In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:
FLOOR SCHEDULE FOR TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2010
House Meets At... 9:00 a.m.: Morning Hour
10:00 a.m.: Legislative Business
First Vote Predicted... 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Last Vote Predicted... 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
“One Minutes” (5 per side)
Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment to H.R. 1586 - Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act (Reps. Obey/Waxman/Levin – Appropriations/Energy and Commerce/Ways and Means) (Subject to a Rule)
Suspension (1 Bill)
- H.R. 6080 - Emergency Border Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2010 (Reps. Price (NC)/Giffords – Appropriations)
- Conference Reports may be brought up at any time.
- Motions to go to Conference should they become available.
- Possible Motions to Instruct Conferees.
The Imperial Senate is out of session, but the House is back in DC to clean up their mess. As I outlined yesterday, the main business is the teacher and Medicaid money:
The House sent the Senate a supplemental appropriations bill with just domestic disaster assistance in it. But the Senate added war money. The House said, "OK, fine, but in that case we also want teacher and Medicaid money." And the Senate said, "Go jump in the lake," and stripped out the teacher and Medicaid money. The House said, "You've got us over a barrel. It's recess time and you're giving us the old 'we need 60 votes' routine," and passed the supplemental and left town. Then the Senate turned around and stripped out the contents of an old House bill, rewrote it to appropriate that teacher and Medicaid money, passed it, and left town, meaning the House now has to come back to DC to deal with what the Senate dropped for them on their way out the door.
So here we are.
And as you can see, there's another item that's found its way onto the schedule today -- another suspension that should by all rights have no trouble whatsoever passing, just like the 9/11 first responders bill from the other week.
Still not shown on the schedule is the kabuki piece from Tom Price (R-GA-06) that purports to be a privileged resolution that would somehow prevent the House from considering controversial measures during any lame duck session. No word on how you'd define "controversial." And no word on how anybody would actually ever prevent the House from considering whatever the hell a majority wanted to consider. And if you actually read the resolution, you'll find that there's no word on just what Price thinks is entitled to privilege, either. So the best guess is that there's never any vote on this thing at all. Just a vote on sustaining the chair when it rules the resolution isn't privileged or is otherwise out of order. It's nonsense, and even if were to pass and the House for some strange reason chose to honor it, the upshot would be that everyone gets a two month paid vacation in which they're not allowed to do any of what they get paid for. What a great idea!
All Price could seriously be hoping for is that this thing gets read in full on C-SPAN before it gets dumped. That's why he filled nine pages of the resolution full of complaints about the Democratic leadership, virtually none of which bear in any way on whether or not there ought to be a lame duck session, except as the thinnest threads of a conspiracy theory woven together in Price's mind.
But there's no rule against being a drama queen, so Price will have his day, as far as it takes him.
Then the House will take care of business, and Price will get back on his plane just like everybody else and go home.
I ask you, is there any other job this glamorous?