Recapping yesterday's action:

Yesterday, the Senate voted on and defeated the Tester amendment, which would have delayed implementation of the new swipe fee caps from the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law. So... now they won't be delayed. Good!

After that... uh... well, they declared a "Polycystic Kidney Awareness Week," and a "American Eagle Day."

Well! That's a full day, then!

Looking ahead to today:

There's still a whole slew of amendments to the bill still pending, and you'll notice a very definite split between the normal (prohibition on interest charges for on-time principal payments) and the crazy (to repeal Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act). And gee whiz, can you guess who's offering the crazy ones?

How about the stupid ones? Rand Paul (R-KY) insists on offering the same debt ceiling legislation that was set up to fail in the House last week. Including, of course, the same language that attempts to blame the increase in the debt entirely on President Obama, as opposed to having a bazillion wars going at once while cutting taxes.

And I'm indebted to Donny Shaw at Open Congress for spotting today's BANANAS Alert, cleverly disguised in the Senate schedule under the mundane listing of, "McConnell for Snowe amendment #390 (regulatory reform)." In reality, the amendment incorporates the text of Snowe's "Freedom from Restrictive Excessive Executive Demands and Onerous Mandates Act." I'm giving the FREEDOM Act a BANANAS score of 8. Five automatic points for spelling FREEDOM, LIBERTY or PATRIOT, additional points for refusing to use the "from" or "and" in the acronym, and another for the flourish of "Restrictive Excessive."

Will they get to all of the pending amendments today? Nobody knows for sure. Will Republicans just come up with a bunch of new ones in order to delay passage of a bil that could actually help the economy? Most likely. How long will that take? Again, nobody knows for sure.

That's life in the Senate.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

Can you feel the excitement, people? Yesterday, the Senate agreed to go forward with S. 782, the Economic Development Revitalization Act! So by unanimous consent, the cloture motion on the motion to proceed to S. 782 was withdrawn!

Whoopee!

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yesssssssss! Woohooooooo! Baby!

So then they did proceed to the consideration of S. 782! Frickin' awesome!

And then the day ended.

Looking ahead to today:

Today at 2pm, Senator Durbin will withdraw his amendment to the Tester amendment. Did you hear that? I mean, come on! And get this: after he withdraws that amendment, they'll vote on the Tester amendment!

For serious!

What's the Tester amendment? Oh, well, it delays the implementation of some new rules that were adopted as part of the financial regulatory reform bill (Dodd-Franks) last year that would impose limits on the "swipe fees" that credit card companies and banks can charge retailers for accepting and processing credit and debit card payments from customers.

That's not good.

But, like everything else the Senate does—and Senators are, tragically, now quite used to this being the case, simply because it keeps happening—this amendment will require 60 votes to pass.

We'll see how it goes. And quite possibly, won't see much of anything else happen.

You'd never know there was no budget in place, or that the debt ceiling was looming. Not from the fact that half the Congress has been on recess for three out of the last four weeks, anyway. Though you can put that one mostly on the House, out for another week of recess on the back end of the Senate's traditional Memorial Day recess, after having been off just two weeks before.

Whatever!

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

Uh... well... the Senate voted to the nomination of Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. to be Solicitor General of the United States, by a vote of 72-16. The vote was pretty damn lopsided, and basically, you had to be one of the assiest a-holes in the Senate to be on the wrong side of this one. Go ahead, take a look.

And... that was it. That's the kind of day the Senate often has. This is something we've discussed before. Because any single Senator can blow the place up for at least a few days at a time, they're always walking on eggshells, schedule-wise.

Looking ahead to today:

And today looks like it will be no different. The Senate will attempt to move to the consideration of S. 782, the Economic Development Act. Sounds great, right? Totally what we need right now! Economic development!

So that's probably why they're not sure they're even going to be able to get to it. If the economy develops, that's good new for President Obama. Which means it's bad news for Republicans. (Except John McCain, for whom everything is good news, as those of you who were alive in 2008 will surely recall.) So that means we're not sure Republicans will allow a motion to proceed to consideration of the bill go forward. We have to wait and see whether Republicans will agree to let the Senate do any of that work they were hired to do. What do they call it again? Oh yes, "voting."

I'm sure they'll get around to it real soon, though. Because you all remember how Republicans around the country were livid that the Wisconsin state Senators were prevented from doing any voting during that big standoff a few months ago over the provisions stripping collective bargaining rights from public employees. So you definitely know that Republicans hate it when Senators are prevented from voting. That should really seal it, I think. How about you?

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping Last Week in Congress

The most substantive accomplishment of the week in the House was the passage of the Homeland Security appropriations bill. That's nothing to sneeze at, since appropriations bills are a major part of the House's annual responsibilities. It came with a little procedural twist of note, however. Since there's no new budget in place this year, and little prospect that there ever will be, Republicans used the rule passed to govern debate on this bill to slip through a provision "deeming" the House-passed Ryan budget (since rejected by the Senate) to be the operative guide with respect to setting allocation limits for these annual appropriations bills. Remember when Republicans thought "deeming" things passed was evil and wrong?

