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This Week in Congress

The House begins their work week today at noon, with votes scheduled for later this evening.  In addition to several bills related to veterans , the House will begin debate on the Panama, South Korea, and Colombia free trade agreements. 

Meanwhile, the Senate begins their work week later today (around 5:30pm).  The Senate is set to vote on a judicial confirmation, passage of the currency misalignment bill, and whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to a variation of President Obama’s jobs proposal.  The jobs plan will take up much of the remainder of the short week in the Senate.

The final act in the FY12 appropriations saga may involve moving annual spending balls in a few small packages, rather than assembling them into a massive omnibus bill funding all of federal government.  The Senate has signaled it’s tentative support for this plan, which the House is hoping to “sell” to their members who expected to see each of the 12 spending bills move independently.  The current continuing resolution (CR) runs through November 18th so both chambers will need to come to some resolution soon as to how they’ll move forward.  The one thing they all seem to agree on:  finish work on FY12 BEFORE the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee makes their recommendations on or before November 23rd.