I’ve upgraded the software powering the site to WordPress 3.1. This mostly impacts things on the administration side, but I’m sure you’re all glad to see that I’m up-to-date and everything. I’m still planning on making the sidebar less annoying so that it doesn’t cover tables, but that’s going to wait until I have enough time to play with the site templates and CSS.
(1144 delegates needed to nominate)
| Gingrich | Huntsman | Paul | Romney | Santorum | Unallocated | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selected | 29 | 2 | 8 | 73 | 3 | 2039 |
| Automatic | 3 | 1 | 22 | 1 | 105 | |
| Total | 32 | 2 | 9 | 95 | 4 | 2144 |
28 February 2011
27 February 2011
S. 23, the Patent Reform bill
With the threat of government shutdown looming (although Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad does find the House’s short-term continuing resolution acceptable), you’d expect to see the Senate turning towards an appropriations bill. You’d be wrong.
Ordered, That upon the conclusion of Morning Business on Monday, February 28, 2011, the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. 23, a bill to amend title 35, United States Code, to provide for patent reform.
Yup, patent reform. The bill in question doesn’t look to be that controversial, as it was reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 15-0 vote. The Congressional Research Service provides the usual summary of what it would do, and Intellectual Property Law Blog has more details. The main features:
- Switches to a first-inventor-to-file system from a first-to-invent system
- Creates more opportunities to submit prior art and creates a review period following a patent grant
- Increases certainty in damage awards
Also on Monday, we get a couple more judicial nominations, this time in the Northern District of Georgia. All in all, a quiet start to the week on the northern side of the Capitol.
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25 February 2011
Even More Continuing Appropriations
Last week, the House passed a bill that funds the government for the rest of the fiscal year without a single Democratic vote. Which tells you that there’s no way that said bill is going to pass the Senate, let alone get signed into law by President Obama, without some pretty major changes. Since nobody expects the House and Senate to agree on spending priorities in the next week, there’s going to have to be another continuing resolution to give Congress another two weeks to negotiate. Usually, a short-term continuing resolution will just continue current spending levels, because avoiding a government shutdown is seen as more important than a fight over spending priorities that will be effective for two whole weeks.
Well, the resolution that the House will consider this week doesn’t do that. Instead, the House will make about $4 billion in cuts to various programs. (We’ll see how well this goes over with Democrats—I haven’t seen any responses yet.) This resolution is scheduled to pass the House on Tuesday, and it needs to get signed into law in some form by Friday at midnight to prevent a government shutdown. We’ll see what happens….
14 February 2011
H.R. 1, the FY2011 Consolidated Appropriations Bill
It’s Budget Day today, and the big story is President Obama’s FY2012 budget. Yet before we talk about FY2012, there’s still the little matter of funding the federal government for the current fiscal year. The resolution that’s currently keeping the government running expires on 4 March, when the timer in the upper right ticks down to zero.
The first bid on spending levels for the rest of the fiscal year belongs to the Republican House, which is bringing H.R. 1 to the floor on Tuesday. It’s not exactly the most clearly-written bill that I’ve ever seen, and it’s only been available since Friday night. Since I’ve been sick this weekend, I’m going to be lazy and describe the bill using secondary sources.
The House Appropriations Committee’s press release claims the following changes from FY2010 spending levels:
| Agriculture | -$5.2 billion | -22% |
|---|---|---|
| Commerce / Justice / Science | -$11.6 billion | -18% |
| Defense | +$8.1 billion | +2% |
| Energy & Water | -$3.6 billion | -11% |
| Financial Services | -$3.8 billion | -16% |
| Homeland Security | -$1.1 billion | -3% |
| Interior & Environment | -$4.4 billion | -14% |
| Labor / HHS / Education | -$17.5 billion | -11% |
| Legislative Branch | -$0.2 billion | -4% |
| Military / Veterans | -$2.6 billion | -3% |
| State / Foreign Operations | -$3.8 billion | -8% |
| Transportation / HUD | -$15.5 billion | -23% |
(The Appropriations Committee has provided a more detailed table.)
