February 4, 2008: Senate stimulus plan hits roadblock; Partisan rancor thrives

Clarification of today's cloture vote

[18:28]
Senators this afternoon voted to invoke cloture on the House-passed version of the stimulus package. This was really a meaningless vote, though. The Democrats want to pass a version of the package that passed the Finance committee last week. That language currently exists as an amendment to the underlying legislation, i.e. the House-passed version of the bill. It is the Democratic amendment that the Republicans now are blocking by subjecting the amendment to a 60-vote threshold.

Reid and McConnell spar over cause for Senate gridlock

[18:19]
The respective party leaders have been going back and forth. Jon Kyl (AZ) now joins McConnell on the floor. He says that, Yeah, I haven't seen the entire bill yet, either. And I'm on the Finance Commitee, he says. He is disagreeing with Reid's assertion that the bill on the floor is basically the bill reported out of Finance. Kyl says, But there's been $1b added for low-income heating assistance. And some other changes, too, right? he asks Reid.

Senate's version of stimulus package hits roadblock in procedural vote

[18:04]
I didn't actually hear/see the vote. I just listened to Harry Reid talk about Republican filibusters.

The cloture vote this afternoon was successful. But the vote was actually a procedural vote on the House-passed version of the package. The Senate version of the package, which exists now as an amendment, is being held up by the Republicans. That amendment itself needs to get 60 votes at some point to proceed.

Minority leader Mitch McConnell (KY) says that his side hasn't gotten to see the entire final version of the package that senate Democrats want passed. The House version needs to be fixed because of the loophole that would dish out checks to illegal immigrants, he says. We all know that.

McConnell is a little hot. He didn't like Reid's assertion that the Republicans are stopping anything from getting done in the Senate. McConnell calls that nonsense. If we did nothing today it'd be like last week, he says.

Reid responds with reference to the minority's dilatory tactics on FISA and the stimulus. Now he's launching into an apostrophe about Indian health care and how apparently the Indians don't matter to the Republicans because the Republican senate never did anything about Indian health care so us Democrats had to do the decent thing and get it done before moving onto FISA.

The President's favorite, says Reid of FISA. "The ability to spy!" Reid is pretty worked up here, too.

McConnell says, The President and both parties in the House together agreed to a stimulus package. He is essentially saying that Senate Republicans would be happy to pass the House-passed version of the package (but including one small change to prevent tax rebate checks from going to illegal immigrants). This isn't a filibuster, he says.

We want to read the entire proposal, says McConnell. We didn't get the whole thing until 15 minutes ago.

Reid says, This bill is a matter of public record. He refers to McConnell's statement as "shallow." Yeah, we added low-income heating assistance language to the proposal, but that's something Republicans want too...

Reid now says he shouldn't have used the word "shallow" and asks that it be stricken from the record. Not this record, baby!

Feingold amendment raises threshold on listening to Americans

[15:25]
As Jon Tester (MT) describes it, under current FISA law, the conversation of any American calling abroad or calling home from abroad can be monitored as long as the gov't believes that the conversation pertains to foreign intelligence.

The Feingold amendment to this new FISA bill would require that if the gov't records such a conversation, it must first merely tag and sequester this conversation. It cannot listen to the conversation until it goes to a court and gets permission. Current law does not require that court order.

Tester is co-sponsoring the amendment.

So is Jim Webb (VA) who is now speaking about the amendment. [15:29] FISA involves the acquisition of communications, whether they be phone calls or e-mails. The Feigold amendment says that when those conversations involve Americans they would have to be stored in a separate database.

Bond now speaks against the amendment. [15:38] He says it would prevent us from hearing conversation by foreign powers about weapons proliferation. He says that it is hard to explain the problems about the amendment outside of a classified setting.

Now he makes a better point. He says that this amendment would have to find out whether the person receiving the e-mail or call from abroad is inside the United States. And that investigation is going to require the gov't to accumulate a lot of information about Americans.

He gives an example about al Qaeda's No.3, "whoever that is today after we killed their previous No. 3" the other day.... I heard that the al Qaeda figure killed last week by a predator drone in Pakistan was a "second-tier" figure in al Qaeda.

Feingold now with a rebuttal to Bond's comment on the Feingold amendment. He says that if one party is a foreign state that no special permission is required to listen to and record the conversation.

The senator from Missouri says that if Osama called we couldn't listen in on it. Our amendment has a special exception for the communications of known terrorists. The weakness of Bond's argument, says Feingold, just shows that his arguments are not made pursuant to the amendment in question.

