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Search Results: today-in-congressToday in CongressPublished: Jun 3, 2011 by admin
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This Week in Congress
 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 1544(c) of the War Powers Resolution: (c) Concurrent resolution for removal by President of United States Armed Forces 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.
Today in CongressPublished: Jun 2, 2011 by admin
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This Week in Congress
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.
Today in CongressPublished: Jun 1, 2011 by admin
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This Week in Congress
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:
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. In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Democratic Whip: THE NIGHTLY WHIP: TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011 The Senate will not be in session today. Today in CongressPublished: May 31, 2011 by admin
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This Week in Congress
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.
Today in CongressPublished: May 27, 2011 by admin
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This Week in Congress
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.
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