Other "accomplishments" of note included the engineered defeats of the "clean" debt ceiling increase bill (brought to the floor under suspension of the rules, which means it required a 2/3 vote to pass), and the Kucinich resolution directing the president to remove U.S. forces from Libya. Consideration of the Libya resolution was delayed several days to give the Republican leadership time to come up with an alternative resolution, which became necessary once whip counts began to indicate Kucinich's resolution might—between anti-war Democrats and anti-Obama Republicans—actually muster enough votes to pass. The House instead adopted the Republicans' non-binding resolution directing the president to submit documents and a written report on the operation to Congress.

This Week in Congress

The House is not in session this week. Why would both houses of Congress be in session at the same time? Duh! All you people seem to think the whole Congress should stick around and try to either adopt a budget, or deal with the looming debt ceiling. But you're sowrong! Your kind probably doesn't even think Paul Revere rang a bell and shot off muskets while warning the British! Seriously, I can't even talk to you.

The Senate will be in session, but of course, no one is allowed to know what they're doing. It's in the Constitution, right next the the filibuster, which is also right there in the hidden section of our founding document. No, it's not really in there, but for some reason everyone thinks the filibuster is an inviolable right in the Senate, and it's partly because any Senator can throw the schedule off by a few days or even a week at any time simply by objecting to some bill or measure that we almost never know what the Senate is going to do for sure more than a day in advance.

So, what are they going to do? Well for now, we know that they'll be voting on confirming the nomination of Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. as Solicitor General. That's Monday. After that, it's anybody's guess. We'll have to wait and see what the good faith negotiating partners in the Republican party will kindly agree to allow to go forward, in their continuing effort to work with Democrats in finding bipartisan approaches to blaming Democrats for everything in the world that's ever gone wrong.

Full floor and committee schedules are below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House spent most of the day finishing up with the Homeland Security appropriations bill, and by evening had begun work on Military Construction (MilCon)/VA appropriations.

That'll basically do it, in terms of recapping. It was what it was.

Looking ahead to today:

Today's schedule doesn't appear to contemplate any further appropriations work. Rather, the House will finally get around to considering the Libya resolution offered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH-10) that's been delayed by the Republican leadership until they could find an alternative with which to distract their rank-and-file. They found it in a brand new resolution introduced yesterday by John Boehner that's designed to give Republicans something "tough" looking (read: anti-Obama enough) to vote for, so that they're not tempted to vote for Kucinich's resolution, which might actually do something.

See, the Kucinich resolution is a concurrent resolution, which has (or purports to have) a certain legal status under section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution:

(c)  Concurrent resolution for removal by President of United States Armed Forces

Notwithstanding subsection (b) of this section, at any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.

So assuming the War Powers Resolution passes constitutional muster, the way for the Congress to get the American armed forces out of Libya is with a concurrent resolution, which is passed by both houses of Congress. That's important. The reason the War Powers Resolution calls for a concurrent resolution is precisely because it's considered and passed by the entire Congress, which is granted the power to declare war in the Constitution, not just with one house or the other, but the whole thing. Declarations of war, of course, are traditionally made using joint resolutions, which differ from concurrent resolutions in that they are signed by the president. But the War Powers Resolution is all about cutting the president out of the loop (which is why there are such serious constitutional questions about its validity), so naturally the preference was for a resolution passed by the entire Congress, but not dependent on the president's acquiescence.

Boehner's resolution is just a simple House resolution. It won't go to the Senate at all, and thus won't be expressing the voice of the Congress. In addition, there's the simple fact that Kucinich's resolution directs the president to remove U.S. forces from Libya, whereas Boehner's resolution merely demands a stack of reports and that certain documents be turned over to the House. In fact, Boehner's document reads much more like a House subpoena to the executive branch than any sort of direction to the president about what must happen regarding U.S. forces in Libya.

And if you thought the irony of Republicans suddenly insisting on enforcing limitations on a president's powers as "commander in chief" once the president was a Democrat was rich, you'll love seeing them put all their eggs in the Congressional subpoena basket.

You see, the way the demands for the production of documents in the Boehner resolution would be enforced if the Obama administration refuses to give them up is, the House would request that the U.S. Attorney prosecute the responsible officials for contempt of Congress. But as we all recall from the last time we set out on this path, the U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and are employees of his executive branch. And not just any employees, but employees with considerable discretion to decide who will and won't be prosecuted.

Yes, there's another alternative to this procedure, and it's called "inherent contempt." But of course, that was completely out of the question with Congressional Republicans when the president was himself a Republican.

