Today in Washington D. C. - Feb 28, 2008

On The Floor: In the Senate - Following morning business, the Senate resumes consideration of the motion to proceed to Sen. Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) bill asking for a report on a strategy to defeat al Qaeda and limit troop deployments (S. 2634). Yesterday the Senate voted to proceed with debate on the motion to proceed to the Feingold al Qaeda report bill. In the House: Democrats again blocked an attempt by Republicans to pass the Senate FISA modernization bill. House Democrats also voted against making permanent the child tax credit and the elimination of the marriage penalty. The House then passed a bill to raise taxes on oil & gas companies.

From Senate & News Sources: At a press conference this morning President Bush again called on the House Democrat leadership to vote on the Senate-passed FISA reform bill. Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Vice Chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees respectively, held their own press conference last night calling for House passage of the Senate bill.

Unfortunately, according to The Washington Post, the response from House Democrat leadership was another accusation of “fear mongering” by House Democrat Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL). CQ Today has noted that a group of 20 Blue Dog Democrats met with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer yesterday “and pressed for another vote [on FISA] before the spring recess, even if it means simply clearing the Senate-passed version of the bill — a course being pushed by the GOP.” Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD), one of the leaders of Blue Dogs, said, “We don’t want for inaction to become the controversy.”

Of course, it’s not just the inaction of the House that is the controversy. It is also the degradation of our intelligence capacity, which Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Vito Fossella (R-NY) warn about in an op-ed in The Washington Times: “Half of all the information we obtain on future attacks against our nation comes from electronic surveillance, according to National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who warned that failure to pass the Senate bill will degrade all intercepts by two-thirds. We can't expect intelligence officials to connect the dots when they have one arm tied behind their back collecting them.”

Reps. King and Fossella also announced that they have begun organizing a discharge petition for the Senate FISA bill, “which would require a vote on [the] bill once a majority of the House signs onto the effort.” Meanwhile, the Senate is continuing debate on Sen. Feingold’s resolutions concerning Iraq and al Qaeda. Democrats are not particularly interested in this debate at the moment. As The Washington Post notes, “Rather than hold a final vote on either measure, the Senate could just shift its attention to the housing legislation.”

According to Roll Call, “The housing bill has little in common with the $156 billion economic stimulus of tax rebates, but that hasn’t stopped Democrats from dubbing it their ‘second stimulus’ bill. It’s a branding approach that Democrats said will be a common sight this year.” It's hard, though, to see how a bill whose effect would be to raise interest rates on mortgages is supposed to stimulate the economy.

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