Today in Washington D. C. - Feb 5, 2008

On The Floor: The Senate reconvened at 10 AM today and began an hour of morning business. Senate will resume post-cloture consideration of the motion to proceed to the economic stimulus bill (H.R. 5140). Yesterday, the Senate voted to take up the House-passed economic stimulus package. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid abruptly changed the amendments Democrats were offering to the bill before Republicans had a chance to read them. Republicans demanded time to study the new proposals, and Reid delayed votes on the package until Wednesday to wait for Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to fly back from the campaign trail.

After getting the Senate to vote to move from the FISA bill (S. 2248) to the stimulus bill, Reid said last night that he may try to reach an agreement to move back to the FISA bill today. hile Democrats prepare political votes and extra spending proposals, the FISA reform bill remains unfinished and the latest FISA extension will expire on February 15th. This extension was supposed to give Congress plenty of time to finish the bill, and yet again Congress is looking at the FISA extension expiring at the end of next week.

From Senate & News Sources: As the Senate began its business this morning, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell lamented the Senate’s delay in completing its work on the economic stimulus package because of Senate Democrats’ eagerness to play politics:

When it got right down to it, Senate Democrats couldn’t do what House Democrats had done. They couldn’t resist — just once — a chance to play politics. If Americans are wondering why their checks aren’t in the mail, they can find it in last week’s news clips. Of particular interest is an AP story entitled ‘Politics Creeps into Stimulus Package.’ Democrats are holding onto the stimulus bill, the article said, not to speed up the rebate checks, but to try to make Republicans look bad in November. We could have disposed of this stimulus package a week ago. But our Democratic colleagues wanted, as they said, to put their ‘stamp’ on it.

Putting a Democrat stamp on the stimulus bill apparently involves adding billions in extra spending to the bipartisan House package. According to The New York Times, “The Senate plan would cost about $204 billion over two years, $40 billion more than the House plan.”

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