In total, this comes to a cool $61.2 billion in spending cuts, mostly to programs that Democrats like. Paul Krugman has some highlights:
WIC is nutritional aid for pregnant women and women with young children; let’s cut that, because the damage to the nation from malnourishment is a problem for future politicians. NOAA is weather and climate — hey, what we don’t know can’t hurt us. Nuclear nonproliferation — well, we probably won’t feel the pain of a terrorist nuke assembled from old Soviet fissile material for a couple of years. FEMA — well, how often do hurricanes hit New Orleans? CDC — with luck, by the time plague hits someone else can be blamed.
Other provisions include removing funds for AmeriCorps and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, revoking all earmarks, and rescinding any unspent stimulus funds.
It’s worth repeating that most of the long-term deficit is caused by health care spending. So while this proposal may reduce the short-term deficit, in the long run it’s likely to have little effect. Of course, given that this bill still has to make it through the Senate and then get signed by the President, hopefully some of the more drastic cuts will be reversed. Think of the version that passes the House this week as a lower bound for FY2011 spending.
The House will be considering H.R. 1 under a modified open rule; after the usual hour of general debate, any amendment pre-printed in the Congressional Record by Wednesday morning may be considered under the five-minute rule. There is also a provision providing for same-day consideration of a further rule—presumably this is to force a final vote by Thursday afternoon.
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13 February 2011
A Routine Monday
Congress tomorrow isn’t particularly exciting. The Senate will clear two more judicial nominations (James Graves for the Fifth Circuit and Edward Davila for the Northern District of California), and looks to get back to work on the amendments pending to the FAA reauthorization bill.
The real excitement is on the House side of the Capitol this week. Tomorrow, the House looks to finish up the USA PATRIOT Act extension that I mentioned last week. Unfortunately, the bill has a large enough majority that it’s hard to see it failing to pass. For the rest of the week, it’s time for spending cuts as the House takes up continuing appropriations for the remainder of the fiscal year. More on that tomorrow.
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12 February 2011
Minimizing Population Variance: A Possible Iowa Map
(Also posted at Bleeding Heartland.)
In Iowa, Congressional districts are drawn by a non-partisan commission that keeps each county in one Congressional seat while seeking to maximize compactness and minimize population differences between the districts. Well, ounty-level population numbers from the 2010 Census came out a couple days ago, and I’ve been trying to draw a map aimed at getting the population of each district as close to the ideal of 761,589 as possible while still retaining some degree of compactness. (Obviously, more compact districts could be drawn if one is willing to have a greater degree of variance in population.) Here’s the best I’ve done so far:
I drew this map by starting each district in a corner of the state and swapping around counties until the populations were roughly even. The largest district (IA-2) is 100.03% of the smallest district (IA-1) in population.
District 1 (Blue)
Population: 761,512
2008 Presidential Vote: Obama 57.5%, McCain 41.3%
Incumbents: Braley (D), Latham (R)
The First District stretches all the way from Ames to Davenport, taking in Dubuque and Waterloo on the way. It includes both Braley and Latham’s homes, which is an incumbent-vs-incumbent matchup I haven’t heard much talk about.
District 2 (Green)
Population: 761,748
2008 Presidential Vote: Obama 57.7%, McCain 41.0%
Incumbent: Loebsack (D)
The Second District keeps Cedar Rapids and Iowa City together, and then sweeps south to include Burlington, Ottumwa, and most of the southernmost row of Iowa counties. It’s pretty clearly an updated version of Loebsack’s district, and is the most Democratic in the state.
District 3 (Purple)
Population: 761,555
2008 Presidential Vote: Obama 53.4%, McCain 45.3%
Incumbent: Boswell (D)
The Third District is based in Des Moines, but reaches north to take in Fort Dodge and includes a number of rural counties to the south. The obvious incumbent is Boswell, although the PVI of EVEN will encourage a strong Republican challenger.
District 4 (Red)
Population: 761,540
2008 Presidential Vote: Obama 47.9%, McCain 51.0%
Incumbent: King (R)
Easily the most Republican district in the state, the Fourth District includes most of northern and western Iowa, from Council Bluffs to Sioux City to Mason City. I’d expect King to hold this seat.
