Senate

Each party’s version would have prohibited Congress from spending more than it takes in.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday that he hopes to hold a vote later in the day on the conference report brokered between the two chambers on the spending bill for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2012. 

The version that emerged from the conference Monday night further clarifies that nothing in the bill would affect “existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the FBI or any other domestic law enforcement agency” regarding the detention of U.S. citizens.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and ranking member John McCain (R-Ariz.) also announced their support for the report Monday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused his Democratic counterpart on Wednesday of poorly managing the Senate’s time this year.

“Time is a wasting,” McConnell said during a tense dialogue on the floor in which he called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to bring an omnibus funding package down to the floor to avert a government shutdown.

The Senate Republican leader objected to a vote on the House-passed bill, citing concerns about a possible government shutdown.

The Senate meets Wednesday to reject two balanced-budget amendments to the Constitution, and might also find time to reject the House-approved bill extending the payroll tax cut holiday and unemployment insurance.

Killing the competing balanced-budget amendments has long been expected, as each party has put forward language that the other can't support.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) shut down the Senate on Tuesday night by pledging to work with his Republican counterpart to schedule a vote on House Republicans' tax cut extension package, which he promised would die in the upper chamber. 

On Wednesday the upper chamber will also hold two show votes on rival balanced budget amendment bills S.J.Res. 24 and S.J.Res. 10. Both bills are expect to fall short of the  two-thirds majority required to amend the nation's founding document.

Sen. Reid said Sen. McConnell did an about-face to deny the Senate a chance to defeat the bill tonight.

The Senate meandered through a sleepy afternoon of debate over the rival balanced-budget amendment bills that will hit the floor for votes on Wednesday afternoon, with senators mostly repeating floor speeches already delivered earlier in the year. 

Republicans of every stripe, from Tea Party favorite Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) to centrist Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), came to the floor in unison to express their support for Sen. Orrin Hatch's (R-Utah) version of the bill that would also place restrictions on raising taxes. All 47 Republicans are co-sponsors of that bill.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on Tuesday accused Republicans of pushing legislation that would poison more than 8,000 people to death as a Christmas gift to Americans. 

"They have attached a poison pill — literally, colleagues — because it will kill 8,100 more people more than would have otherwise been killed from pollution,” said Boxer, referring to a provision Republicans have included in their payroll tax cut extension bill that would delay the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) industrial boiler regulations.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) warned House GOP leaders on Tuesday that their payroll tax cut extension bill will fail in the Senate over a rider that would fast-track the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.