Today in Congress: Senate Republicans jump out of the way of the FDA bill. But first... lunch!

Recapping yesterday's action:

The Senate is the only game in town this week, and it was a relatively productive Monday. Senators reached an agreement for proceeding to the FDA bill, allowing them to vitiate the cloture motion. They were also able to get through the approval of the nomination of Paul J. Watford to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals without needing the cloture vote they were preparing for. And they were even able to clear the Iran sanctions bill that Republicans had objected to moving last week. Probably a wise move by Republicans to jump out of the way of these things following Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) expressions of frustration with their obstructionism that led to a renewed bump in filibuster reform talk. Maybe they're hoping it'll cool passions, or at least appear to remove some of the justification Democrats might have leaned on if they decided to make a move on rules changes, though no one anticipates any such moves in the immediate future.

Looking ahead to today:

Despite the progress, it's a little too early to conclude that the Senate is ready to operate under "normal" conditions, whatever those might be. Although there was an agreement struck to avoid a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the FDA bill, they're not there yet. It seems nothing works intuitively in the Senate, and this agreement is no exception. There won't be a vote on the motion to proceed at all. The agreement is that it'll be considered adopted, but not until 2:15 p.m. today, after spending the morning on additional debate of the motion to proceed. So yes, they're going to "debate" the question of whether or not to begin debate on the FDA bill, even though there's already an agreement in place to say they've agreed to move on to that... at 2:15.

Whatever.

The reality is that they'll use the time to debate the bill itself. They almost never use debate time on motions to proceed to actually discuss whether or not they should proceed, and this is no exception. Today, they'll just basically be killing time until after the Tuesday party luncheons. That's why they're waiting until 2:15. There's nothing magical or even mildly interesting about that time of day. It's just when they're supposed to be done with lunch.

So that's "Today in Congress." The Senate will "debate" something they've already decided, until they're done with lunch. Then they'll "debate" the bill they were "debating" starting "debate" on before lunch, even though everyone already knew they were going to "debate" the bill after lunch.

Honestly, I don't know why I do this sometimes.

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