Is the Senate's race to the recess catching up with them? The upper chamber still has the housing bill (H.R. 3221) to finish up, in addition to FISA and the Iraq supplemental/GI Bill/unemployment extension.
Here's Harry Reid, on the floor earlier tonight, describing the problem and its consequences:
I know of only one holdup on our being able to complete the housing legislation. If we can't get that Senator to sign off on this, then we only have one alternative and that is we'll file cloture tomorrow on another arm of this housing legislation. We will have cloture on that two legislative days later and then we still have one more to do. Now, that would mean we would have to be here over the weekend. Now, that was not anticipated we would do that. In the meantime, having done that, we are not going to be able to -- it will hold up our being able to do FISA. We wanted to do a consent agreement on that tonight. That was -- I was told that would not be possible.
Now, Mr. President, on that, there are people who don't like the FISA legislation. Now, I recognize that the majority of the Senate does. But some people don't like it. But in spite of that, I have found the two people that speak out mostly against that -- and there are others -- but Senator Feingold and Senator Dodd have been very -- Senator Feingold and Senator Dodd have been very diligent in their opposition to the legislation. But, of course, they understand the Senate very well. They understand the Senate very well.
[...]
And so what we would like to do is have a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to that. Well, we can't do that unless it's by consent. So, therefore, we're going to have to do cloture on the motion to proceed to FISA at some later time. And then that only allows us to proceed to the bill. And then we still have to do cloture on the bill.
Now, Mr. President, FISA is a product of the administration. It's passed the House and that's fine. But we're not going to stop people from going home for the 4th of July recess over FISA. If people don't want to do it, then we're not going to do it. It's not because we're holding it up over here, is what I'm saying. It's being held up by the minority. Now, we're going to -- we're going to proceed and we're going to stay here and finish this housing bill. Mr. President, the Case-Schiller home price index registered the largest decline in home prices in that index's history. That's more than 40 years. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. So we're going to finish the housing bill. It may knock a few people out of parades on July 4th, or whatever -- however long it takes us to do this.
Now, the other product we have that we want to finish before we go home is the supplemental appropriation bill. Again, Mr. President, there's been a delicately crafted piece of legislation that has come from the House on this. They've worked very hard to get the House leadership to approve that, Democratic and Republican, the President of the United States has signed off on this.
Is it everything that I want? Is it everything we want over here? The answer is no. But I think, Mr. President, it's something that will pass with a very large margin over here. But we can't get to it unless people allow us to get to it. And so that, too, would have to wait until we get back after the July 4th recess. I think that would be a shame. We've been [told] that the Pentagon can pay the bills until about the middle of February. Then they're out of money. Now, that -- the President -- I want the President, all of his people to hear what I'm saying. We are not holding up the supplemental. We, the Democrats, are not holding it up. We, the Democrats, are not holding up FISA.
It was an odd choice to schedule FISA for consideration before the supplemental. Nobody wants to go home for July 4th parades without passing the GI Bill, and a fair number of Senators feel the same way about the housing bill, the war funding and/or the unemployment benefits extenstion. Putting FISA -- a contentious bill that was sure to produce extended debate -- before the supplemental virtually guaranteed either a delayed adjournment or serious discomfort among the membership.
What an... interesting decision that was. Let's see how that plays out tomorrow, when debate resumes on the housing bill, and the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the FISA bill coming due in the afternoon.
Just like in December, the FISA bill suddenly faces long odds for passage before recess grants yet another (short) reprieve.