Today in Congress

In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Democratic Whip:

THE NIGHTLY WHIP: MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2011

TOMORROW?S OUTLOOK
On Tuesday, the House will meet at 2:00 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m. Members are advised that important votes are expected on Tuesday and that the vote series at 6:30 p.m. is expected to be longer than usual.

?One Minutes?

Suspension (1 Bill)

1. H.R. 1079 - Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2011 (Rep. Mica - Transportation and Infrastructure/Ways and Means)

H.R. 839 - The HAMP Termination Act of 2011 (Rep. McHenry - Financial Services)

The Rule provides for one hour of general debate and makes in order the following amendments:

Rep. Hanna Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Quigley Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Canseco Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Inslee Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Waters Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Jackson Lee Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Matsui Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Maloney Amendment (10 minutes of debate)
Rep. Loretta Sanchez Amendment (10 minutes of debate)

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 10:00am

Following any leader remarks, the Senate will proceed to a period of morning business for one hour with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees with the Majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half.

Following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of S.493, the Small Business Jobs bill.

The Senate will stand in recess from 12:30pm until 2:15pm for the weekly caucus meetings.

Roll call votes in relation to amendments to the small business jobs bill are possible during Tuesday?s session. Senators will be notified when any votes are scheduled.

Another exciting Tuesday on Capitol Hill, with the newly created jobs fairly falling from the sky!

In the House, they're set to terminate a program that was designed to keep people in trouble with their mortgages in their homes. Yay! But we pretty much know the score on this. HAMP wasn't really all it was cracked up to be on the one hand. And on the other hand, Republicans hate people and families. So in the end, it was really an easy call.

All that's left is to work out the details. And to that end, there are nine amendments that Republicans are allowing, none of which present any serious speed bumps to terminating the program. In fact, it's kind of a strange set of amendments if you take a look at them. Two of the Republican amendments—Hanna and Quigley—are actually about enshrining a bunch of conservatives' complaints about HAMP in the text of the bill. They're literally just a list of things they don't like about the way it worked and how much it cost. Now, normally, those are things you'd just discuss in the debate about the bill. But in this case, they're actually trying to add them in as amendments, too. Which is kind of weird.

With just an hour of debate allowed for the bill, and ten minutes for each of the amendments, it actually looks more like Rules Committee Republicans decided to set this nonsense up so that a rule that would otherwise be categorized as "closed"—that is, permitting no amendments—as instead being "structured," meaning that amendments are allowed, but only pre-cleared ones. But they didn't really want any substantive amendments offered, so they've limited things to 10 minute debates on amendments that will codify the Republican list of complaints about HAMP. And as if in answer, most of the Democratic amendments seek to list, or have someone else list, HAMP's good points. The more substantive amendments offered—ones that actually aimed to improve the program for those still remaining in the system—were simply excluded from consideration.

On the Senate side, not much is expected to happen. Again. But at least it's arguably a jobs bill that they're working on, even if things have slowed to a crawl, as they usually do.

Seriously. There's really nothing else to say about what's going on in the Senate. An hour of morning business, an hour and a half on the small business jobs bill, then lunch. And a note that they'll call you if anyone thinks there's any chance you might have to vote on something.

Committee activity will be in high gear today. Check out the schedule below the fold, and remember that you can watch just about any committee out there, right from your own computer, with the Main Street Insider Committee Dashboard.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/ioM0TExQMZc/-Today-in-Congress

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