Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) plans to propose legislation that would order the auction of up to 45,000 unused or underused government properties in order to raise funds to reduce the nation's deficit, the Boston Herald reported on Thursday.

Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) said in a note to constituents on Wednesday that he does not believe President Obama has the skill to negotiate tough compromises with his political opponents.

"One of the skills you need to have in this job is to be able to oppose someone and still work with them," Campbell wrote in his "laptop report" Wednesday, two days after the House approved a final debt-ceiling deal.

"So, you work with those whom you will oppose on Election Day," he continued. "I think the President just doesn't have this skill."

The partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration will likely be resolved before next week, a key lawmaker said.

The lawmakers want all meetings “done in a transparent manner through advanced public notification, public attendance and live television broadcasts.”

Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) this week sought to assure Tennessee residents that the new congressional "supercommittee" created to find another $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years would operate transparently, and would not operate in secrecy the way past debt commissions have.

"They won't be meeting behind closed doors, maybe as a commission would do," Black said during an appearance on Nashville Public Radio, WPLN. "They're going to be meeting as we do any other meeting."

President Obama was a mere bystander in negotiations that resulted in raising the debt ceiling, his former rival for the presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said in an interview on Wednesday. 

“Neither came out looking very good," said McCain when asked which side was helped most by the debt-ceiling debate. "But it is a fact that the president was basically a bystander."

McCain said the bipartisan deal was "really orchestrated" by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) are behind the effort to ensure no recess appointments are made.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) this week proposed legislation that would require all decisions to form unions, stay in unions and go on strike to be made by secret ballot, and prevent unions from spending dues on political activities without the written consent of workers.

Hatch said his bill, the Employee Rights Act, is not anti-union, but rather pro-worker, as it it aimed at giving workers more control over decisions to unionize or abandon a union.

"Contrary to what some may think, I am not anti-union and I do not want to stand in the way of unionization if the decision to unionize is truly the will of the employees," Hatch said. "However, I believe that the right not to join a union is equally important."

As the dust settled after the grueling fight to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, conservative activist Grover Norquist on Wednesday suggested that even greater battles were just over the horizon.

“[R]ecognize that this is not the end game,” said Norquist, who was the keynote speaker at the conservative Leadership Institute’s Wednesday Wake-Up Club Breakfast. “The fight we just had was not Armageddon.”

“This was not the final conflict to determine the direction of the country," he warned.