Tuesday: Senate Dems lunch with Obama, then move to CR

The Senate starts work at 10 a.m. and is expected to begin debate on the 2013 continuing resolution, but the real topic of debate will be the Senate Democratic lunch with President Obama.

The meeting with Democrats is the first of several meetings the president will take with members of Congress this week. Obama is hoping to use them to lay the groundwork for progress on issues like the budget, immigration and gun control later this year.

Obama meets with House Republicans on Wednesday, and on Thursday, he will meet separately with Senate Republicans and House Democrats.

But the meetings could end up being nothing more than an attempt to show openness in talks that many think are doomed to failure. On the budget, for example, Democrats continue to insist on tax hikes as a component of deficit reduction, while Republicans are insisting that the burden of deficit reduction should fall only on the bloated federal budget.

Regardless of how it turns out, the Senate will start its side of the process by debating the continuing resolution for the rest of 2013. Members of the Appropriations Committee are expected to talk about the Democratic spending proposal before noon, and the Senate should start work on its bill after the caucus lunches.

The House passed its version of the continuing resolution, H.R. 933, last week.

The House starts work at noon, and by the afternoon will begin work on two suspension bills. They are:

H.R. 749 — the Eliminate Privacy Notice Confusion Act. This bill would allow banks to only tell customers about their data privacy policies when those policies change, instead of every year, and

H.R. 1035 — which would require a study on whether community-based flood insurance options might be used as a compliment to the current national flood insurance program.

Votes on these bills, if needed, are expected at 6:30 p.m.

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