Today in Congress/Open Thread

In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

FLOOR SCHEDULE FOR MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2008
House meets at 2:00 p.m. for Legislative Business
Unlimited "One Minutes" Per Side
Last Vote Predicted: 7:00 p.m.

Suspensions (5 Bills):

1)       S. 2403 - A bill to designate the new Federal Courthouse, located in the 700 block of East Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia, as the "Spottswood W. Robinson III and Robert R. Merhige, Jr. Federal Courthouse" (Sen. Warner – Transportation and Infrastructure)

2)       S. 2837 - A bill to designate the United States courthouse located at 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn, New York, as the "Theodore Roosevelt United States Courthouse" (Sen. Schumer – Transportation and Infrastructure)

3)       H.R. 4081 - Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act of 2007 (PACT Act) (Rep. Weiner – Judiciary)

4)       S. 2450 - A bill to amend the Federal Rules of Evidence to address the waiver of the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine (Sen. Leahy – Judiciary)

5)       S. 2135 - Child Soldiers Accountability Act (Sen. Durbin – Judiciary)

H.Res. _ - Expressing the condolences of the House of Representatives on the death of the Honorable Stephanie Tubbs Jones (Reps. Kaptur/Regula)

• Conference Reports may be brought up at any time.
• Motions to go to Conference should they become available.
• Possible Motions to Instruct Conferees.

And we're back! Suspensions and a Stephanie Tubbs Jones memorial today. A light pace to let Members get themselves back into the D.C. swing of things after the party conventions.

Is trouble expected for the memorial bill? Is that why it's not on the suspensions calendar? No. Probably just that suspensions are limited to 40 minutes of debate time, and more than 40 minutes worth of Members are expected to want to say something about their departed colleague.

In the Senate, our usual schedule from the Office of the Majority Leader isn't available yet.

However, they're expected to convene at 3 p.m. and take up where they left off -- with a motion to proceed to consideration of the Defense authorization bill, S. 3001. The last action on this was back at the end of July, when a cloture vote on the motion to proceed failed by a vote of 51-39. You may recall that the bill was being held hostage by the Republicans over (what else?) oil drilling. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was pressured by his Conference into refusing to agree to any unanimous consent agreements that would allow the bill to go forward until the Republicans got everything they wanted in an oil drilling deal. And if you didn't recall that, you do now.

"But isn't the Defense authorization bill kind of important?", you may be asking. Well, yes it is. And this is exactly the kind of thing that, if Democrats did it, would be in TV ads all over the country, accusing them of cutting off funding to our troops.

Did you see those TV ads this summer? I didn't either. But you will see a vote on oil drilling.

Go figure.