January 23, 2007: Work On the Minimum Wage; Debate Over Line Item Veto

[17:27]
The Senate will adjourn until this evening at 20:30 when it will convene and walk to the House where it will sit and hear the State of the Union Address, after which time the Senate will again stand in adjournment.

The cloture vote on the Gregg Amendment will take place tomorrow.


[16:55]
The Senate is voting on a Sessions (AL) amendment to the minimum wage bill.  Everyone is voting "aye."


[16:04]
Lindsey Graham (SC) relayed his impressions from this mornings discussion between the Senate Armed Services Committee and the new head general in Iraq, David Petraeus.  He thinks Petraeus, coupled with the President's new strategy, need a chance to show us the way forward in Iraq.


[15:50]
Bernie Sanders (VT) hopes that the increase in the minimum wage is just the first step our country will take to helping bolster the middle class.  He pointed to trade agreements as a current plague on our nation's working class and urged that our nation re-think its trade policy.


[15:13]
The Senate has been debating a bill that would raise the minimum wage.  A Snowe (ME) amendment just passed.  There will be further debate and votes on amendments.


[10:29]
John Cornyn, TX.  The junior senator from Texas is shuffling through a series of big blue cards on which he has quotes from Democrats favoring a line item veto proposal circa ten years ago.  This is the extent of his argument in favor of a line item veto/rescission authority, the thrust of the Gregg Amendment.  Cornyn has nothing else to say in support of the Amendment.  Just that Feingold, Feinstein, Dorgan, and Murray once spoke in favor of a line item veto amendment, albeit a line item veto different in material ways than the one before the Senate.  The Gregg Amendment gives the President the authority to hold up a bill passed by Congress for up to 365 days.  The Constitution says the President has to act on a bill passed by Congress in 10 days.


[10:07]
According to the majority leader Harry Reid (NV), a vote for cloture on the Gregg line item veto amendment will take place tomorrow.  This amendment would give the president rescission authority over bills that Congress has passed.  Thereafter will follow votes throughout the week and into Friday morning unless the minimum wage bill is completed on Thursday, which Reid believes is possible.  Looking farther ahead, the Senate plans to pass continuing funding resolutions next week.  These are stop-gap spending agreements in lieu of appropriations bills, which last year's Congress did not pass for FY 2007.