We're not anywhere near that stage at this point, however. The name of the game for Republicans today will simply being able to go home and tell their constituents that they voted for a "tough" resolution that demanded answers from the Obama administration. But they'll have to hope those constituents, if they favored real action in curtailing U.S. military activity in Libya, don't know that a resolution that really directed the president to do that was offered at the same time, but that they passed it up in favor of this thing that Boehner and the desperate Republican leadership made up on the fly.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

A relatively quiet day in the House, with just one major piece of legislation under consideration: the Homeland Security appropriations bill. A small bit of procedural drama developed when Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN-05) raised a point of order against consideration of the rule for the bill, objecting that its provisions which allowed the Republicans' Ryan budget to be "deemed" passed violated the Congressional Budget Act. The problem with that, though, is that it's a question that can be resolved by putting it to the body as a whole, and guess what this House majority is going to think of that? Yeah, on a straight party line vote, they said they pretty much thought it was just fine.

The House worked all day and late into the night, churning through amendments, with just a few procedural speed bumps along the way, with something like a half dozen amendments going down on points of order because they were offered during consideration of the wrong section of the bill. Sounds like a bit of posturing, where Members get to tell the folks back home they "offered" such and such an amendment on the floor, but were unable to carry the day. It's true, of course, but maybe it never comes up that the amendment never even got voted on because they somehow made the "mistake" of offering it during the wrong part of the proceedings. But sometimes that can be how leadership can accommodates requests for pesky amendments that are very important politically to individual Members and maybe even could pass, but would really screw things up if they did.

All this running in circles kept them in session past midnight. The Senate, of course, was not in session at all. Because they're on recess for the week of Memorial Day.

Looking ahead to today:

Because of the House's late night, no schedule was released for today by the Democratic Whip's office, even into the wee hours of the morning. And I'm following the Senate's schedule, myself, so I wasn't about to stay up waiting for the House to release its agenda. Instead, I'll just tell you that we anticipate continued work on the Homeland Security appropriations bill, with that work hopefully wrapping up today.

We're also still waiting on the resolution from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH-10) relating to the deployment of U.S. forces in Libya, with respect to the War Powers Resolution. Originally expected on the floor yesterday, it was pushed back and we might possibly expect it today instead. That'll make for an interesting moment, as we try to guess what the numbers in support might be, between those genuinely opposed to continuing the military engagement in Libya are joined by those on the Republican side who might be indifferent or even supportive in principle, but just want to cause as much foreign policy and international security grief for President Obama as possible.

Without a schedule posted by the Democratic Whip's office, we've turned to the official source of the day's floor schedule, the Majority Leader's office. That schedule's available, but gives no indication that Kucinich's resolution is on the agenda for the day. So either they're looking to dispense with (and bury) it on Friday, or they think it might actually pass, and aren't sure what to do, since although they wanted to create foreign policy problems for the President, they hadn't really thought about what might happen if they actually succeeded in creating a real problem rather than just harassing him.

And indeed, that appears to be the case! Open Congress points to a Fox "News" report this morning that says:

"[Republican leaders] hadn’t seen much of a threat from [the Kucinich bill]. He’s kind of this marginal figure and having his resolution go down narrowly would be no big deal and might even send a message to the administration," said one of the Republican aides. "But once they saw that there was substantial support, they were like, ‘Whoa.’"

So we have a little bit of a constitutional crisis this morning, to go with the normal tedium. And that's always nice.

But on a more serious note, is this an unintentionally provided clue as to how Republicans might react in their debt ceiling bluffing game?

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

Four nice, little suspension bills passed yesterday. But the "clean" debt ceiling bill, which turned out not to be all that "clean" at all, didn't.

So, we got Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center locked up for the celebration of the birthday of King Kamehameha, but what's rumored to be the foundation of the future of the world financial system is still in play.

Looking ahead to today:

By itself, the House's schedule doesn't look all that interesting today. They'll finish up with one suspension bill vote that got postponed yesterday, and then begin consideration of the Homeland Security appropriations bill. They probably won't finish that one today, since they're allowing an open rule of the bill, meaning more or less unlimited amendments. Or at least no way to predict how many there'll be.

The real "excitement" of the day (and only we would think of calling it that) comes in the rule governing consideration of the Homeland Security bill. Yes, it's an open rule in terms of amendments, but it carries a hidden surprise in it as well.

First, let's go to the archives:

Do you remember the "deem and pass" procedure once suggested by House Democrats as a method of winding up work on the health insurance reform act? The one Republicans delighted in insisting was really pronounced "Demon Pass?" The one Crazy Michele Bachmann (R-MN-06) insisted was "treason" and an "impeachable" offense? The one that some nutbar radio guy once called "100 times worse than Watergate"?

Yeah. Well, it's back. And the Republicans are doing it.

Surprise! Ha ha!

