arberagl01: Today in Congress

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Today in Congress

Recapping yesterday's action:

Can you feel the excitement, people? Yesterday, the Senate agreed to go forward with S. 782, the Economic Development Revitalization Act! So by unanimous consent, the cloture motion on the motion to proceed to S. 782 was withdrawn!

Whoopee!

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yesssssssss! Woohooooooo! Baby!

So then they did proceed to the consideration of S. 782! Frickin' awesome!

And then the day ended.

Looking ahead to today:

Today at 2pm, Senator Durbin will withdraw his amendment to the Tester amendment. Did you hear that? I mean, come on! And get this: after he withdraws that amendment, they'll vote on the Tester amendment!

For serious!

What's the Tester amendment? Oh, well, it delays the implementation of some new rules that were adopted as part of the financial regulatory reform bill (Dodd-Franks) last year that would impose limits on the "swipe fees" that credit card companies and banks can charge retailers for accepting and processing credit and debit card payments from customers.

That's not good.

But, like everything else the Senate does?and Senators are, tragically, now quite used to this being the case, simply because it keeps happening?this amendment will require 60 votes to pass.

We'll see how it goes. And quite possibly, won't see much of anything else happen.

You'd never know there was no budget in place, or that the debt ceiling was looming. Not from the fact that half the Congress has been on recess for three out of the last four weeks, anyway. Though you can put that one mostly on the House, out for another week of recess on the back end of the Senate's traditional Memorial Day recess, after having been off just two weeks before.

Whatever!

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.