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Search Results: today-in-congressToday in CongressPublished: Apr 1, 2011 by Will Urquhart
Filed under:
This Week in Congress
<a href="http://www.congressmatters.com"><img src="http://images2.dailykos.com/images/user/1237/cm_crosspost4.gif" align="right"></a><p>In the House, courtesy of the <a href="http://www.democraticwhip.gov/content/nightly-whip-thursday-march-31-2011">Office of the Democratic Whip:</a></p><p></p><blockquote><strong>THE NIGHTLY WHIP: THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2011<p></p></strong><p><strong>TOMORROW’S OUTLOOK</strong><br>On Friday, the House will meet at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business.</p><p>Last votes are expected no later than 3:00 p.m. </p><p><strong> “One Minutes” (5 per side)</strong></p><p><strong>Complete Consideration of <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR658:/">H.R. 658</a></strong> - FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2011 (Rep. Mica - Transportation and Infrastructure/Science and Technology/Judiciary)</p><p><strong>Postponed Amendment Votes:</strong><br>·Pearce Amendment<br>·Schiff/Sherman/Berman Amendment<br>·Sessions Amendment<br>·LaTourette/Costello Amendment<br>·Shuster Amendment </p><p><a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR1255:/">H.R. 1255</a> - Government Shutdown Prevention Act of 2011 (Rep. Womack – Appropriations) (Subject to a Rule)</p></blockquote><p></p><p>In the Senate, courtesy of the <a href="http://democrats.senate.gov/calendar/2011-04.html">Office of the Majority Leader:</a></p><p></p><blockquote><strong>Convenes: 2pm</strong><p></p><p>Following any leader remarks, the Senate will proceed to a period of morning business until 4:30pm with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.</p><p>Following morning business, the Senate will the Senate proceed to Executive Session to consider Calendar #42, Jimmie V. Reyna, of Maryland, to be United States Circuit Judge with one hour for debate equally divided and controlled between Senators Leahy and Grassley.</p><p>5:30pm roll call vote on confirmation of Executive Calendar #42, Jimmie V. Reyna, of Maryland, to be United States Circuit Judge.</p><p>Additionally, Senators should expect 2 roll call votes in relation to <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:H.R.4:">H.R.4</a>, 1099 repeal on Tuesday prior to the caucus meetings.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Mop-up duty on the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/08/953974/-House-GOP-quietly-pushing-anti-union-legislation-in-FAA-reauthorization-bill">union-busting FAA bill</a>. You can read up on the amendments for which votes are still pending <a href="http://rules.house.gov/Legislation/legislationDetails.aspx?NewsID=192">here</a>.</p><p>When they're done busting the unions, it's on to the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/30/961616/-Very-serious-Republican-compromise-on-budget-Now-with-pixie-dust!">"Let's Vote on the Same Bullshit Again and Pretend It's a Budget Act of 2011."</a> Yes, this is the bill Republicans hope everyone will think can magically convert H.R. 1, which the House passed but the Senate rejected, automatically into law. Hey, remember <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html">that thing</a> the Republicans made everyone <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/01/06/933682/-Today-in-Congress">read out loud</a> back at the beginning of the Congress? That was hilarious! Especially this part:</p><p></p><blockquote> Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. ``Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States. If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated who shall enter the objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.''</blockquote><p></p><p>Yes, that was Joe Wilson (R-SC-02) reading Art. I, section 7, clause 2. Hey, Joe Wilson! You... uh, don't lie. That's actually true. Bills <em>do</em> have to pass both houses in order to become law. Wow, I guess this thing isn't going to work after all. </p><p>In the Senate, it's not even the small business jobs bill anymore. They've spent another whole week on it, but haven't managed a single vote, so now they're jumping off that stalled bill and going back—again—to the 1099 repeal issue. That's the one piece of the Affordable Care Act that everybody appears to agree to want repealed. And yet, they can't seem to get it done, though the Senate has voted on it several times in the last year. (<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/30/924211/-GOP:-tax-cuts-dont-have-to-be-paid-for-Unless-they-do">Remember this one?</a>) Wacky, huh? Oh, you nutty Senate!</p><p>There's a light committee schedule today, below the fold as usual. Everyone's smelling the jet fumes, as they say, and ready to get out of town for the weekend. It's good practice, too, since in another week from now they'll be back on the tarmac, waiting for flights home for a two-week recess. </p><p>Oh, and there's just a week left until the latest CR runs out. Again. Plus, for all the ranting, we managed to make it through the first week with Congress back in session without having anyone get a vote on any resolutions regarding Libya. One week left before the recess on that, too. Have a nice weekend!</p><p><iframe src="https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?mode=AGENDA&height=600&wkst=1&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&src=2l61perl6e2988l4lqj6ivfda0%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%238D6F47&ctz=America%2FNew_York" style=" border-width:0 " width="550" height="450" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
