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| By A.F. Branco - Obama Has Your Back |
The Senate reconvened and resumed consideration of the farm bill, S. 3240. At 2:15, under a unanimous consent agreement, the Stabenow-Roberts substitute amendment will be agreed to as the text of the farm bill. The Senate will then begin considering 73 amendments to the bill that were agreed to be taken up. Each amendment will get two minutes of debate. Eight of the amendments will require 60 votes for approval, while all others will require a majority vote. When all amendments have been disposed of (via a roll call vote, voice vote, withdrawal, or adoption), the Senate will vote on passage of the bill, as amended. The bill will require 60 votes to pass.
On Wednesday, the Senate will consider the motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 37, the resolution of disapproval of the EPA’s expensive Utility-MACT regulation, offered by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). A vote on the motion to proceed is scheduled for 12:30 PM tomorrow.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 64-27 to confirm Mary Geiger Lewis to be United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina.
Today, the House will take up HR 2578 — Wild and scenic rivers bill and HR 2938 — Gila Bend Indian Reservation gaming but did not vote on the bill. (which they debated yesterday).
Yesterday the House passed the following bills by Voice Vote:
H Res 683 — Expressing Regret over laws that adversely affected Chinese in the U.S. including the Chinese Exclusion Act.
HR 1272 — Minnesota Chippewa Tribe judgment fund distribution by the United States Court of Federal Claims in Docket Numbers 19 and 188, and for other purposes.
HR 1556 — Academic programs under the Omnibus Indian Advancement Act to allow certain land to be used to generate income to provide funding for academic programs, and for other purposes.
HR 3668 — Counterfeit drugs toTo prevent trafficking in counterfeit drugs.
HR 4027 — Defining Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation exterior boundary in Utah
S 997 — Authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to extend a water contract between the United States and the East Bench Irrigation District.
Yesterday, the House also voted and passed the following bills:
S 404 (380-0) — To modify a land grant patent issued by the Secretary of the Interior.
S 684 (383-3) — Utah land conveyance of certain parcels of land to the town of Alta, Utah
In a must-read piece for National Review Online, Robert Costa looks at Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s long history of battling restrictions on political speech under the guise of campaign finance reform.
Costa writes, “As the elected leader of Senate Republicans, he wears many hats, but on a personal level, no issue has shaped his career more than the intersection of campaign financing and free speech. Late last week, he made two major addresses on the subject, first at the American Enterprise Institute and soon after at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom conference. McConnell’s multi-decade pushback against campaign-finance reformers . . . has not always been popular, he acknowledges. But as the Obama administration attempts to ‘micromanage’ political speech, he says, his efforts are more than a pet project — they’re critical for every political group, conservative or liberal, that wants to speak up without Big Brother calling the shots.”
“[H]e adds, if conservatives who care about the Constitution do not actively defend the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, the president and his allies will do whatever they can to delegitimize it. Or at the very least, McConnell says, Obama and his allies will keep shaming Americans who support conservative causes. Blocking the DISCLOSE Act, a bill which would have expanded disclosure requirements for donations to political groups, was a good start, he says, but Democrats’ thirst for exposing conservative donors remains strong. Obama-friendly organizations such as Media Matters, he notes, frequently use ‘thuggish’ tactics to pressure private citizens.”
"McConnell underscored that threat in his AEI talk citing Nixon, the man who got him interested in the issue 40 years ago. He compared Obama’s eagerness to bully organizations that disagree with him to the Nixon White House, right down to an '‘an old-school enemies list.'"
As Costa highlighted in one of Leader McConnell’s key points: "'Especially if you’re a conservative, your ability to speak out on behalf of that cause is very much at stake right now,' McConnell said at AEI. 'But this isn’t just a conservative fight. It affects all of us. Because everyone in this room, liberal or conservative, is engaged in what they regard as a very important battle of ideas. And the First Amendment makes all of that possible. If we lose the right to speak, we’ve lost these battles before they’ve even been waged.'"
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