That maneuver back in January set the stage for today's move. What they were doing then was using the adoption of the new House Rules package to insert a new provision allowing the Budget Committee Chairman to "deem" a budget for Fiscal Year 2011 to have been passed, and allocate appropriations levels as though it had. Today, the rule for consideration of the Homeland Security bill has this section in it:

Sec. 2. (a) Pending the adoption of a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2012, the provisions of House Concurrent Resolution 34, as adopted by the House, shall have force and effect (with the modification specified in subsection (c)) in the House as though Congress has adopted such concurrent resolution. The allocations printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution shall be considered for all purposes in the House to be the allocations under section 302(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 for the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2012. (b) The chair of the Committee on the Budget shall adjust. the allocations referred to in subsection (a) to accommodate the enactment of general or continuing appropriation Acts for fiscal year 2011 after the adoption of House Concurrent Resolution 34 but before the adoption of this resolution. (c) For provisions making appropriations for fiscal year 2011, section 3(c) of House Resolution 5 shall have force and effect through September 30, 2011.

That gibberish means that until there's a real budget (i.e., one passed by both the House and the Senate) for Fiscal Year 2012, the House is going to deem the one they passed (but the Senate crapped on) to be the actual budget. That is, they're going to pretend it passed the Senate, and work on appropriations bills as if it had.

Can they do that? Sure. They can pretend whatever they want to. Only the appropriations bills they pass while pretending that their make-believe budget controls the numbers will still have to pass the Senate, regardless of what the House decides to imagine for itself. So actually implementing the budget numbers they're pretending were passed will still at some point require the agreement of the Senate.

But frankly, I'm not sure I'd bet a whole lot on the Senate holding the line on a lot of these things. In fact, Homeland Security and Military Construction (the other appropriations bill due up this week) would be two I wouldn't bet a great deal against.

Bottom line, though, is that for all the hemming and hawing, foot shuffling and outright stiff-arming of the Medicare-killing Ryan budget House Republicans have been doing since their last vote for it (including insisting that those votes didn't matter, because the Ryan plan wasn't really going to take effect), those same House Republicans are going to be asked to cast the same vote again today, and they'll all do it happily.

And this time, appropriations bills are going to start passing the House based on Ryan's numbers.

So yeah, it's starting to "count."

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

No action at all yesterday. Both houses were out of session for Memorial Day.

Looking ahead to today:

Six bills are scheduled for floor action today, all under suspension of the rules, which means there's a maximum of 40 minutes of debate, no amendments are permitted, and a 2/3 vote is required to pass. Normally, suspension of the rules is reserved as an expedited procedure used for bills that are non-controversial and have broad, bipartisan support. The other use for suspension of the rules is to dispense with bills you've decided for some reason you'd like to hold a vote on, but would also like to ensure will lose. And that's what's happening with the first of the bills being considered today: the "clean" debt ceiling increase.

A "clean" bill is one with no special conditions or riders pertaining to other subjects attached to it. So the "clean" debt ceiling increase bill would simply raise the debt limit, period. None of the concessions Republicans have demanded in exchange for their votes, like cuts to Medicare or Medicaid, the elimination of entire federal government departments, etc. And that's why the bill isn't expected to get enough Republican votes to pass the 2/3 threshold.

And when it doesn't, count on Republicans to point to the failed vote and say that it means there's no appetite in Congress for raising the debt limit without major cuts as a concession. Nevermind the artificially-imposed barrier to passage.

The other five suspensions, listed below the fold, are mostly of the first kind. That is, non-controversial bills with broad support. So aside from the first bill, which is designed to fail, the rest of the short work day should be relatively unremarkable.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Last Week in Congress

Typical week in the House last week. Another in the continuing series of bills aimed at repealing part of the Affordable Care Act (harder than you said it was gonna be on the campaign trail, ain't it boys?), the defense authorization bill, and renewal of the the USA PATRIOT Act. In other words, more pulling the rug out from underneath regular people who just want to be able to afford to take their kids to the doctor, and then throwing the money out the window to the DoD and their contractors. Awesome!

The Senate's entire week was consumed with the passage of the PATRIOT Act renewal, which normally would be something I'd use to make fun of the body's dysfunction. But a week really is probably way too quick to reauthorize that monstrosity. Consider that it took a month to pass that small business jobs bill not that long ago. Given that, what's the likelihood that the balance of liberty versus security can be correctly struck in just a week?

This Week in Congress

The House is in session this week, which is out of keeping with recent tradition. Usually they're adjourned for the week of Memorial Day. But since they were just in recess the week before last, that wasn't likely to happen again quite so soon.

First up (aside from the usual raft of suspensions) is a debt ceiling increase bill, which is itself coming to the floor under suspension of the rules. Why? Because it's a "clean" increase, meaning there are none of the Republicans' outrageous hostage-taking provisions attached to it. So they're bringing it to the floor under a procedure designed to cause it to fail, since passage under suspension of the rules requires a 2/3 vote. And after it fails to clear that artificially high barrier, Republicans will insist that this illustrates that there's no appetite in Congress for a clean increase.

