Today in Congress: House kicks off short week after recess with yet another abortion bill

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House was not in session yesterday. As you know, many of us little people enjoyed a three-day holiday weekend, and were off from work on Monday. Congress, which is better than you, took a four-day weekend, and took off on Tuesday as well. Oh, and they were also in recess last week. Forgot about that.

The Senate is not in working session week, but held a pro forma session yesterday.

Looking ahead to today:

So yes, the House was not in session yesterday, but because today is the first work day of the week, it's regarded as a travel day for most Members. That means legislative work begins at 2 p.m., and any necessary votes will be delayed until 6:30 p.m, to give Members a chance to get back into town. How do you like that? The workweek begins on Wednesday afternoon and ends on Friday. That must be all that "run government like a business" stuff we're always hearing about.

Anyway, when they do get down to business today, it'll be to handle a slate of 12 suspension bills, most of which are usually non-controversial. Bills considered under suspension of the rules require a 2/3 vote to pass. That's why the procedure is typically used for non-controversial measures. But that's in a normal Congress. In Bizarro Congress, the week begins with a highly controversial bill, the pretentiously-named "Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act," which people have taken to calling simply the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, or PRENDA. Apparently there's only so much bullshit people will put up with, and the ridiculous historical name-dropping is either too annoying, or just too time-consuming to recite every time.

Either way, this bill is a stupid and unnecessary stunt, right down (probably) to scheduling it for consideration under suspension of the rules. As you might have guessed from the high drama in the naming department, and the (Republican) use of the word prenatal, this is an anti-abortion bill. Republicans don't introduce legislation about prenatal anything, if it's meant to deal with routine pregnancies of women who are happily trying to carry babies to full term. They don't care about that prenatal stuff. For Republicans, prenatal is only an abortion-related code word. So the fact that it deals with abortion pretty much guarantees controversy, and that means the chances of it actually passing under suspension of the rules is greatly diminished. And that may very well be the plan. That is, Republicans may think they get the best mileage out of this bill by selling it as compelling and necessary, and then setting it up to fall short, for which they can then blame Democrats. Indeed, if the bill does fail today, it will have been Democrats who prevented it from passing, but only because it will have been Republicans who opted not to use their ability to schedule the bill for consideration under regular order, where it could pass without needing any Democratic support. And they'll likely resort to that later, if the bill doesn't pass today. Why not? If they believe they'll benefit politically by putting Democrats on the record in opposition to this once, surely it can only be better to do it twice.

So what exactly is this bill? Well, it's easiest for me to stick to the procedural issues, and point you to others who know better about the substance. So for this one, I'll point you to a couple articles from RH Reality Check. First, this one, about the non-existent rationale for the bill. And second, this one, about the James O'Keefe-inspired attempt to create a rationale for it, anyway. By some truly amazing coincidence, the creators of these secret video hoaxes have chosen this week to release their latest hit piece, and it just happens to be all about the subject of this legislation, which they totally swear is 100% real and stuff.

That's the big news of the day. There are a few other items that might also raise eyebrows, like the House's insistence on passing a different legislative vehicle for its version of the FDA bill, in order to create a little extra delay and confusion before going to conference. But that's not likely to cause as much of an uproar as this Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass nonsense.

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