The House is not in session this week.
In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:
Convenes: 2:00pm
Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will proceed to a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each. There will be no roll call votes during Monday’s session of the Senate. However, the Majority Leader hopes to reach an agreement to begin consideration of S.223, the Federal Aviation Administration Act.
We're going with a "Today in Congress" this Monday, rather than a "This Week in Congress." Why? Because with the House out of session and just the Senate on hand, we only have a day's worth of schedule available to us, anyway. Why is that? Because the fact that everything can be filibustered means that absent a unanimous consent agreement, the Senate can never really tell more than a day or so in advance what they're going to be able to work on.
Well, having refused the opportunity to change its rules, Senators will spend the day walking around, and occasionally speaking to an empty chamber, while those of you watching on C-SPAN2 will hear lots of classical music. Behind the scenes, they'll be negotiating to see if they can reach agreement on whether or not to start debating a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration.
FAA authorization? In January?
Yes. Remember what happened to that bill last year?
Uh-oh! The sun rose, so you know what that means. A cloture vote in the Senate! Today's cloture vote is on the substitute amendment that will strip the original text out of H.R. 1586 -- which started out as a re-authorization bill (definition) for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), but will now become the vehicle for funding the teacher jobs and aid to the states that got stripped out of the supplemental the week before last. Remember what that was all about?
Why strip out the contents of an FAA authorization? Because the offset for the spending comes in part from closing the foreign tax credit loophole, which means it's a revenue measure. And revenue measures are supposed to originate in the House, under the Constitution. Remember? So they're taking a bill from the House and "amending" it so that they can comply with the rule. This bill originated in the House. They're just taking every single thing in it out and putting in something completely new. Ta-da!
So they'll be working on getting cloture on that substitute amendment. But just for fun, I'll point out that the entire history of this bill is that the House passed it in March of 2009. The Senate didn't even take it up until a full year later, in March of 2010, and when it did, it slogged through two full weeks of debate on it, amended it, and sent it back to the House. The House agreed to the Senate amendments and added still more amendments (which took them all of one day, by the way) and sent it back to the Senate again. So the reason I'm telling you all this is so that you'll recognize that what they're voting on today is a cloture motion on the motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment with an amendment.
I wish I was kidding you.
(Side note: That's, like, a triple embedded "Remember"! Don't let anyone tell you that you're not learning anything here.)
So here we are, back on FAA authorization. A bill that initially passed the House under suspension of the rules (meaning it needed 2/3 to pass), then got bogged down in the Senate for two weeks, then sailed through the House again. And now we're back to square one, and having to negotiate to see whether the Senate can work out an agreement just to start debating it again.
No need for rules reform or anything.
And now, the last Today in Congress appearance for our famous countdown clock. Let's remember, this has been more than just a good laugh:
Harris, who campaigned on an anti-Obamacare platform, made news last month when he asked during a freshman orientation class why it would take so long for his government health insurance to kick in. The question, first reported by Politico, has become a running joke here, with David Waldman of the liberal Congress Matters website keeping a daily countdown of how many days Harris must wait "for his sweet, sweet government health care."
Reigrut said he doubts the negative publicity affected Harris' chances of getting on the Energy and Commerce Committee, citing the high number of incoming Republican freshmen as a more likely reason.
Yeah, well, doubt away, buddy. Just do it from somewhere other than the dais of the Energy and Commerce Committee.