Senate

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Friday afternoon that he would hold the Senate open into the evening while awaiting a vote in the House on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) deficit-reduction plan.

With the nation’s financial future still uncertain, Senate committees will continue to push forward with a number of comparatively mundane matters next week, including an examination of military strategy in Afghanistan, a mysterious closed Army Services Committee hearing on “cyber issues” and an exploration on a nationwide alert system to spread information when law enforcement officers are injured or killed in the line of duty.

A list of featured committee hearings scheduled for next week follows:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) slammed President Obama from the Senate floor on Friday, accusing the president of putting his own reelection prospects before the good of the country.

“The president said, really this is what the president said a week ago, ‘The only bottom line that I have is that we extend this debt ceiling through the next election, until 2013.’” claimed Sessions, who is the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. 

Republicans' addition of the balanced-budget amendment to Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio.) deficit-reduction plan is proof they are not serious about averting the looming crisis, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget, said on Friday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the floor Friday morning to blast the Democratic majority in the Senate for failing to propose a solution to the looming deficit crisis that could pass either house. 

“Democrats here in the Senate have offered no solutions that could pass either chamber, not one," said McConnell. “Instead, all day yesterday we got chest-thumping comments about how we are going to kill any legislation that comes from the House.”

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the Senate will “have to wait until tomorrow to do our work.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recessed the Senate Thursday night while it awaits news from the House on whether or not there will be a vote on Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) deficit-reduction plan.

House Republican leadership postponed the vote indefinitely earlier in the afternoon as they scrambled to whip together enough votes for it to clear the lower chamber.

Reid said he expects no action in either body before 9 p.m.

Ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) expressed doubts about the veracity of the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline in a floor speech Thursday night and demanded that Treasury inform Congress exactly how much cash it has remaining.

"Why do members of Congress not know details about Treasury's projected cash flow for August?" asked Hatch. “How can we decide whether Aug. 2 … is even close to some sort of deadline date for dealing with the debt limit?”

Registering irritation late Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he would hold the Senate open while waiting to see whether or not the House manages to hold a vote on Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) deficit-reduction plan.

House Republican leadership postponed the vote indefinitely earlier in afternoon as they scrambled to whip together enough votes for it to clear the lower chamber.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said he believes Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will successfully whip the necessary votes to pass his deficit-reduction plan. 

“Speaker Boehner's having a rough time getting the votes over there but my guess is he will,” said Schumer.

Schumer reminded his colleagues that regardless of its outcome in the House, the legislation has no chance of clearing the Senate in a vote tentatively scheduled for later tonight.