This Week in Congress

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

First Vote of the Week... Tuesday 12:00 p.m.
Last Vote Predicted... Friday p.m.

MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 2009

The House is not in session.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2009

On Tuesday, the House will convene for the start of the 111th Congress at 12:00 p.m. There will be a recorded quorum call at 12:00 p.m. following the Pledge of Allegiance.

H.Res. _ - House Rules Package for the 111th Congress (Privileged Resolution)

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2009 AND THE BALANCE OF THE WEEK

On Wednesday, the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. On Thursday, the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. and recess until approximately 1:00 p.m. for the Joint Session of Congress to count the electoral ballots for the President and Vice President of the United States. On Friday, the House is expected to meet at 10:00 a.m.

Suspensions (2 bills):

1.     H.R. _ - Presidential Library Donation Reform Act (Rep. Towns – Oversight and Government Reform)

2.     H.R. _ - Presidential Records Act (Rep. Towns – Oversight and Government Reform)

H.R. _ - Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (Rep. George Miller (CA) – Education and Labor) (Subject to a Rule)

H.R. _ - Paycheck Fairness Act (Rep. DeLauro – Education and Labor) (Subject to a Rule)

The new Congress is coming! The new Congress is coming! This week marks the opening of the brand-spanking new 111th Congress. Lots of great procedural stuff happens when they open for business on Tuesday. The House reconstitutes itself completely, and even has to start over by adopting its rules all over again, along with any proposed changes -- and there are some in the works, most notably on our old "friend," the motion to recommit. In the Senate, just 1/3 of the body is renewed with each new Congress, so the old rules continue, but there's more on tap this time than just the routine swearing in of 30 or so Senators, old and new.

To help you get up to speed, if this is your sort of thing, here are PDFs of reports prepared by the Congressional Research Service:

• The First Day of a New Congress: A Guide to Proceedings on the House Floor
• The First Day of a New Congress: A Guide to Proceedings on the Senate Floor

Read them. Know them. Live them.

As for substantive legislative work, the House bills already on the schedule are unnumbered because they haven't been introduced yet, since the 111th Congress isn't in session, and in fact doesn't even exist yet. But these bills have titles nonetheless, because they were bills that were introduced and passed by the House in the last Congress, and are being reintroduced this year, at the top of the agenda.

The Presidential Library Donation Reform Act was last year's H.R. 1254, then introduced by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA-30), and this time introduced by the new Chair of that panel, Ed Towns (D-NY-10).

Coming with it, and under the same circumstances, is the Presidential Records Act, the 110th Congress' H.R. 1255. Both come to the floor under suspension of the rules, which is how they passed last time. Should be a breeze in the House. The Senate ate them both last time.

Also on tap, but under regular order, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- H.R. 2831 from the last Congress, which passed the House 225 - 199 but died by filibuster in the Senate, and was headed for a Bush veto, anyway. We saw the Paycheck Fairness Act last time as H.R. 1338, and it too passed the House and died in the Senate. No filibuster on that one, though.

In the Senate, as usual, the calendar doesn't tell us much. But here's the only entry so far for the 111th Congress, for Tuesday the 6th, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 12:00noon

Hmm. Great.

But as we know, the Senate is a lot less predictable than the House, given its procedural requirements, so we'll almost never get anything like the clear picture of the week ahead that we get from the other side of the Capitol.

But what we do know is that there could be some behind the scenes fireworks in the Senate -- the contested status of both Roland Burris of Illinois and Al Franken of Minnesota. Will they be seated? Will a deal be worked out about how to deal with them if they're not? Will Dick Cheney go berzerk on one or both counts? Will there be a deal on organizing resolutions?

Most likely all the good stuff will happen behind closed doors. But procedure buffs will be able to view some prime arcana on Tuesday, and maybe even divine some of what happened in the back rooms by the clues we're given in the procedures revealed on the floor. Keep your eyes peeled for anything unusual, which you'll perhaps recognize if you study up on the CRS reports of what's routine.

REMINDER: You're all invited to the party over at Congress Matters, where we'll be paying closer attention to the details on stuff we cover here at Daily Kos. We'll still cover what's happening here (and there, too, of course), but Congress Matters will give us some space to talk about why it's happening and how.

And when I say you're all invited to the party, I mean that the password and user ID files that work here at Daily Kos work just the same there at Congress Matters.

Oh, and if I can throw in one additional pitch, that also means that visitors over at Congress Matters get an additional crack at a diary each day. Which brings me to my next pitch, to the liveblogging crew. As confirmation hearings for the Obama cabinet nominees begin, and key legislation starts moving, we'll be watching the committee proceedings over there. Why not consider parking your mothership here at Daily Kos where the eyeballs are, and doing the liveblogging in linked diaries over at Congress Matters? A click to a diary there works just the same as a click to a diary here, plus you get to hang on to your Daily Kos diary allotment without sacrificing it to the liveblog maw.