Today in Congress: Transportation/HUD approps in the House, time-wasting in the Senate

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House was in pro forma session yesterday.

The Senate was in regular-a session. That's not a word, though. I'm just kidding. Their unanimous consent to adopt the motion to proceed to the flood insurance bill went off without a hitch, and they even voted without incident to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the House message on the FDA user fee bill. So although the day was pretty much burnt on procedural motions, it was a Monday, and that's not all that unusual for the Senate.

Looking ahead to today:

The House returns to a full plate this week, but this being its first work day of the week, much of it is given over to the usual batch of non-controversial suspension bills. Also tacked on to the back end of today's agenda are two postponed votes on two more motions to instruct conferees on the surface transportation bill. They might perhaps squeeze those votes in at the end of the day, or they might move them up right behind the suspensions, before moving on to the substantive work for the day: the Transportation/HUD appropriations bill, for which they'll likely handle only passage of a rule and general debate, beginning the amendment process tomorrow.

As nice as it was to see the Senate make procedural progress yesterday, the fact remains that they'll waste the bulk of today on the same crap, insisting on running the post-cloture clock on the motion to proceed to the FDA bill. After a brief pause to consider the nomination of Robin S. Rosenbaum to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, and then a break for the party caucus luncheons, the Senate will return to burn another 6+ post-cloture hours on the motion to proceed. Awesome.

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

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