The Day On The Hill
Share1. Specter works on Patriot Act deal; tries to promise wavering Sens that he'll hold hearings early in the year on civil liberties.
2. First budget cutting bill since '97 passes the Senate. But Dem procedural motions bottle it up until at least the beginning of Feb b/c the House needs to re-approve it. That gives Dems a month to pound GOPers for allegedly cutting serves for kids and the elderly.
3. ANWR's out until at least the Senate passes its '07 budget resolution. Frist's vaccine liability provisions are still in the defense approps bill, though, and Dems will try to strip it out parliamentarily if it gets to the floor. More details after the jump.
4. Labor/HHS approps should pass the Senate tonight.
Here's what National Journal's CongressDaily has to say about the defense authroization bill:
"The Senate this afternoon will likely proceed to the defense authorization bill, which is not expected to encounter any significant opposition. A cloture motion on that bill is expected to be vitiated, so the bill will likely require only one up-or-down vote. After passing defense authorization, the Senate may return to the Defense appropriations legislation. Republican senators emerging from this afternoon's meeting said there is much opposition to a proposal to pass a resolution stripping the ANWR language out of the conference report. "It takes unanimous consent to go to that, and half the Conference will object," Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. Senate leaders are working to resolve the ANWR impasse, but a solution was unclear at presstime. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said with cloture blocked, there is no need for procedural motions Democrats had threatened to secure a ruling that the ANWR provisions were out of scope of conference, in violation of Senate rules. That would have been followed by a GOP motion to overturn the ruling of the chair under Senate Rule 28. "There's no need to appeal to the chair; I don't see that happening," Kerry said.
"That leaves a vote on the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, another vote where Republicans are still struggling to round up needed votes, to occur sometime this evening. Momentum also seemed to be building for a short-term extension of the USA PATRIOT Act, although at presstime the Senate Republican leadership had not backed off its position that the act will expire unless Democrats agree to changes to the law contained in a conference report. "I think it might have to be real simple: Extend it for a period of time we can all agree to. Three months, six months, whatever it is," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss."
And here's what CongressDaily reports about the liability provision:
"Senate Democrats opposed to shielding vaccine makers from lawsuits said today they will raise budget points of order against its inclusion in the FY06 Defense spending conference report. If the bill reaches the floor, Democrats say they will challenge the vaccine provisions, which Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called a "sweetheart deal for drug companies." The bill's outlook is uncertain because of a cloture vote today that was rejected. Senate Democrats complained that the vaccine language gives drug companies broad protections from lawsuits, beyond the narrow shield Democrats have supported to encourage drug makers to produce vaccines for the avian flu and potential pandemics. For example, the liability provisions kick in once the HHS secretary declares an epidemic. But that definition could encompass chronic diseases or even obesity, which HHS Secretary Leavitt has in the past called "epidemics," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. And Harkin suggested that the ban on judicial review of the HHS secretary's decision could be unconstitutional."
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