Recapping yesterday's action:

The House held what amounts to yet another placeholder session, passing four suspension bills, seemingly just to keep the lights on until Thursday, which in recent weeks has become one of the only days with substantive legislation on the floor.

We're much more accustomed to seeing the Senate do nothing in particular on any given day, so it's not nearly as shocking for us to see it again. This time, the cause of the wasted day was the waiting period for the ripening of the cloture motion on the motion to proceed to the Rebuilding American Jobs Act, which will come due tomorrow. 

But whereas the Senate has the excuse of the filibuster, the House is a place that can get through whatever it wants to get done, because it's strictly majoritarian. It's just that the House doesn't have anything it cares to get through. It's particularly stunning in combination, to see both houses do as close to nothing at all on the same day, in the middle of the week, while thousands are literally in the streets clamoring for action on jobs and economic reform.

Looking ahead to today:

The House has its only "serious business" of the week scheduled to begin tomorrow. Unfortunately, it's mostly more loosening of securities regulations being presented as "jobs" legislation, under the same, shopworn theories of how stuffing venture capital into executive pockets (but doing it with less regulation and paperwork) will eventually "trickle down" and... zzzzzzz. Oh, sorry. Fell asleep there.

The Senate will hold a vote on the motion to proceed to the Rebuild American Jobs Act. But there will actually be two votes on motions to proceed today. The one I just mentioned, but also one on a motion to proceed to S.1786, the Republican "alternative" bill, the "Long-Term Surface Transportation Extension Act."

Wonky rules discussion:

Strictly speaking, this stuff is inspired by, but doesn't belong under, the category of stuff that's happening today. So I'm separating it out. Where else can you discuss this sort of thing but here? And it deserves discussion, this idea that the minority will be offering its own motions to proceed now.

This seems to me to be setting yet another annoying precedent. It used to be that the minority didn't offer motions to proceed to their own stuff. That was just one of those things you didn't do. But hey, presto! Republicans are doing it! Democrats could have, it seems. Anyone could have. They just... didn't.

Worse still, I don't see any indication that the motion to proceed to the Republican bill was subject to a cloture filing. It appears they're just getting a vote on it as part of a deal, wherein both motions will require 60 votes to pass. That's a "painless filibuster" for both. But Dems had already filed their cloture motion, and it would have ripened an hour after the Senate convened today, meaning 11 a.m. Under the terms of this deal, the vote now isn't happening until 3 p.m., plus Republicans are getting a vote on a motion to proceed that will require 60 votes, but never required that a cloture motion be filed. Why let this vote happen?

Well, remember that even if Dems won the cloture vote at 11 (or whatever time they held it), that only establishes the fact that a vote on the motion to proceed will actually take place. A successful cloture vote doesn't pass the motion itself. That means that even with a successful cloture vote, Republicans could still stretch out post-cloture time for up to 30 hours, and the actual vote on the motion to proceed wouldn't take place until Friday. If you think you might actually win, well, then you can start work sooner rather than later. And if you think you're gonna lose, why blow your weekend on it? Just lose on Thursday and go home early.

Still, while the time savings may make a certain amount of sense, establishing a pattern of granting the minority votes on motions to proceed to their own bills seems like a serious power giveaway. You don't hold the door open for the minority to start trying to schedule floor business.

Seriously, something really has to be done about reforming the rules on post-cloture time. There's no reason in the world why a motion to proceed should need any post-cloture debate at all, let alone 30 hours. Post-cloture time is meant for the debate of any still-pending amendments. But you don't amend motions to proceed (or nominations, for that matter). So there's no reason to even have post-cloture debate on them.

But remember... THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE UNITED STATES SENATE. IT IS PERFECT AS IT IS, JUST AS THE FOUNDERS INTENDED.

It just coincidentally keeps changing, and adopting strange new practices that cede power to the minority that had been out of the question for the past 200 years. Because the Founders intended for us to wait a couple centuries and then all of a sudden invent all kinds of new crap. Isn't that weird?

