House

The House adjourned just before 8 p.m., and is planning a relatively short day for Thursday.

Members will reconvene at 10 a.m. Thursday for legislative business, at which point it will begin two and a half hours of debate on H.R. 4, which would eliminate IRS reporting requirements for companies and property owners.

Republicans anticipate last votes on that bill by 2 p.m., after which there is no other legislative business for the day.

To no one's surprise, President Obama on Wednesday night signed H.J.Res. 44, the two-week spending measure that will allow the federal government to keep operating through March 18.

The bill was approved Tuesday by the House and earlier Wednesday by the Senate.

Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) on Wednesday night announced that the Environmental Protection Agency has won the Republican Study Committee's inaugural "Golden Turkey Award" for its pending regulation that would require mitigation measures for spilled milk.

"Each month, the RSC will be bestowing this dubious award to highlight the most absurd, most ridiculous, and most obscure regulation that taxpayers foot the bill to enforce and have to live by," Black said on the House floor Wednesday.

Black said the EPA "recently discovered that milk contains fat," and because fat contains oil, the EPA has decided to regulate cleanup measures used to clean milk spills on dairy farms. Black said the final EPA rule is expected to be released in November, but said she would work to ensure it is not released.

Black and Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) mocked the pending rule and proposed that a barn full of cats might be enough to deal with milk spills.

Wednesday's House vote on the FY 2011 surface transportation spending bill drew just four opponents in the final vote: Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.).

Amash said on his Facebook page that the bill, which authorizes spending at FY 2010 levels, would spend $13 billion more than is currently available in the Highway Trust Fund.

"The American people deserve some serious reforms, not more of the same," Amash said.

Just before the vote, Polis proposed to recommit the bill in order to remove $180 million in spending for two "bridges to nowhere" in Alaska, but that motion was rejected in a mostly party-line vote.

A bill that would ensure federal transportation spending for the rest of FY 2011 was overwhelmingly approved by the House Wednesday afternoon, in a 421-4 vote.

The bill, which will now be sent to the Senate, won the support of all Democrats but one, even though less than 20 Democrats supported the rule for considering the bill earlier in the day. Without passage this week, federal highway money will expire on Friday.

The House on Wednesday afternoon approved a rule setting up a Thursday debate and vote on a bill that eliminates IRS reporting requirements for companies and people who own rental properties.

The rule for the so-called 1099 repeal bill was approved in a 252-175 vote, and only 14 Democrats supported it. During the debate earlier in the day, Democrats said the underlying bill, H.R. 4, would raise taxes on middle-class Americans.

But Republicans argued the bill would simply repeal an unnecessary subsidy to people for buying health insurance under last year's healthcare law, and said the subsidy would not take effect until 2014. Republicans also noted that the Obama administration has supported a scaling back of this subsidy.

The House on Wednesday approved a rule for considering a surface transportation spending bill, H.R. 622, and will debate that bill for an hour and vote on it later in the day. The bill funds federal transportation spending for the rest of FY 2011, at FY 2010 levels.

During debate on the rule, Democrats argued that the rule should be rejected because it does not allow any Democratic amendments to be considered, like several other rules Republicans have written.

The rule was approved in a party-line 256-169 vote, and less than 20 Democrats supported it. But the vote on the bill is likely to draw support from Democrats, which in recent weeks have rejected some rules but then found room to support the underlying bill.

On Tuesday, for example, only 15 Democrats supported the rule for the two-week spending bill, but 104 Democrats voted for the actual spending bill.

Democrats on Wednesday afternoon objected to a Republican plan to pay for the elimination of widely reviled IRS reporting requirements by reducing health insurance subsidies under the healthcare reform law.

In a debate on the rule for the bill, H.R. 4, several Democrats took to the floor to protest this way of paying for the elimination of language requiring companies to report all transactions valued at $600 or more to the IRS, and similar reporting requirements for property owners. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) warned that reducing health insurance premium payments would result in bills to middle-class Americans of several thousand dollars per year.

Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) added that Democrats want to end the so-called 1099 reporting problem, but said "we will not do it on the backs of hard-working middle-class Americans."

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) this week introduced legislation that would eliminate federal light bulb standards passed in 2007 that are expected to have the effect of phasing out some incandescent bulbs in the next few years.

Bachmann said her "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act" is needed because "government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy."

"In 2007, Congress overstepped its bounds by mandating that only 'energy efficient' light bulbs may be sold after January 1, 2012," she said. "This mandate has sweeping effects on American families and businesses and needs serious consideration before taking effect."

Bachmann's bill, H.R. 849, would terminate two sections of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that set energy-efficiency standards for incandescent and fluorescent bulbs and labeling standards. The bill does, however, allow these standards to remain in place if the comptroller general were to find that they will lead to consumer savings, reduced carbon-dioxide emissions and pose no health risks to consumers (such as risks posed by the presence of mercury in more energy-efficient bulbs).

Reps. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), Ron Paul (R-Texas), Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) are co-sponsors of the bill, which she also introduced in the last Congress.

Reps. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) introduced legislation Tuesday that would require Congress to authorize decisions to locate national monuments in Montana and Idaho.

"The open-season on Montana's land is over," Rehberg said Tuesday. "This is about standing against the insufferable arrogance of Washington, D.C., that assumes an unelected bureaucrat can make better decisions from behind a desk than the folks who live and work the land in Montana. It's time to reassert the authority of the people of Montana to manage our lands."