9 February 2011
USA PATRIOT Redux
Well, that was fast. The House Rules Committee today reported out a rule providing for consideration of the USA PATRIOT Act Extension Bill with an hour of debate. No amendments will be in order except for the usual motion to recommit. The floor schedule for tomorrow doesn’t say that the bill itself will actually be considered tomorrow, so I guess that the final vote will happen Friday.
Of course, given that the Republican leadership lost another suspension vote today, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the fail by our new House overlords. Especially in light of this:
The House received a communication from Representative Lee (NY) wherein he resigns as a member of the House of Representatives effective at 5:00 p.m. on February 9, 2011.
That was apparently prompted by this little sex scandal that broke a few hours earlier, although it doesn’t seem worth resigning over—maybe we’ll find out that Chris Lee did something a little worse than just Craigslisting. More on the resultant special election when I have time to actually react to the vacancy, but I’ll rate it “GOP Hold Favored” for now.
H. Res. 72, the Bloviation Resolution
In case anybody was wondering about that resolution “directing certain standing committees to inventory and review existing, pending, and proposed regulations and orders from agencies of the Federal Government, particularly with respect to their effect on jobs and economic growth” I mentioned on Monday, it’s now been officially scheduled for a good nine and a half hours of debate. Oh, and no amendments are in order. Wouldn’t it be better to just adjourn for two days so that the committees in question can actually hold hearings instead of just talking about holding the hearings?
(If you’re keeping score, the committees involved are Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Judiciary, Natural Resources, Oversight and Government Reform, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Ways and Means, which each get to control an hour of this yack fest; the Education and Labor and Small Business Committees get to split an hour.)
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8 February 2011
PATRIOT Act FAIL
Today, the House considered a bill to extend three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act until 8 December. The bill was considered under the “suspension of the rules” procedure, meaning a 2/3 vote was required for passage. Since, as happened, I expected a number of Democrats to vote for it, I was ready to write a post blasting “Tea Party” Republicans for being hypocrites about government intrusion.
But as it turns out, not all of them are hypocrites. (At least not on this issue.) 26 Republicans joined with 122 Democrats to bring down the extension, 277-148. While this probably doesn’t kill the extension completely, it does mean that Republican leaders will probably have to allow a full House debate on it. (Which means a guaranteed Democratic amendment—yay motion to recommit.) Or it means that they’ll twist a few arms to get their supermajority. We’ll see.
I’m also highly amused by the failure of the Republican whip team on this bill. I wasn’t expecting a bill like this to come to the floor without the votes it needed to pass. (And judging by the length of time the vote was held open, the failure was not intentional.) Republican whips: learn to count votes better! Alternatively, don’t—it it will make the next two years much funnier.
Full list of Republican “no” votes over the fold:
(more…)
7 February 2011
The House of No
Dave Weigel has a good piece up at Slate about how the Republicans are governing by basically sitting around and not doing anything:
The answer: They are taking an approach to legislating completely antithetical to what President Obama proposed in his State of the Union speech. They don’t want Congress to “do big things.” Government, in general, should not do big things.
This week’s House schedule provides an excellent example of this do-nothing approach. There are four non-controversial bills up on Tuesday and Wednesday: another USA PATRIOT Act extension (through 8 December), a trade extension bill, a bill to return money overpaid to the UN, and finally, a bill to name an under-construction Arizona courthouse after John Roll, the judge murdered in last month’s Tucson shootings. (I will note that only the first and last of these bills are actually available to the public.) Then all of Thursday and Friday are set aside for consideration of the incredibly exciting H. Res. __, “a resolution directing certain standing committees to inventory and review existing, pending, and proposed regulations and orders from agencies of the Federal Government, particularly with respect to their effect on jobs and economic growth.” Substantively, this is an utter waste of time. I really don’t think the chairmen of various House committees need to be formally instructed to hold oversight hearings. They’re going to do that on their own.
So on the floor of the House this week, I expect two days full of Republicans complaining about how Big Government is the Great Evil. I don’t know what Democrats are going to be saying. It’s hard to really come up with a good opposition line to something this vapid. It’ll probably be far more interesting to watch the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 5, the Medical Liability bill, scheduled for 10 AM EST Wednesday. Or Tuesday afternoon’s Constitution Subcommittee hearing on H.R. 3, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act”, if you really feel like throwing up.
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