Also up this week, a resolution from Dennis Kucinich (D-OH-10) invoking the War Powers Resolution, directing the President to remove U.S. troops from Libya. Not sure how that's going to come out. Previously, Republicans had been big supporters of executive power in this area. But now that the President is Barack Obama (and I'll have you know that some of my best friends are Barack Obamas), things are looking a little different.

Things wrap up this week with two of the regular, annual appropriations bills: Homeland Security, and Military Construction (MilCon). You tend to see these go through early in the appropriations process, and with relatively little controversy. People don't want to stand in the way of money for Homeland Security or military anything, for the most part.

The Senate, thankfully, is following a more normal Memorial Day schedule—i.e., the one I was counting on when I scheduled my vacation for this week. So, thank you Senate for at least lightening the load a little.

Full floor and committee schedules are below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House managed to find a way to dispense with the enormous number of amendments to the defense authorization bill, mostly, it seems, by not offering them. That gave them time to pass the Senate's USA PATRIOT Act renewal, sent over earlier in the day, before adjourning for a long weekend. By which I mean until next Wednesday!

In addition to the PATRIOT Act renewal, the Senate took care of some housekeeping by unanimous consent, covering everything from passage of the House's intelligence authorization bill, to some commemorative resolutions, to a huge raft of military appointments and promotions.

Looking ahead to today:

Nothing doing today. But the Senate will be in pro forma session. Republicans, fearing recess appointments—particularly that of Elizabeth Warren to head the CFPB—insisted that they would object to any unanimous consent request on adjournment, and thereby touch off an annoying and possibly troublesome voting situation. The motion to adjourn is not debatable (and therefore can't be filibustered), but the thinking is that it would be politically sensitive (and certainly an annoying waste of time) to have to vote to adjourn when there's still no budget in place, and no prospect of ever putting one in place.

In addition, some House Republicans apparently threatened to block adjournment by attempting to defeat any adjournment resolution. Constitutionally, neither house can adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other. And three days is generally considered to be the minimum length of recess necessary to attempt a recess appointment, though technically there's no constitutional minimum prescribed.

Either way, it was just easier to agree quickly to a deal for pro forma sessions instead, especially since there's been no indication from the White House that there was any interest in exercising that power at this time.

So that's that, at least for the next couple of days! Enjoy the holiday weekend. And if you're annoyed by the fact that your Members of Congress have so often been in recess lately, I suppose this is your chance to let them know, since even when they're "off" they're "on." You'll likely be able to find your Senators and Representative nearby over the short break, attending all the local events that eat up an elected official's "time off" around a holiday like Memorial Day

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House proceeded pretty much as expected yesterday, finishing up this week's installment in the continuing saga seeking the repeal of the ACA, before moving on to the Defense authorization bill and its 152 amendments. They appear to have gotten through 36 of the 152 up to this point.

The Senate split their time between running down the cloture clock on the motion to proceed to S. 990, which is set to become the vehicle for the USA PATRIOT Act renewal, and a series of failed motions to proceed to consideration of budget proposals. First up was the House-passed Ryan budget, followed by the budget resolution introduced by our good friend Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL). Now, the trick here was that this second resolution was the original budget proposal submitted by the President back in February. Normally that's a document that's reworked several times, and of course, almost never actually comes to the floor without extensive revision in the Budget committees, or even replaced entirely by their own work. But this time around, nobody actually took up the Obama budget, so it was in no sense an actual legislative proposal. But Republicans apparently felt the need to retaliate for being asked to vote on the House-passed Ryan budget. (Now why would they feel that way?) So Sessions took the dormant Obama document, put his name on it in order to get it a bill number, and moved it to the floor. So if you want to know who actually introduced the budget that got zero votes on the motion to proceed, the answer is: Jeff Sessions.

Oh yeah, there were also two other loser budgets, from Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Rand Paul (R-KY).

Looking ahead to today:

The House has its work cut out for it today, with over a hundred amendments to the defense bill left on the list. Now, very often, a list this long will get whittled down as groups of similar or non-controversial amendments are considered "en bloc," while others are adopted with minimal debate by voice vote, and still others are just dropped altogether and not offered at all. So it's not necessarily the case that they'll consider all 152 amendments along the way. Members certainly hope that isn't the case, because the weekend is coming. More importantly, recess—yes, another recess!—is coming. But on top of this defense bill, there's also the matter of the PATRIOT Act renewal, for which they're waiting on Senate action. The current extension expires at the end of the week, and everybody's a little nervous about leaving town for a recess without an extension of some kind in place.

Ordinarily, then, this would be a great time for the Senate to use the leverage the recess and the expiration give them to hand over their preferred version of the bill and then skip town, leaving the House to either accept what they're given or take the blame for the fact that there's no renewed law in place. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of sunlight between Democrats and Republicans on this, so I'm not predicting great things coming from this opportunity for the Dem Senate to assert itself against the Runaway Republican House.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House spent the morning playing host to the Joint Session addressed by Israeli PM Netenyahu, but by the afternoon had moved on to passing a little-noticed and non-controversial small business bill that's actually going to play a big part over the next few days. That wasn't the main focus of the day, however. The bulk of the time was spent on H.R. 1216, the latest entry in the ACA repeal sweepstakes. Dems had a bit of fun with the "five minute rule," and motions to "strike the last word," allowing several Members the opportunity to claim floor time that they used to bash the Republican death panel for Medicare. Unable to wrap up the bill before day's end, the House leadership suspended activity for the evening and will pick the bill back up today.

