Housing bill, FISA delayed until after July recess

[babylonsister]

Housing bill, FISA delayed until after July recess
By Manu Raju and J. Taylor Rushing
Posted: 06/26/08 12:28 PM


The Senate hit impasses over legislation aimed at helping struggling homeowners and a rewrite of spying laws, forcing Democratic leaders to push back consideration of those measures until next month.

Leaders had hoped to finish both measures this week, in addition to an emergency war-spending bill and a Medicare bill, before lawmakers return home by week's end. Both bills have wide support, but in each case, individual senators have refused to let the measures speed through the chamber. As a result, they were forced to lower the bar for this week's action.

Democrats also threatened to keep the Senate in session through the weekend if Republicans didn’t agree to move quickly with the Medicare bill.

Objections by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) will push back an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until after lawmakers return in July, Democratic leaders said Thursday. Feingold is strongly opposed to language that would likely give telephone companies that participated in warrantless surveillance retroactive immunity from lawsuits.

more...

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/housing-bill-fisa-delayed-until-after-july-recess-2008-06-26.html

[peacebird]

1. good news at last? or at least a brief reprieve?

[spanone]

2. filibuster

this seems to be a pattern....put it off until the light is not shining on it and then swiftly pass it....while the 'stupid people' (us) aren't watching

[jtrockville]

9. Since they already voted on cloture, can they still filibuster?

[Breeze54]

13. What do you think they've been doing all day?

They've been talking about everything EXCEPT the FISA bill. ;)

[colt equalizer]

10. Appears KO has changed his mind on FISA from what it was 4 months ago.

Caught a short clip of his comments last night. Pretty tame stuff on FISA by KO now that Obama has indicated he more or less is in favor of the bill.

[wtmusic]

3. A glimmer of light.

But the telcoms have not yet begun to fight, and we must answer them. :patriot:

[mikelgb]

4. kick ass

[ColbertWatcher]

5. LOL! n/t

[havocmom]

6. Sis, are the DEMs keeping a squad near the Hill to open regularly

so bush can't slip any appointees by?

[babylonsister]

12. I haven't read it yet, but I'd about guarantee they'll have

sentries posted for the holiday. :patriot:

If I see anything, I'll let you know.

[Oregone]

7. They are waiting until people forget about it...

At such a time they will rename it FIZY and attach a soda pop provision, so it flies through.

[Breeze54]

8. AWESOME!! WooHoo!!!

:applause: :applause:

:P

The Liberal Democrats ROCK!! :yourock:

:toast:

[madfloridian]

11. It does not mean that much.

Think about how they have kept on with this for so long.

[librechik]

14. so the tradeoff for not having to ok wirtetapping is to throw homeowners to the wolves

That sounds about right. Such a Deal! (for Republicans)

[pinto]

15. Looks as though the (R)'s held up the Housing bill (sorely needed) in retaliation

for the Democrat's delaying tactics on FISA. And an interesting snip from the same article:

The battle between Reid (who wanted to move forward) and Ensign (who moved to stall, calling the housing bill 'too complicated') was ironic given that May’s foreclosure rate in Nevada was the highest in the country for the 17th consecutive month. It also created several pointed exchanges on the Senate floor Wednesday night between Ensign and Durbin.

[babylonsister]

16. They've been playing these games for months. Maybe every Dem

in the Senate is fed up with this one...


http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/26/reid-plans-a-coburn-omnibus/

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is planning to bring forward a “Coburn Omnibus” in July that would “wrap most if not all of the bills held by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) into one large measure to be voted on by the Senate.” Coburn is blocking roughly 100 bills, including ones that fund breast cancer research and screen soldiers for signs of suicide risk. Most recently, Coburn placed a hold on an HIV/AIDS prevention bill, although Senate negotiators have reportedly reached a “tentative” agreement to move forward on that legislation.

[pinto]

18. Yeah. Coburn's been a regressive pain in the butt.

It would be a good smack down, in Senate form, to see Reid bring a 'Coburn Omnibus' bill to the floor.

[Phred42]

17. that should give us time to workover the 94 traitors

[wryter2000]

19. Yay, Feingold

At least, we should refuse to consider FISA until they've considered everything we want.

[gateley]

20. Thank you!

I just now logged on and was frantically trying to find out what was going on with FISA - it was odd there was no mention or threads on it, and that DU wasn't on Defcon 2.


:hi:

[Subdivisions]

21. About fucking time something went at least a little our way. n/t