Today in CongressPublished: Mar 31, 2011 by Will Urquhart
Filed under:
This Week in Congress
 In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Democratic Whip: THE NIGHTLY WHIP: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 2011 In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader: Convenes: 9:30am The House will spend it's day, and probably part of tomorrow, on a crappy union-busting bill that the President has already threatened to veto. Well, maybe not, actually. See, for some reason, the White House has begun couching their Statements of Administration Policy—the documents in which veto threats are formally made—in somewhat unusual terms. That is, instead of saying, as most SAPs have in the past, that if presented with such a bill the president would veto it, this SAP (and the last few preceding it, actually) have said, "the President's senior advisers would recommend" that he veto it. That's... strange. Anyway, want to know what all those amendments are about? Visit the Rules Committee page for the bill and read through their descriptions. In the Senate, well, uh... we'll call you. Again. We are ostensibly still working on the small business jobs bill. But there hasn't been a vote on anything related to it since March 16th. And no wonder, since almost none of the pending amendments actually has anything to do with small business jobs. It's becoming a Christmas tree, as they call it. Hung with policy rider "ornaments" of all kinds, ranging from Republican hobby horses like blocking the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gasses, to a Bernie Sanders amendment to protect Social Security, to Rand Paul's motion to commit and report back with an amendment relating to the use of military force in Libya. The Senate invoked cloture on the motion to proceed to this bill on March 14th. Since then, they've managed three votes on amendments, all on the 16th. And that's been the sum total of their progress on voting, as amendments continue to rack up. Looks like that "gentlemen's agreement" was a real winner in terms of its ability to untangle the knots the Senate has tied around itself. The way things are going, they might just have to set S. 493 aside to pass a second CR during its consideration. A small business jobs bill. Really. Not even kidding. And have I mentioned that there's another recess scheduled in two weeks? Committee schedule appears below, if you can stand it. Today in CongressPublished: Mar 29, 2011 by Will Urquhart
Filed under:
This Week in Congress
In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Democratic Whip: THE NIGHTLY WHIP: MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2011 In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader: Convenes: 10:00am Another exciting Tuesday on Capitol Hill, with the newly created jobs fairly falling from the sky! In the House, they're set to terminate a program that was designed to keep people in trouble with their mortgages in their homes. Yay! But we pretty much know the score on this. HAMP wasn't really all it was cracked up to be on the one hand. And on the other hand, Republicans hate people and families. So in the end, it was really an easy call. All that's left is to work out the details. And to that end, there are nine amendments that Republicans are allowing, none of which present any serious speed bumps to terminating the program. In fact, it's kind of a strange set of amendments if you take a look at them. Two of the Republican amendments—Hanna and Quigley—are actually about enshrining a bunch of conservatives' complaints about HAMP in the text of the bill. They're literally just a list of things they don't like about the way it worked and how much it cost. Now, normally, those are things you'd just discuss in the debate about the bill. But in this case, they're actually trying to add them in as amendments, too. Which is kind of weird. With just an hour of debate allowed for the bill, and ten minutes for each of the amendments, it actually looks more like Rules Committee Republicans decided to set this nonsense up so that a rule that would otherwise be categorized as "closed"—that is, permitting no amendments—as instead being "structured," meaning that amendments are allowed, but only pre-cleared ones. But they didn't really want any substantive amendments offered, so they've limited things to 10 minute debates on amendments that will codify the Republican list of complaints about HAMP. And as if in answer, most of the Democratic amendments seek to list, or have someone else list, HAMP's good points. The more substantive amendments offered—ones that actually aimed to improve the program for those still remaining in the system—were simply excluded from consideration. On the Senate side, not much is expected to happen. Again. But at least it's arguably a jobs bill that they're working on, even if things have slowed to a crawl, as they usually do. Seriously. There's really nothing else to say about what's going on in the Senate. An hour of morning business, an hour and a half on the small business jobs bill, then lunch. And a note that they'll call you if anyone thinks there's any chance you might have to vote on something. Committee activity will be in high gear today. Check out the schedule below, and remember that you can watch just about any committee out there, right from your own computer, with the Main Street Insider Committee Dashboard. Today in CongressPublished: Mar 17, 2011 by Will Urquhart
