In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:
FLOOR SCHEDULE FOR THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2010
House Meets At: 10:00 a.m.: Legislative Business
First Vote Predicted: 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
Last Vote Predicted: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
"One Minutes" (5 per side)
Suspension (1 Bill)
- Senate Amendment to H.R. 4994 - Medicare & Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010 (Reps. Levin/Waxman – Ways and Means/Energy Commerce)
Postponed Suspension Vote (1 Bill):
- H.R. 6412 - Access to Criminal History Records for State Sentencing Commissions Act of 2010 (Rep. Scott (VA) - Judiciary)
- Conference Reports may be brought up at any time.
Motions to go to Conference should they become available.
Possible Motions to Instruct Conferees.
In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:
Convenes: 9:30am
Following any Leader remarks, Senator Durbin will be recognized to speak for up to 10 minutes. Following his remarks, the Senate will resume consideration of S.3992, the DREAM Act, with the time until 11:00am equally divided and controlled between the Leaders or their designees.
At 11:00am, the Senate will proceed to a series of at least 2 and possibly 3 roll call votes. Those votes will be on the following items.
- Cloture on the motion to proceed to Calendar #663, S.3992, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2010 (DREAM Act); and
- Cloture on the motion to proceed to Calendar #641, H.R.847, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010.
- Senator Reid may reconsider the failed cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S.3454, DoD Authorization.
Following the votes, Senator Bennett will be recognized to speak for up to 20 minutes for his farewell speech.
Senator Bunning will be recognized at 1:00pm for up to 30 minutes for his farewell speech.
Senator Dorgan will be recognized at 2:00pm for up to 20 minutes for his farewell speech.
The House, having finished its heavy lifting for the week with the passage of the DREAM Act last night, cleans up with a couple of suspension bills today, before heading out of town.
The Senate, on the other hand, picks up where the House left off and continues its cloture vote-a-rama, beginning with DREAM.
And if DREAM cloture fails, it's the 9/11 first responders' health bill. And if that cloture fails, it's a possible shot at reconsideration of the Defense authorization bill -- so far, still with DADT repeal.
The situation remains the same as yesterday. If any of the cloture votes actually succeeds, you'd see the 30-hour post-cloture clock start ticking. Yes, that's right. Succeeding on one of the votes today would send the Senate into a 30-hour time-wasting exercise that would consume the rest of the week, after which you'd have yet another vote... on the motion to proceed. And only after that would you get to the bill itself. Frankly, I'm a little surprised the Republicans didn't opt to vote for cloture on some of these motions to proceed just to waste 30 more hours, and then start filibustering the bill itself after that. But apparently the allure of voting no was stronger.
And I don't know if this is reflective of how they expect the votes to go or not, but afterward, the plan is to have three farewell speeches from Senators Bennett, Bunning and Dorgan. I suppose that if one of the cloture votes actually passes, they could suspend the 30-hour clock by unanimous consent to allow the speeches instead. The rules would normally preclude any other business from coming to the floor. So it's not entirely clear whether scheduling these speeches for today means they expect them all to fail, or that they simply expect to be able to get unanimous consent in the even that one passes.
I guess we'll see.
Today's committee schedule appears below.
UPDATE: The Senate is currently scheduled to vote on a motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to consideration of the DREAM Act under the designation of S. 3992. However, the House-passed version of the DREAM Act from last night is under H.R. 5281 (which began life as a completely different bill, on a completely different subject, but was amended by the House yesterday to carry the DREAM Act). Whether the Senate will change its plans in some way is unknown at this point, but it would sure be a faster path to completion if the Senate opted to take up H.R. 5281 instead. Even if the texts of H.R. 5281 and S. 3992 are identical, the key is passing them under the same designation. So if the Senate defies the odds and invokes cloture and eventually passes S. 3992, it'd only have to go back to the House for another vote, and the last one was too close for comfort as it was. So we may very well see something engineered in the Senate to get them to H.R. 5281 instead. Or at least I hope so.