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Welcome to the 14th installment of "Considered Forthwith."

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies.

This week is a special edition of Considered Forthwith. Instead of examining a single committee, I will look at the committee system in general this week. For one thing, Congress is in recess for Fourth of July (funny, I only get one day off for that). For another Meteor Blades is launching the committee monitoring project, so this seems to be an ideal time to go over the basics.

CQ ($) is reporting that the bargaining is over regarding the Specter switch, and new organizing resolutions are in place, but no deal is reported on seating Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).

As much as I'd hoped Senate Democrats could use Specter's defection as leverage on Franken, I guess I can't complain too much when Republicans refuse the deal and we keep the deposit. If the position I described had anything to do with the negotiations, it seems they went down like this:

Dems: Seat Franken now, or we'll keep all of Specter's committee seats, and give ourselves even bigger advantages on those panels.

Republicans: OK, fine. Keep the seats.

Dems: Well, OK then.

So we kept them.

Here's the CQ report:

Under the two organizing resolutions — one for the majority (SR 130) and one for the minority (SR 131) — approved Tuesday evening, no additional GOP members will be added to the five panels, and Specter will simply be counted as a Democrat rather than a Republican.

That approach will give Democrats a six-member edge, rather than four, on Appropriations; their margin on Judiciary, Environment and Public Works, Veterans’ Affairs and Special Aging grows from three to five members on each committee.

Republicans could have pushed to reopen negotiations on committee ratios, but a GOP aide noted that doing so was unlikely because "it just opens a can of worms."

So, OK. Fine. I hope we at least see some better bills coming out of committee.

Oh, one other item probably of interest to some of you:

Specter, who said last week that he would retain his seniority as though he had been elected as a Democrat in 1980, will be stripped of his seniority on his committees through the 111th Congress.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., confirmed late Tuesday that Specter would be the least senior Democrat on the Judiciary, Appropriations, Environment and Public Works, Veterans’ Affairs and Special Aging committees.

But that's only temporary. When the Senate reorganizes for the 112th Congress, it's all open for negotiations again. And note:

Manley said Specter’s seniority for the purpose of committee assignments would be restored in the 112th Congress — an important allowance, since he would then outrank many of his colleagues on those panels. Democrats almost always defer to seniority when making chairman assignments.

Senate Republicans reeeeeeeeeeeeally don't want to give an inch on Franken. At least we took our pound of flesh. Back in January, Republicans were seriously trying to cap Democratic committee advantages to no more than two seats on every panel. Reid put the screws to them on that, and he got everything that was coming to him on this one, too.

Note, too, that this deal retains some leverage over Specter, as well, who's been a little too frisky lately. With big votes coming up (and expected to continue coming up) for the balance of the 111th Congress, negotiations on his seniority in the 112th will no doubt hinge to some extent on how he conducts himself from here on in.

As we have seen in the past few days our "Democratic" Senator from New Jersey has been a horses ass. Bob Menendez has decided to hold up two well qualified science appointees over an issue of the Cuban Trade Embargo, which of the last time that I checked has about as much to do with Science as shoe tying or cereal making. Now the power of an idividual senator to place a hold on an appointee is in itself undemocratic, but at least in the past it has been used over either something relevent or something improper of the appointee. For Example the nomination of current Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was held up because of something relevent and something improper, her stance on unionization was relevent (it is called the Department of Labor) and the fact that her spouse failed to pay taxes was improper. But these appointeees did nothing wrong, they are hostages of Senator Menendez to advance his (increasingly unpopular) pro embargo agenda.

More below the fold

Cross-posted from Congress Matters.

First he wins his first cloture test of the new Congress, then he hits one out of the park on the organizing resolution!

Yes, credit where credit is due, everyone. Harry Reid appears to have won the organizing resolution stand-off.

Remember when it looked like the Republicans might filibuster the organizing resolution, thereby preventing new Senate committee assignments from being made? The issue then was that a 59-41 Senate, which is for all intents and purposes what it looks like we'll end up with once Norm Coleman is scraped off, would appear to argue for partisan ratios on the committees that result in a +3 net Democratic advantage in most cases. But Republicans were threatening to use their 41 votes to filibuster that resolution unless Democrats agreed to cap their advantage at +2.

Well, that just didn't make sense, because without a new organizing resolution, the old one remains effective, and with all the Republican losses and retirements:

at least until the resignation of Senators who are expected to move into the Obama administration, the Democrats stand to lose very little in terms of raw committee power if the Republicans actually do try to block the new organizing resolutions, and in fact gain considerable power in many key areas, especially in the early going when the focus will be on the stimulus package.

That meant the longer the Republicans delayed the organizing resolution, the longer they had to live with a situation like a +5 Democratic advantage on the Appropriations Committee.

Nor did their gripe that the Dem. advantage should be uniform across all committees make any real historical sense, given that uniform spreads where the partisan advantage in the full Senate was more than just a few seats have only recently been the norm, but weren't always.

So guess what? It's over, that's what. According to CQ ($):  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have reached a tentative agreement that would give Democrats a three-seat advantage on most committees during the 111th Congress.

[...]

Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, head of the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee, said Democrats negotiated a larger, four-seat advantage on the Appropriations and Armed Services committees. By statute, Democrats will have only a one-seat edge on the Intelligence Committee and a two-seat advantage on the Joint Economic Committee. On all other committees — except the Ethics panel, which always includes three members of each party — there will be three more Democrats than Republicans, Stabenow said.

Atta way, guys! Boy, am I glad to be able to cheer for this one!

[Cross-posted from Congress Matters]

This issue has been diaried a thousand times in the past couple days, and everyone has their own opinion about what should happen to Lieberman. But a lot of people seem to be confused about some basic facts. I'd like to clarify some things rather than add yet another opinion to the mix.

This is a weekly diary diary I do over at the EENR blog, and since some of you may be interested in it, I figured I'd post it over here once and let you know that it gets posted at 11:30am Eastern/8:30am Pacific every Monday morning on the EENR. Here is today's edition in full:

(photo by Cam in Van on Flickr)

Hey there all you folks out there on the EENR this Monday! This is the Critter Watch, and we do it because, of course, we all know that we have to keep a close eye on those Congress Critters of ours; you never know what they'll vote for sell auction off give away next. For more, scroll down and bring tissues...

Which of the presidential candidates will make progressives in Congress stronger? This question is the subject of my newest piece in In These Times.