Republican end their embargo of FISA amendments

[15:07]
Russ Feingold (WI) is currently introducing an amendment for the FISA legislation. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) introduced an amendment last hour. The Senators' ability to introduce amendments on the floor verifies that Republicans have ended their blockade of amendments to the FISA bill. As part of an agreement to proceed to debate on the amendments — and therefore to begin a debate on the bill itself — it appears that Democrats have agree to subject the amendments to 60-vote passage thresholds. Only amendments with bipartisan support will proceed. I would not be surprised if none of the amendments succeeds in getting 60 votes.

The first Whitehouse amendment (he will introduce another amendment tomorrow morning) requires that the legislation require minimization procedures, a term of arm from the field of surveillance. His amendment, for example, requires that eavesdroppers drop the surveillance once it is confirms that the conversation does not pertain to terrorism. These procedures would be required if a terrorist target called up an American citizen for some purpose other than talking about terrorism.

Of course, you have to wonder. Haven't I seen in the movies where a surveillance target has his wife make the call or starts out talking about baseball before quickly switching to talk about crime? Do they ever stop listening, really?

Committee chairman Rockefeller (WV) supports the amendment, vice-chairman Bond (MO) opposes it.

FISA legislation moving forward?

[14:07]
It appears that senators will start voting later today on amendments to a revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that is currently pending on the floor of the Senate.

Tonight senators Russ Feingold (WI), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), and Ben Cardin (MD) will attempt to introduce amendments that range from a requirement that senators have access to pleadings in FISA court cases to shortening the length of the sunset provision on the legislation from 6 years to 4.

Moments ago majority leader Harry Reid (NV) indicated that senators could vote tonight on those three amendments. I did not hear him say whether those amendments are subject to the regular 50-vote threshold or a 60-vote threshold, as Republicans have demanded during the last two weeks, while the legislation was stalled.

Tomorrow morning would be three votes on more-controversial provisions, including the Dodd/Feingold amendment stripping retroactive immunity for telecoms from the bill. Also tomorrow would be votes on an amendment that would substitute the U.S. gov't for the telecom companies as the defendant in any suit stemming from the warrantless spying.

What Senate has added to the stimulus package

[13:45]
As the Senate prepares for a 17:30 cloture vote on its version of the impending economic stimulus package, I want to describe briefly how the Senate's version differs from the House-passed version.

It appears that the tax rebate checks under the Senate plan would go to any taxpayer who earned $3000 in 2007. Those checks would be in the amount of $500 for a single taxpayer or $1000 for couples. The House checks would be a bit higher at $600/$1200.

However, the Senate has raised the income limitations on those checks. Taxpayers earning over $150k in 2007 ($300k for couples) would not get a check. The House limitations are at $75k/$150k.

Seniors earning social security money also get rebate checks under the Senate plan, whereas they would not receive checks under the terms of the House stimulus package.

The Senate package would extend tax credits for investment in alternative energy projects. For example, a company retrofitting its offices with a solar power array could claim tax credits as a way to help pay for the project. Those tax credits were in effect in 2007 but as I understand it, they are set to expire either this tax year or the next.

Disabled veterans are in line to get some benefits from the Senate package but not from the House package. Sorry for the vagueness here; I don't have the details.

Reid announced this afternoon (14:12) that some low-income heating assistance funds as well as some housing-related provisions would appear in the Senate version. The House version did not include the low-income heating assistance but it did include the housing provisions. The housing provisions raise the loan limits that quasi-governmental bodies like Freddie mac and Fannie Mae can lend to homebuyers.

The Senate package also grants businesses more generous tax loss benefits. For example, companies that stand to lose money in 2008 (ahem, banks) can count those losses against gains they accrued in the previous five tax years in order to get a tax rebate check amounting to a refund of taxes previously paid. Pretty sweet deal for businesses that have suddenly fallen on hard times.

There are probably some other differences between the Senate and House versions of the packages but that's all I have been able to verify. Again, sixty senators need to vote "aye" this afternoon to keep the Senate's version of the stimulus alive.

Of course, senators will try to reintroduce each of these benefit provisions one-by-one as amendments to the underlying bill, i.e. the House-passed version. So, even if cloture fails, some of these provisions could still end up in the Senate-passed version of the package. It will then remain to be seen whether these provisions make it into the final conference report.

Precap:

At 14:00, the Senate convenes and resumes consideration of S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act of 2007.

The Senate's version of an economic stimulus package faces its first big test at 17:30 when senators vote on cloture. Democrats are not sure that they have the 60 votes they need to clear the procedural hurdle. Will Obama and Clinton be able to swing by the Capitol to vote? It could make all the difference.