But before I move on, if you didn't see this, you didn't see the most grotesque Republican absurdity of the day:

It's Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs (yes, they really call it that) Chairtoddler Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10) making an ass of himself, fighting with Elizabeth Warren over whether or not their offices had actually made a deal to settle what time and for how long she would testify, and ending with McHenry insisting that she had made it up! Big hat tip to Main Street Insider for grabbing that video, bringing it to Daily Kos, and then blasting it out. Hey, have I mentioned that I'm Public Affairs Director at MSI? Now would be a good time to do that, probably.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Harry Reid turned the Senate around in it consideration of the PATRIOT Act renewal. Instead of fighting it out on cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill, and then having to fight another cloture battle on the bill itself, he's pulling a nifty parliamentary trick that allows him to skip on of the cloture fights. The House just got done passing S. 990, a small business bill, and has sent it back to the Senate, apparently amended in some way (although they passed it under suspension of the rules, which doesn't permit amendments, so I missed whatever process they might have used to change it between receiving it on Monday and passing it on Tuesday).

At any rate, the bill having been amended, it now returns to the Senate for their approval of its new form. And here's where the trick comes in: Reid will move to agree to the House amendment, but add just one more. That additional amendment will be... to remove the entire existing text and replace it with the text of S. 1038, the PATRIOT Act renewal bill they were just trying to get to the floor.

Why do that? Because although you can filibuster the amendment (or technically, the motion to concur in the House amendment with a further amendment), if you manage to get cloture on that and vote it through, it has the effect of sending a completed PATRIOT Act bill over to the House, with no second cloture vote needed.

It's a nifty trick and I always admire it, but I wish it wasn't happening with the damn PATRIOT Act.

Looking ahead to today:

The House schedule was a little late in coming last night. Perhaps it was difficult to draft through the tears over NY-26. But we don't have to have it in hand to know what's on tap for the day. The House adjourned last night without finishing H.R. 1216, the latest installment in the ACA repeal bonanza, so that'll be first up today. Then it's on to the earmark-stuffed Defense authorization bill, against which we're already seeing veto threats (of the "senior advisors" type, for those of you scoring at home). That'll doubtless occupy the balance of the day and into tomorrow, since the rule allows for an astounding 152 amendments! That's a lot of votes to cast blindly along party lines! Whew! They'll really need a vacation after that. So, you know, they'll take another one.

A long entry for the Senate in yesterday's recap usually means there's not much left to say when it comes to looking ahead there. And that holds true here. You know how it is that the Senate came to be considering S. 990 instead of S. 1038, even though they didn't switch what legislation they're working on. That was the complicated part. The simple part will occupy their entire day today: waiting for the cloture motion to "ripen" so that they can get to the vote on the substitute amendment. But that won't happen until... Tomorrow in Congress.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House passed its Monday in typical fashion, with a raft of suspensions voted on in the late afternoon, giving Members time to return to DC from their districts during the day. Five relatively non-controversial bills (listed below the fold in the floor wrap-up) that normally pass more or less unnoticed and under the radar.

The Senate got right down to business—sort of, in the Senate's unique way—agreeing to a motion to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed to the USA PATRIOT Act renewal. I think we all would've preferred a more robust opposition than just eight votes against. It is just cloture on the motion to proceed, but it's not particularly likely that there'll be a groundswell of opposition or even second thoughts about the renewal of the act. The fear of terrorism—or rather, the fear of appearing "soft" on terrorism—is still just too great.

Looking ahead to today:

The main event for the day isn't legislative in nature. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in town, and he'll be addressing a Joint Session of Congress. That's always an interesting in itself, even if you don't care to listen to the speech, because Joint Sessions actually do have their own rules and procedural protocols that are worth watching.

In the House, the chief legislative business is H.R. 1216, the new Flavor of the Week in health care law repeal. Yes, there's another one, this time "to convert funding for graduate medical education in qualified teaching health centers from direct appropriations to an authorization of appropriations." That doesn't by itself repeal the spending, but it does make it easier to cut (or eliminate) later, which is probably the eventual aim here.

In the Senate, the day will be spent running down the post-cloture clock on the motion to proceed to the PATRIOT Act renewal bill. Yes, thirty additional hours of debate on whether or not to begin debate on the bill, even though they've already decided to end the debate on beginning debate. Get it?

Hot committee happenings: Hey, how about this?

White House adviser Elizabeth Warren returns to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to defend the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau against Republicans who want to curb and control the agency's powers.