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

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House, as is it's first-day-of-the-week-in-session tradition, did practically nothing yesterday, passing its three scheduled suspension bills, plus a fourth measure making an enrollment correction to one of the three suspensions. But lest we forget, the House did pass H. Con. Res. 13, reaffirming "In God We Trust" as the national motto! So now we can all kick back and wait for our fat checks from God!

While I have your attention on this (he said, hopefully), would you like to see the roll call on that vote? Because there were votes against it. And maybe the most interesting of them all was that of The Michigan Madman, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI-03), whom David Nir recently pointed out has made a near-pathological habit of such things.

The Senate completed its work on the "minibus" appropriations bill, not surprisingly rejecting every single remaining amendment and the motion to recommit. I say it's not surprising because I mentioned yesterday that they were amendments being brought by the usual annoyance squad, this time consisting of Senators Coburn, DeMint, Lee, and Paul. Senator Coburn had the good sense to balance his amendments for show, bringing one that at least could come within striking distance of a majority, to balance the other, which got walloped and received just 13 votes. But think about that for a second. We just recently had a fight in the Senate about dilatory amendments. And at the beginning of the year, we had the fight that resulted in the "Gentleman's Agreement," which entailed Republicans agreeing to stop filibustering so many motions to proceed in exchange for the Majority Leader agreeing to allow more Republican amendments. Well, Republicans did filibuster the motion to proceed to this bill. And yet we find that there's room enough to hold the door open for an amendment that gets no more than 13 votes.

Of course, Senator Coburn might tell you that that was an important vote, because he bravely exposed some of the hidden hypocrisies on his own side of the aisle by offering up cuts to an agency that might be more popular than most among Republican constituencies, the Rural Development Agency. On the other hand, how brave was it if it only got 13 votes and therefore was never in any real danger of passing? A favorite game among legislators, this "equal opportunity budget cutting" (that can't possibly pass, but looks great and you can brag on it).

Looking ahead to today:

Life in the fast lane continues for the House, which today takes up four suspension bills! The first is the "Civilian Service Recognition Act," on its second go-round. You may recall that this bill made it onto the schedule once before, but it ended up getting pulled from the floor when the American Legion and others raised objections about giving away flags to people who aren't them. Apparently it's been tinkered with enough to survive this time, even under suspension of the rules, which requires a 2/3 vote to pass. Two other bills slated for today are still more tweaks to the SEC regulations, designed to make it easier to make money disappear on Wall Street. They round out the day with a Veterans' benefits cost of living adjustment. How'd that get on the suspension calendar? Pretty controversial!

The Senate moves on to the motion to proceed to S.1769, the Rebuild America Jobs Act. That's part two of the now-broken-up American Jobs Act, dealing with infrastructure projects, and is summarized in this Main Street Insider "90 Second Summary."

A cloture motion's already been filed on the motion to proceed, and a vote (absent an agreement to bump it up earlier) is expected on that this Thursday. Until then, the Senate's time will be spent ticking down the hours on the cloture clock. If successful on Thursday, Republicans can opt to run out the full 30 hours of post-cloture time, too, meaning that just getting to a vote on whether or not to proceed to actual debate on the bill might have to wait at least until late afternoon on Friday.

There is nothing wrong with the United States Senate!

But it does make the Occupy Wall Street consensus-seeking process look brisk by comparison.

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

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House was not in session yesterday.

The Senate was, but there wasn't a great deal going on. Still, they did manage to get several executive nominations cleared, and pass three bills relating to federal court procedures, all by unanimous consent. Just one roll call vote for the day, confirming a new federal judge.

Looking ahead to today:

The House meets late today, with votes on just three suspension bills postponed until 6:30 p.m. But the good news is that after today, we'll be well on our way to making "In God We Trust" our national motto! Awesome! And much, much better than yesterday, when our national motto was "In God We Trust."

You read that right.

H. Con. Res. 13 will "reaffirm" that our national motto is indeed "In God We Trust." It already is "In God We Trust," but hey, why not reaffirm that? Think of all the jobs that could be created! We could even pass another resolution reaffirming that this resolution did, in fact, reaffirm the motto. You can never be too sure, when it comes to mottos (mottoes?). They're pretty tricky, as you can see.

