This Week in Congress: veto-bait appropriations, a filibuster of Paycheck Fairness & Daily Kos Radio

Recapping Last Week in Congress

The House put in a short work week last week, coming back from the Memorial Day weekend on Wednesday. And though they passed an intelligence authorization bill, a military construction and veterans' affairs appropriations bill, and started work on an energy and water development appropriations bill, what attention they got last week came from the failed attempt to pass the nonsensical PRE(TE)NDA Act under suspension of the rules. So the failed bill got all the eyeballs, and the appropriations bills are all under veto threat. What a productive week!

Speaking of productive weeks, the Senate was in recess last week.

This Week in Congress

There's not much different on tap this week in the House. Another bunch of suspension bills to start things off on Tuesday, though nothing as obviously exciting as the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass and also Superman and Batman and then Superman, again Act. And the follow up is more work on more appropriations bills (including the conclusion of the energy and water development bill from last week) that are still likely veto targets, plus the all-too-tantalizingly named Protect Medical Innovation Act. Woo! See if you can guess how they're going to protect medical innovation! No, seriously, go ahead, take a.... Oh, you're guessing a tax cut? Damn it, did someone tell you? Come on!

The Senate schedule for the week so far consists of continued deliberation of the motion to proceed to the Paycheck Fairness Act, a confirmation vote on the judicial nomination of Timothy S. Hillman to the District of Massachusetts, and then on Tuesday, a cloture vote on that Paycheck Fairness motion to proceed. That's not expected to go anywhere, though, and the word is that after that, it might be on to a farm bill.

Now, on to a bit of housekeeping of our own for just a moment. It's time this week for Netroots Nation, and that also means it's time for the launch of Daily Kos Radio, for which we owe a great debt to the help of our fellow Kossacks who are the force behind our very own Netroots Radio group, where they've already been putting out a fantastic stream of online radio programming for over a year now. Be sure to check out their offerings, because not only do they speak your language, but it's an opportunity for you to join in the fun, and do some of that speaking yourself, too.

Anyhow, the point here is that the availability of the Daily Kos Radio outlet means we'll be rethinking and reconfiguring how we deliver you the news and commentary that have been a part of Today in Congress for the past couple of years. The radio format, I hope, will make it even easier to give additional insight, discussion and nuance on what's happening in Congress that the blog format can sometimes constrain (as hard as that might be to believe). But it'll likely also mean that the blog format for Today in Congress will be curtailed and phased out, replaced with a reminder to tune in at 9:00 Eastern (or download podcasts later, if you choose) for that info and more. We'll be playing it by ear for a while, and working out the details of how the future of this particular feature will look, but for right now, I'll just say the prospects are pretty exciting on this end.

So thanks for sitting through all this, everyone! Here's hoping that radio gives us some more room to have fun with what can be (we all have to admit) some dry, sometimes impenetrable, and often frustrating material that it just so happens we can't afford to ignore.

And yes, you'll find your full floor schedules below the fold.