Not a great deal of action in the Congress last week, aside from the President's address. Things happened, but it wasn't exactly a speeding freight train loaded down with substantive legislation or anything.
The House did manage to make it all the way through one piece of substantive legislation at all last week, but only one: H.R. 1892, the FY12 Intelligence authorization bill, which had only two amendments offered, and was wrapped up in just a few short hours of work on Friday morning. Earlier in the week, the House did take up H.R. 2218, the "Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act," and complete action on several amendments to it, but votes on two amendments and final passage were postponed until this week.
The Senate, too, was limited to the passage of a single bill last week, but that's actually a pretty brisk pace for them. These days, it often takes weeks to get through a single bill. This week's product was H.R. 1249, the "America Invents Act," a/k/a the patent reform bill. None of the offered amendments passed, so with the bill's passage in the Senate, the bill should shortly be on its way to the President.
That was it for substantive legislation, but there was also a judicial confirmation early in the week, that of Bernice Bouie Donald to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The House schedule this week is, as you might expect, pretty much the same old, same old. They'll be returning to the suspiciously-named "Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act," taking up the equally suspicious soundng "Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act," revisiting FAA authorization yet again, and considering a resolution of disapproval of the President's exercise of his debt deal authority to raise the debt ceiling (even though the Senate defeated the motion to proceed to its version of the resolution last week). Seems like we're spinning our wheels here.
The Senate, of course, is always a bit of a mystery. But we know what's got to happen in the pretty near future. The fiscal year is coming to an end, and we'll need to have appropriations in place. "Some in Washington," if not necessarily anyone in the Congress, will expect to see action on the President's jobs proposals of last week. And yet, we find ourselves caught up in a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to consideration of a bill to... renew sanctions against the repressive regime in Burma. Really? We have to have a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to this? I can't see how it bodes well for moving the larger agenda items that can have a real impact, if we're bogged down by the smaller ones (and in fact, by everything) that are relatively incidental. These guys will filibuster anything.
Full floor and committee schedules are below the fold.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/W6CqdyhKMzQ/-This-Week-in-Congress
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