In a House Oversight subcommittee hearing that's being held to attack oversight of the bureau, Warren will focus on highlighting the need for the bureau, detailing all the different checks and balances on it, according to prepared testimony released Monday.

Wanna watch? Keep tabs on the happenings even if C-SPAN can't, with Main Street Insider's Committee Dashboard. Just click here to tune in when the hearing gets underway at 2pm Eastern. Or watch it right here at Daily Kos, in a special Congress Matters post that'll embed the streaming video live. And just what the hell is the Republicans' problem with the CFPB? Find out in 90 seconds with MSI's 90 Second Summary.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Last Week in CongressLast Week in Congress

Great week in the House last week! That is to say, the House was in recess last week.

The Senate reported for work, but so did the Senate rules, which means that very little more was actually accomplished there than in the House. Not counting the Senate resolutions passed by unanimous consent, we're talking about the confirmation of a single judge (though it was a Circuit Court judge, nothing to sneeze at) getting through. And then after that, nothing. Well, nothing but the continued filibuster of Goodwin Liu's nomination, the filibuster of one Democratic bill to cut oil subsidies, and the filibuster of a Republican response that would have opened up a drilling free-for-all.

This Week in Congress

The House considers a short list of legislation this week, ranging from the merely boring to the truly disturbing. Six suspensions inspiring varying levels of boredom are scheduled, plus one bill repealing part of the ACA (what week would be complete without one of those?), a defense authorization bill, and depending on the Senate's ability to resolve the matter on their side, the long-term reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Yuck!

The Senate starts in immediately on the business of the PATRIOT Act. Or more accurately, on the business of voting on cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill.

This will be the third cloture motion filed on a motion to proceed in four working days in the Senate. You may remember that part of the "gentleman's agreement" reached on rules reform at the beginning of the session provided that Republicans would stop filibustering motions to proceed in exchange for agreement from Democrats not to block Republican amendments from the floor. As you can see, that's broken down some in the past few days. We'll see how important that is to Republicans on the PATRIOT Act. They clearly didn't care much that the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act never made it to the floor, but they probably don't want to be responsible for blocking renewal of the PATRIOT Act. Then again, they might not think they'd catch the blame for this, being that running the Senate is the Democrats' responsibility. That's worked for them in the past. With the current extension of the PATRIOT Act expiring this Friday, we'll have their answer soon enough.

Full floor and committee schedules are below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

Boy, I was really asking for it when I committed to using these headers every day, wasn't I? Recapping yesterday's action, eh? Hmm. Let's see. They failed to pass a motion to proceed to a stupid bill about oil drilling.

Then, they honored the 100th Anniversary of the Indianapolis 500, marked the passing of Harmon Killebrew, and stuff like that.

I'm not kidding.

Looking ahead to today:

Ah, now today, they might also get nothing done. But it'll be in a fight over a long-stalled judicial nomination that a lot of people have been waiting forever to have a fight about. Believe it or not, after all this time, it's Goodwin Liu, up for a seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. And if you'd like to catch up on why this is something special, check out Adam B's front pager on the subject.

Exciting as it is, that's all I've got for you. There will undoubtedly be some additional unanimous consent housekeeping afterward, but I've got no word on what that stuff might be. We'll only hear about it looking backward at the schedule once it's all said and done.

Because that's the way the Senate rolls.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

Let's see. How can I recap yesterday's action? Well, the House did nothing at all, of course. They're on recess all week. The Senate confirmed an appeals court judicial nomination (Susan Carney, 2nd Circuit) by the solid but not overwhelming vote of 71-28. And then, they failed to agree to the motion to proceed to that Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act they were hyping yesterday. Failed by a vote of 52-48. That's right. A majority wanted to bring the bill to the floor, but they lost anyway. Here's why.

And here's an item not included in yesterday's wrap-up on the Senate schedule page, for some reason: Harry Reid has filed cloture on the nomination of Goodwin Liu to the 9th Circuit Court of appeals. Liu's been blocked since forever, but with the cloture filing made, the path is cleared for a vote on Thursday. That's big news! But as you know, the title of the post is Today in Congress. And that's tomorrow.

Looking ahead to today:

Because yesterday was such a roaring success, how about we do it again today? That's what the Senate has set up for itself, this time with respect to S. 953, the Offshore Production and Safety Act. It's the Senate counterpart to the oil drilling free-for-all bills we saw over the last two weeks in the House.

The Senate is once again in the position of having to find 60 votes to end debate on the motion to proceed, having set up another very convenient "painless filibuster." Just as well, I guess, and perhaps just reward for yesterday, since I doubt many of us would be terribly enthusiastic about the bill.

And... that's it, as far as the schedule goes. It can be pretty short and to the point when all you've got to deal with is a gridlocked Senate.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

Er, ah, well... see, the thing is, the House is in recess all week. And the Senate? Well, they were in session. Sort of. But they didn't vote on anything. They made some deals to vote on some stuff today, and later this week. Well, sort of. That is, they agreed to hold some votes that would require 60 votes in order to pass. And they even agreed to hold some votes on whether or not to begin debate on stuff they want to vote on, and those votes will also require 60 votes to pass.

