords, and her staff to make this possible."
News of the House's consideration of the resolution comes amid criticism of the speaker by Giffords's husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, who wrote that Boehner did not visit the Arizona Democrat while on a trip to Houston this year.
"Our only contact with him had been a simple get-well card he'd sent a few days after Gabby wasa injured," Kelly wrote in the couple's new memoir, "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope," according to The Hill.