The Senate plans to wrap up work on H.R. 2112, the "minibus" appropriations bill, with votes on five more amendments, a motion to recommit, and then final passage. Hey, see if you can guess who's behind the last day's worth of amendments! Did you guess Senators Coburn (R-OK), Paul (R-KY), DeMint (R-SC), Crapo (R-ID) and Lee (R-UT)? Wow, what a guess!

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

Recapping Last Week in Congress

The House was the only game in town last week, and though that's the body that can definitively set a schedule and expect to move deliberately through it, they really didn't use their time all that productively. The biggest and most important legislation moved last week was the combination of the repeal of the Republican-passed-but-never-implemented 3% withholding tax on government contractors, and it's "pay-for," which is basically a cut in eligibility for Medicaid among Social Security recipients. In that sense, it sounds like a typically Republican week, but the curve ball here is that these are two (very small) pieces of job-creating and budget-cutting proposals that came out of the White House.

The Senate was not in session last week.

This Week in Congress

It's been two weeks since the whole Congress has been in town at once. So naturally, we should expect big things, right? Well, probably not so much in the House. Once again, the familiar pattern emerges: no session on Monday, suspensions spread out over Tuesday and Wednesday, and the substantive bills on Thursday and possibly spilling over into Friday (but not too much of Friday). And this week, the House's big to-do at the end of the week will be a stab at answering the Democratic critique that the Republican-controlled House hasn't done squat on job creation. And how will they do so? By taking two bills that tinker with (read: eliminate) certain Securities and Exchange Commission reporting requirements and putting the words "job creators" and "entrepreneur" in the titles.

The Senate comes right back to work on Monday, with a vote on a judicial nomination, and on Tuesday, it's back to work on H.R. 2112, the appropriations "minibus" bill, rolling up the Agriculture; Commerce, Justice, and Science; and Transportation/HUD bills. There are still a few amendments to get through, but the end is in sight here, and there's an agreement in place not only to finish this up and get a vote on passage, but to insist on the Senate's position in the event of disagreement with the House, with Senate conferees already lined up and named. That's a good sign, considering how far behind the Senate is on appropriations, and the latest continuing (non-)resolution set to expire in mid-November. It's good to see the Senate serious about getting at least these bills done and into conference.

There's a lot more to take care of, but this is a good way to start.

Full floor and committee schedules are below the fold.

Recapping yesterday's action:

I got some push-back yesterday when I said it was the lamest day ever, but what's convincing me that I was right is facing the task of having to recap it. Nothing tops off a heaping helping of lame like having to write about it twice.

The House debated the rule for tomorrow's debate on the two-bill combo, featuring both the government contractors' 3% withholding tax repeal, and the Medicaid eligibility cuts to pay for it. Then it was a detour for the debate on and passage of the copper mining land swap bill, defeating all three Democratic amendments along the way (protecting Native American sites, requiring royalty payments on minerals extracted from the swapped land, and local hiring requirements). A quick U-turn for passage of the rule debated earlier, and then finally disposing of the suspension bill vote held over from yesterday.

The Senate was not in session.

Looking ahead to today:

The dual bills repealing the contractors' withholding tax and cutting Medicaid to pay for it are the only items on the agenda for today. No amendments are permitted, so you'll see them closing up shop around lunch time today and heading out of town for the weekend. (You know, the weekend. That thing that starts 36 hours later, for all the rest of us.)

One procedural note of interest. The rule for today's debate covers both bills, and directs that upon the passage of both, the text of H.R. 2576 (the Medicaid cut) is to be appended to the text of H.R. 674 (the withholding tax repeal) during the engrossment process (that is, the process of printing the bill up formally for presentation to the Senate). Then, H.R. 2576 itself is to be tabled, and only H.R. 674 (with its new addition) will go on to the Senate.

Today's floor schedule appears below the fold. No committee meetings are scheduled.