Oh, and they named some post offices by unanimous consent.

But they didn't vote on anything.

Looking ahead to today:

The Senate is the only show in town today. And they'll start with another judicial nomination, that of Susan Carney, for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. That's a bigger deal than most of the nominations that they've dealt with to this point during this Congress. The appeals bench is the intermediate step between federal trial courts and the Supreme Court. So we'll see whether this one goes smoothly or not.

After the break for party lunches, it's on to the first of the bills covered under yesterday's deal.

So what's that deal about? The idea is to take up S. 940, the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act. But we don't even know that that's what'll end up happening.

Why not? Because before you can take up a bill, you have to get the Senate as a body to agree that that's what they want to do. Bills don't just come to the floor by magic. If you're lucky, you can get unanimous consent to do it. But if not, then you have to actually make a motion to proceed to consider the bill you want (a "motion to proceed" for short), and get a Senate majority to agree to your motion.

Thing is, the motion to proceed gets a debate of its own. And that debate is subject to the filibuster. And if you can filibuster the motion to proceed, then what you end up with is a debate on whether or not to end debate on the question of whether to start debate on the bill you actually wanted to bring to the floor. You may recall that we saw a lot of that in the last Congress. This Congress began with a "gentleman's agreement" by Republicans not to filibuster motions to proceed, in exchange for Democrats agreeing not to use procedural tricks to block Republicans from offering amendments. So I guess that deal broke down over this bill, at least.

What we have in this situation, however, is what I call a "painless filibuster." Because one or both sides in the fight over whether or not S. 940 should be brought to the floor know that there are at least some opponents who are willing to threaten a filibuster, but nobody really wants to sit there and see how long those opponents can hold out, nor have to waste the time it takes to file for and invoke cloture, everyone agrees (in a unanimous consent agreement) to simply require 60 votes in order to pass the motion to proceed, rather than go through the hassle of actually having the filibuster fight. So the 60-vote threshold is built right into the vote. If you can get 60 for the motion to proceed, then it's assumed that you'd have been able to get them for a cloture vote, too. And vice versa, of course. So everyone saves time by agreeing to these "painless filibusters." But protecting big oil subsidies are the kind of thing you might have thought Democrats would be happy to force Republicans filibuster over.

But as we know, there are also a few oil state Democrats who might not be very happy at the prospect of this bill's passage. So we'll have... this thing, instead.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

Last Week in Congress

Last week was a bit of a time-waster in the House, but not as much as this week is going to be! As the rest of us waited for some job-related relief and some attention to the actual problems facing the country, the House passed two more offshore drilling free-for-all bills, repealing an imaginary drilling moratorium and granting permits by "deeming" the mandatory safety studies to have been completed, whether they'd been done or not. Those—for Republicans—are the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it seems. Then a brief detour into reality, passing an Intelligence Authorization bill in an attempt to play catch-up in the wake of the Osama bin Laden killing.

The Senate, for its part, got nothing done legislatively last week. But they did manage to confirm three judges, two of them by unanimous vote. They did, however, conspire to filibuster a vote confirming James Cole as Deputy Attorney General. Cole, you'll remember, was the House ethics committee special counsel who busted Newt Gingrich for his fiscal dalliances with the first iteration of "Newt, Inc.," which has once again become a topic of interest (as though it were something new) now that Gingrich is going through the motions of running for president.

This Week in Congress

So, how could this week in the House be any more of a time waster than last week? How about if they don't even return to session at all this week? Yes, that's right. Two weeks after returning from the last recess, and two weeks before they plan to leave for the next one... the House is taking just one more much needed week-long break.

So what aren't they working on this week? Well for one thing, they won't be turning to foreclosure relief, like Rep. Raul Grijalva's Right to Rent Act:

Oh, and another thing they won't be on hand to deal with: the debt ceiling:

Happy debt-ceiling day! As of today, the authority Congress has given the Treasury to borrow money outpaces the borrowing required by the laws Congress has passed. Today, in other words, is the day we hit the debt ceiling. I hope you brought cake and candles.

Forget cake and candles. Did anyone bring the Republican-controlled United States House of Representatives?

No? Wow. Well, that must be because they are souch Very Serious People.^TM

The Democratic Senate, by contrast, will be on hand and begin work on confirming another judicial nominee, this time a Second Circuit appeals court judge, which is perhaps slightly heavier lifting than the district court judges that occupied their time last week.

That's all we know for sure about the Senate schedule at this point, though we're still awaiting the threatened vote on the House's Paul Ryan budget, and of course, the debt ceiling limit still looms. And it's nearly June. Seems pretty irresponsible for the House to be out of town at this point, don't you think?

Full floor and committee schedules are below the fold.