The House spent the better part of yesterday working through amendments to the Interior appropriations bill. Then, it spent the worst part of the day blowing the scheduled vote on the Boehner version of the debt ceiling bill that the Senate said they're going to reject. The vote never happened. The House leadership never got a clear enough picture of what the outcome would be, and they pulled the bill for the day.
The Senate, which spent the day standing by for the House to send them the Boehner bill, instead could only dispense with noncontroversial business (by unanimous consent), and then sit and wait some more.
Looking ahead to today:
The House still has a pile of work to do in finishing up postponed votes on suspension bills. And then, of course, there's also that whole debt ceiling thing that they neglected to take care of yesterday. The fact that the House will recess after the day's "one minute" speeches means they're still trying to round up votes. That will involve an emergency meeting of the rules committee, to throw together a new rule that: 1) deems as adopted a new manager's amendment, with text tweaked to win over a few more votes, and; 2) a waiver of the rule that prohibits same-day consideration of... this rule. Hey, presto! Remember when that used to be tyranny?
Why they're not using that time to take care of postponed suspensions votes, I don't really know. I guess they must need another Republican Conference meeting, at which they'll doubtless play another motivational video. The Muppet Show? Rebecca Black's "Friday"? The smash hit Twitter sensation, #BoehnerWars?
But that's pretty much all they've got to go with. They could do some more appropriations amendment if they need busy work. But basically, we should expect them to stay in DC until they pass something. And that means in both houses. Though I wouldn't put it past them to pass their bill and then skip town, in the hopes that the Senate would be so flummoxed that they'd accept the House bill just to get things finished so everyone can go on vacation. Sounds dumb, but so does blowing the vote yesterday.
And the Senate will just sit there and wait for their turn. It's expected that they'll table the Boehner bill, if it ever gets sent to them. And then they'll turn to whatever compromise they've been cooking up and see if they can send it to the House over the weekend.
Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.
Looks like no one expected to still be around long enough to have committee meetings on Friday. I doubt they'll schedule any, either.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/aPANOAtzgC8/-Today-in-Congress
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