For the second week in a row, Congress seemed to be doing very little in the light of day, in either the House or Senate chambers.
The Senate considered and confirmed five executive nominations afterseveral hours of debate on each nominee. This basically chewed up the entire week on the Senate floor. When the Senate wasn't debating nominees, the speeches on the floor were peppered with statements demonizing the banking industry and big business in general. These orchestrated statements were cued upin the preperation for next week's Senate floor debate on financial reform legislation.
The House side of the U.S. Capitol was to consider passing a bill to give avoting representative in the U. S. House to the District of Columbia. This D.C. voting rights bill was pulled at the last minute due to controversial gun control language. The House sent to conference an Iran sanctions bill, but otherwise spent most of their time behind closed doors puzzling through what their legislative agenda should include between now and the November elections.
Readers may recall an earlier piece by this writer in which I talked about returning members of Congress whining about not wanting to cast any more tough political votes. This lot of "gun shy" members continued their bleating this week, only they were louder and more determined. This made setting the legislative schedule even more of a challenge for the leadership.
At week's end the House Majority Leader announced a schedule for the next four weeks, which is the biggest chunk of legislative time both chambers will be in session prior to the November elections. It included floor consideration of a budget resolution -- much to the dismay of many in Congress. On the Senate side, the Senate budget committee met, and after two days fulfilled its obligation and passed out a budget resolution for potential Senate floor debate in the coming weeks.
Remember there has been some fear that any potential budget resolution could contain reconciliation instructions which allow bills to be created and pushed through the Senate without the threat of filibuster. Well, the current budget resolution just passed out of the Senate budget committee contains three reconciliation instructions.
These three instructions call for producing bills from subjects within the jurisdiction of the finance committee that would reduce the deficit by $2 billion as well as a bill dealing with jobs, and one that would increase the public debt by $50 billion. Allof these bills could be considered in the fall of 2010, before or after the elections.
The Congressional leadership is seriously considering having a lame duck session, that is a session that occurs after the November elections, but before the newly elected members of Congress are sworn in come January, 2011. This lame duck session could include the reconciliation bills and these bills could be subjects including carbon cap and trade, immigration reform, and the like.
Sincethe dates for the instructed committees to create the reconciliation bills are late Fall dates, this should be a tip off that there will indeed be a lame duck session and it could be the most productive in Congressional history.
Meanwhile, whenthe Senate debates the budget resolution, questions and maybe amendments could be offered defining these reconciliation instructions further, or even striking them all together.The budget resolution last year actually did include such language as it would apply tothe cap and trade bill.
Senator Vitter (R-LA) offered amotion to instruct the budget conferees, telling them not toinclude any language that wouldincrease: the cost of producing energy from domestic sources, including oil and gas from the Outer Continental Shelf or other areas; the cost of energy for American families; or the cost of energy for domestic manufacturers, farmers, fishermen, or other domestic industries; or that would not enhance foreign competitiveness against U.S. businesses. TheSenate agreed to the Vitter language by a vote of 63to 30.
More to come later on the Congressional budget and a possible lame duck session.
Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, four-times-elected United States Senate secretary for the Majority and Minority. She is the founder of GradeGov.com.
