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Category: On the Hill

Welcome Back Congress!

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Members of Congress return to Washington, DC today after a two-week recess period. Today marks a nine-week work period where at least one chamber will be in session. But the House will recess again in two weeks, the Senate will take off all of Memorial Day week, and the House will take another recess the first week in June. Then both chambers will recess for the week of Fourth of July. After that, there are just four weeks until the five-week August recess, which stretching through the first week in September. That break will be followed by maybe as few as a dozen working days before early October when the House leadership has promised members they can go home to campaign full time for the mid-term elections. The Senate is likely to follow suit.

That’s not much time for genuine legislating, especially given that both parties plan to spend much of the time using the Capitol as a sound stage for their political messaging.

This week, the House is expected to begin considering the first two FY2015 appropriations bills of the season: Military Construction-VA and Legislative Branch. The Commerce-Science-Justice measure will be next in the queue, with the House Appropriations subcommittee taking it up Wednesday. Senate appropriators are moving more slowly on their bills but we expect to see a lot of action on appropriations measures between now and the August recess period.

Senate Passes House Bill to Raise Debt Ceiling

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With an impending snow storm as a powerful motivator, the Senate passed the House’s bill to suspend the debt ceiling until March 15, 2015 by a vote of 55-42.

Earlier this week, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas vowed to filibuster the measure since the House Republicans “caved to President Obama” and were unable extract to any spending cuts or other concessions to pass the bill. Such a filibuster could have caused a repeat of last Fall’s government shutdown.

However, much of the Senate’s inclination to stand tough went by the wayside as 5 plus inches of snow have been forecasted for the DC region. Both chambers of Congress have been eager to get out of town this afternoon given the storm hitting the eastern seaboard and the amount of snow that’s expected to fall in the Washington area.

The Senate voted 67-31 to end a debate on the legislation or end any filibuster threatened by Senator Cruz. The vote took nearly an hour, but cleared the way to a vote on final passage with a simple majority threshold. A dozen Republicans voted with Democrats to end the filibuster after the Senate Republican Leadership McConnell and Cornyn led the way. Republicans joining Democrats included, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Mark Kirk of Illinois, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Thune of South Dakota.

Both Washington Senators Murray and Cantwell voted to end the debate and voted for the suspension of the debt ceiling.

House Passes Clean Bill to Raise Debt Ceiling

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With a vote of 221-201 , the House voted to suspend the debt limit for one year without requiring any offsets. Earlier this week, the House had floated the idea of adding military COLA pay to the measure, but ultimately that proposal and other additions were squashed.

The measure narrowly passed and only passed with the help of Democrats. Only 28 Republicans voted for it, while 199 voted no.

The Senate is expected to vote to approve the measure later this week before they recess to avoid DC’s impending snow storm.

Senate HELP Committee Approves Cordova for NSF

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The Senate HELP Committee met in an Executive Session today and approved several Presidential nominations including Dr. Frances Cordova to be the Director of NSF.

The HELP Committee approved Dr. Cordova’s nomination last year (December 18, 2013).  With a new year, the Committee must approve her nomination once again.  From here, Dr. Cordova’s nomination will need to be approved by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and the whole Senate as well.

 

SOTU Tonight

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Tonight President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at 9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT. He is expected to talk about a package of largely recycled proposals that would, among other things, raise the minimum wage, overhaul immigration laws, and authorize new infrastructure spending. He’ll also use the State of the Union to serve notice he’s ready to use executive orders and the bully pulpit to revive his second term and end run Congress on such issues as environmental regulations. There will be sharp focus on the middle class, the economy, and income inequality, and another chance to sell the public on the merits of the health care overhaul. And Obama is certain to highlight issues related to college costs and access that may or may not be viable with Congress.

Washington state’s own Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers will provide the GOP response to the President’s SOTU. We are hoping that she doesn’t fall victim to the State of the Union Curse that has plagued so many before her.