Senate taking the lead

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) late last year said she was not going to schedule tough votes for her caucus in 2010 unless the Senate moved first.

By and large, she has stuck to that promise. This has led to a slowdown of legislative activity in the lower chamber while the Senate has grabbed the headlines, especially in recent weeks.

{mosads}The top priority for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is financial regulatory reform. But work on that complex bill has not stopped talk of passing other big-ticket items such as climate change and immigration reform. While the odds are against these bills passing this year, incremental steps have been taken on both pieces of legislation. 

The House last year passed its climate change and financial regulatory reform bills, but will not act on immigration unless the Senate does. Similarly, the Senate has taken the lead on a budget resolution while House Democratic leaders have raised the possibility of not passing a budget measure this year.

It’s more likely than not that the House will move forward on a budget, because Democrats want to adjust the soon-to-be-expiring Bush tax cuts with reconciliation protections so that they only need 51 instead of 60 votes.

Still, the Senate is ahead on its budget work, having cleared a resolution through the Budget Committee.

The House, which has been the driving chamber on legislation this Congress, recently was pushed by its Senate counterparts to block a pay raise for members in 2011.

On April 22, the Senate passed such a measure. Five days later, even though the House had not put the bill on its schedule, that chamber added it to the calendar. The bill passed, 402-15 (with Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., opposing it). 

In a release, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), a proponent of blocking automatic wage increases for members, noted that the House had followed the Senate’s lead: “I am very pleased that the House has passed a bill to stop the congressional pay raise for next year, just days after the Senate passed my legislation to do the same.”

As the Senate moves closer to a final vote on financial regulatory reform, the House will be voting on the so-called “cash for caulkers” bill, touted as a jobs bill that is environmentally friendly. 

President Barack Obama and many lawmakers, especially those who represent Gulf Coast states, will be focused on the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Policymakers will also be getting briefed on the car bomb found Saturday night in Manhattan’s Times Square.