Filed under:
This Week in Congress
In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Democratic Whip: TOMORROW’S OUTLOOK In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader: Convenes: 9:30am Kind of an exciting day, by comparison to the rest of the week. First up in the House, Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH-10) resolution directing the President to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Some enormous majority of Americans no longer believe this war is worth it, so of course, the resolution is considered to have zero chance of passage. After that, it's on to the very important race to defund NPR, even though the video supposedly damning it was largely faked, just like pretty much every other James O'Keefe video has been. But as you know, nothing rocks the Congressional world like Republican outrage. Fake video about ACORN, defund ACORN. Fake video about Planned Parenthood, defund Planned Parenthood. Fake video about NPR? Defund NPR. And while you're at it, let's put O'Keefe on the Sunday talk shows to gripe about how no one pays attention to him and The Man is keeping him down. On the Senate side, more slow progress on everyone's favorite small business legislation, followed by the (expected) passage of the new 3-week continuing resolution, followed by the (expected) confirmation of yet another non-controversial federal judicial nominee, after just nine months in limbo. And after that? A one week recess, just to make sure that it's as tough as possible to negotiate the next attempt to avoid a government shutdown. There's still a ton going on in committees, of course. It being budget season, at least nominally, the appropriations committees are meeting constantly, trying to gauge the needs of the various departments and agencies within their jurisdiction. Check out the schedule of events below, and tune in the online video from any committee on the Main Street Insider Committee Dashboard. Today in CongressPublished: Mar 16, 2011 by Will Urquhart
Filed under:
This Week in Congress
In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Democratic Whip: TOMORROW’S OUTLOOK In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader: Convenes: 9:30am Once again, we're spreading the work thin in the House. Two bills cleared for floor action under the same rule are being spread out , one for consideration today, the other being postponed until after the upcoming recess. That at least keeps the House busy with things to do, although you've doubtless noticed by now that none of the things they're keeping busy with help create any jobs. You remember the whole, "Where are the jobs?" thing, right? Today, the House busies itself with—you guessed it—another program termination bill. This time, it's the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Because nothing says "Socialism!" more than stable neighborhoods. The NSP, as its name suggests, provides funds to cities with high rates of property abandonment due to mortgage foreclosure. Rather than letting the properties blight, the funds can be used to revitalize and redevelop them, saving neighboring property owners the loss in value that might otherwise be expected from the decline of the neighborhood. Can't have that, of course. So what does the bill do? It terminates the program, and rescinds all of the program's unobligated funds. How much is unobligated? Well, right now, it's $1 billion, which was set aside for the program under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill last year. The problem: that money is slated to be obligated on March 31st, which means that by the time this thing passes the Senate and gets signed, it'll likely be too late to recapture that money. But at least no other neighborhoods will be able to be saved! Take that, blighted America! Anyway, if you're interested in a brief description of each of the amendments listed above as eligible for consideration (and those that were submitted and rejected)? Click here. If you're interested in saving $1 billion by letting cities go to pot, well, you're probably out of luck. You'll have to find some other way of destroying them. On the Senate side, it's another exciting day of small business program legislating, during which Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) will attempt to reduce the Senate's own operating budget by 5%. I'm sure that'll totally save him in 2012. Plenty of goings on in the committees. Take a look at the hearing schedule, below the fold. We're the only free, weekly compilation available for all Congressional committee scheduling information. Did you know that? It's true! Everyone else charges a couple grand a year for their varying packages of Capitol Hill coverage including that information. How about that, eh? And how about this? The only place where you can watch all the the committee action in one place (and even chat about it in real time with other, like-minded wackos) is the Main Street Insider Committee Dashboard. Don't say we never did anything for you! At least not within earshot.
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