Today in Congress: do-nothing Congress does record amounts of nothing on transportation

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House kicked the day off with a steaming hot cup of hypocrisy, using the procedure they used to decry as traitorous and unconstitutional'the "Demon Pass," a childish play on "deem and pass"'to pretend the Senate has agreed to the ridiculous Ryan budget. What they did was stick a provision in the rule for yesterday's "Sportsmen's Heritage Act" that said:

Pending the adoption of a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2013, the provisions of House Concurrent Resolution 112, as adopted by the House, shall have force and effect in the House as though Congress has adopted such concurrent resolution

In other words, the House would vote to say that even though the Senate didn't and never will pass the Ryan budget (House Concurrent Resolution 112), the House intends to pretend it did. See, among other things, it's against the rules for the House to consider appropriations bills later this year unless there's a real budget in place. House Republicans could always waive that when the time comes, but they make that and a few other budget and appropriations operations easier on themselves by voting now to simply pretend a budget is in place later on. That's the problem with these institutions that make their own rules. They can always waive them when they become inconvenient. Can't really be avoided.

Anyway, that's all done now. They've deemed the budget passed, and made it legal to import polar bear parts from Canada. That's quite a day.

The Senate had its cloture vote of the day, this time agreeing to limit debate on the motion to proceed to Joe Lieberman's turd of a postal reform bill, and then agreeing unanimously to yield back post-cloture time, agree to the motion, and move right to consideration of the bill. But failing to get an agreement to stick only to germane amendments (Rand Paul was having none of that nonsense), Majority Leader Harry Reid quickly "filled the amendment tree" to block unwanted amendments, and filed for cloture on a committee substitute amendment, and the bill itself.

While waiting for the cloture motion to ripen for a vote on Thursday, the Senate then moved to the motion to proceed to the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act. No doubt they'll end up having to file cloture on that motion as well. But it's a way to pass the time until Thursday.

Looking ahead to today:

Today, the House takes up what I believe is the ninth emergency band-aid transportation authorization extension bill of the 112th Congress. At this point, nearly 10% of the entire public law output of the 112th is made up of transportation extensions, even though transportation authorization is usually a relatively easy, bipartisan affair. This time, however, Republicans are killing themselves internally, with Tea Party types battling old line Republicans over vague, ill-defined notions about what constitutes wasteful spending and the like. Unable to resolve the issues, they haven't found a way to put a permanent renewal on the table that they can patch together a working coalition to pass. But hey, if you thought that was a sign of incompetence and a do-nothing Congress, keep in mind that over 15% of the public law output has actually been post office and federal building naming legislation. Together, those two things by themselves constitute a quarter of their entire output.

Don't worry, though. That's not all the House has planned for the day. They're also going to vote on the Mark Twain commemorative coin.

The Senate will pass the day in debate over the motion to proceed to the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, while the clock ticks down on the ripening of the cloture motion on the postal reform bill.

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