The Senate will conduct the first test vote Monday on the global tax agreement. The 3 p.m. cloture vote requires at least 60 votes for the Senate to advance the bill further in Congress.
Most believe that it will garner the necessary votes to send the bill to the House, but not before several Senate Democrats have a few hours to speak their peace. Sen. Sanders, I-Vt., spent over eight hours speaking on the Senate floor Friday outlining his heartburn over the agreement. He was joined for a few minutes by Sen. Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Landrieu, D-La., but for the most part the 70-year-old senator held the floor by himself.After the Senate concludes consideration of the tax bill by midweek, it will need to consider the funding of our federal government agencies and departments.
Last week the House passed a full year of spending for our federal government, setting the funding at the current 2010 levels. The Senate GOP would like to see this funding bill expire by the spring of 2011 and not continue for the rest of the fiscal year. It is for this reason that the bill will have some trouble passing in the Senate in its current form.
The congressional GOP wants to be able to consider this bill again early next year and cut the spending back to 2008 levels. They feel the past elections called on them to do so and therefore they need to try to set this up when Congress considers the bill in the last weeks of the lame duck session.
As it stands now, this funding runs out on Saturday, Dec. 18. When the House passed this bill last week, it passed only after Speaker Nancy Pelosi ran onto the floor to vote at the very last minute.No Republican members of the House voted for the year-long spending bill. This will be the Senates next fight after it passes the tax bill. Finally, the Senate majority leader is setting up another vote on the Defense department policy of dont ask, dont tell. This issue failed to get the needed 60 votes to advance it on the Senate floor last week.
The House will spend the week in several leadership and conference meetings discussing the fate of the global tax agreement. Most expect the House to ultimately pass the bill by weeks end.
Prior to the passage, expect the speaker to set up a couple of alternative votes to appease the House Democrats who feel like the president sold them down the river when he agreed to the global tax agreement. The House may also have to reconsider the government funding bill if the Senate is successful in changing the date to expire early next year.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, another real crisis is occurring and this one is very real and serious to many members of Congress. You see, the House leadership has informed those members of the House who lost their re-election bid or decided to retire, that they will need to be completely out of their offices and their borrowed cubicles by close of business Friday. So, if Congress doesnt wrap up its lame-duck session by the end of the week, approximately one-third of the House membership will be homeless.
Stay tuned to see if members of Congress stop the tax man before they head home for the Christmas holidays.
Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, elected United States Senate secretary for the majority and minority. Currently she is a senior legislative adviser for Covington & Burling, LLC and is the founder of GradeGov.com.
