A long and wild week in Congress last week, with the House actually spending the bulk of its time on amendments to the Interior appropriations bill, and the "North American-Made Energy Security Act," essentially expediting the regulatory processes for construction of a trans-American oil pipeline. But all the attention went to the debt ceiling crisis?first to Speaker Boehner's successful attempt in the House to pass his own package, which ultimately failed in the Senate, and later to continuing negotiations that appear to be leading to approval of a "deal" later this week.
The Senate likewise spent the bulk of its week on the debt ceiling issue, mostly just keeping the floor occupied with placeholder legislation while negotiating in the background and waiting for The Deal to arrive. With no deal ready for presentation to Congress in time for a scheduled 1pm cloture vote on Sunday, the Senate was in no position to invoke cloture, and rejected it, leaving S. 627 still pending on the floor and at least technically still under debate.
The House returns from a very short weekend break to await the legislative language embodying The Deal, occupying itself with a few noncontroversial suspension bills for the time being. Noting that the House schedule anticipates some possible action on the debt ceiling deal today, and knowing that Speaker Boehner has presented the outlines of the plan to his House Republican Conference, we should expect the House to move first, then send the resulting legislation on to the Senate.
The Senate continues its holding pattern, using the still-unsettled S. 627 to keep it busy until word arrives from the House on the latest deal. Having failed to invoke cloture on S. 627, that bill remains available for debate on the floor. The fastest way for The Deal to get passed is probably for it to be proposed as an amendment to the pending Reid amendment to S. 627, and for the Senate to then move to reconsider the cloture vote that failed yesterday, invoke cloture, and then vote to amend S. 627 with the text of the deal and send that to the House for its approval. But if the House insists on moving first, or procedural technicalities frustrate the Senate's ability to use S. 627 as a vehicle for the newest deal, then the House's product (whether a new bill or another Senate-passed bill that gets hollowed out) will have to be sent to the Senate and run the same cloture gauntlet, complete with the "ripening" waiting period, unless unanimous consent can be secured to move to a vote more quickly. If not, the earliest the Senate could finalize the deal would be in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, August 3rd.
And finally, after the debt ceiling is taken care of, the Congress is expected to break for its month-long August recess.
Full floor and committee schedules are below the fold.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/38K0_Aa3_xY/-This-Week-in-Congress
Diora Baird Dita Von Teese Dominique Swain Donna Feldman Drea de Matteo Drew Barrymore Ehrinn Cummings Elena Lyons Elisabeth Röhm Elisha Cuthbert
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