Word on the street is that Congress will come back in on November 17th to do some post-election business. The respite gives us time to look at some of the bills hustled across the House floor while we were concentrating on the big stuff.

Though there might be more silliness when Congress comes back, this is the final one in this set of “Silly Season” posts. Here are the previous installments: Silly Season on Capitol Hill; Silly Season, Part Deux; Silly Season, Part C; and Silly Season, Part IV.

Here are some of the bills that saw action on the House floor Thursday and Friday last week. It wasn’t the silliest period compared to a few days earlier but, again, these bills could have been debated at any time, not just the last two days of the regular session:

H.R. 5159
The Capitol Visitor Center Act of 2008
Costs: $1.51 per family

S. 3641
A bill to authorize funding for the National Crime Victim Law Institute to provide support for victims of crime under Crime Victims Legal Assistance Programs as a part of the Victims of Crime Act of 1984

H.R. 7221
The Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act of 2008

S. 3197
The National Guard and Reservists Debt Relief Act of 2008
Costs: $0.00 per family

H.R. 5714
The United States Army Commemorative Coin Act of 2008

H.R. 6867
The Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008

S. 602
The Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007
Costs: $0.00 per family

H.R. 6469
The Organ Transplant Authorization Act of 2008

S. 3197
The National Guard and Reservists Debt Relief Act of 2008
Costs: $0.00 per family

H.R. 7222
To extend the Andean Trade Preference Act, and for other purposes

Monday was another day with a cavalcade of bills streaming through the House of Representatives.

While you were watching the bailout (just at the moment I’m posting this, the House is debating the rule that would govern its debate on the Senate-passed bailout bill), or perhaps noting the beginning of the new fiscal year without a budget for most federal agencies, Congress was passing bills on half the things under the sun.

[Previous posts in this series: Silly Season on Capitol Hill; Silly Season, Part Deux; and Silly Season, Part C.]

Here are some of the bills that saw action on the House floor Monday:

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Silly season on Capitol Hill. It’s that special time of year when Congress nears the end of its scheduled session and decides to do all its work at once. Dozens of bills fly across the House floor with little debate.

They’re not all bad bills, but nothing prevented Congress from addressing them at a careful pace all through the winter, spring, and summer.

This year has been particularly silly, as Congress didn’t even try to follow its annual budgeting and spending process. It just passed a temporary measure on the fly, funding the government through the first half of the fiscal year in one big bill.

Then along came the financial services crisis. (Or is it a “crisis”? I’m less and less sure that it’s a crisis for anyone more than the investment bankers who overextended themselves.)

Smack dab at the end of the session, right when members want to go home and campaign, they have to think about a $700 bailout of the financial services industry. (Text of the proposal that failed Monday is here.)

Congress comes back Thursday - maybe to consider another bailout proposal. Don’t lose focus on that issue just yet!

But for the moment, let’s take a look at some of what the Congress did while we focused on everything else that Congress was doing. These are the bills that went to the floor of the House of Representatives on Saturday. The bills that were on the House floor last Thursday and Friday are here and here. Monday’s bills coming soon:
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While a financial bailout proposal is debated among congressional leaders, silly season continues. The House has been passing bills hand over fist. Here are the bills that went to the floor on Friday, including a bill to spend more than $500 per U.S. family. Up later today, the bills that raced through the House Saturday . . .

S. 2982
The Runaway and Homeless Youth Protection Act
Costs $6.64 per family

H.R. 7112
To impose sanctions with respect to Iran, to provide for the divestment of assets in Iran by State and local governments and other entities, and to identify locations of concern with respect to transshipment, reexportation, or diversion of certain sensitive items to Iran

H.R. 7081
To approve the United States-India Agreement for Cooperation on Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, and for other purposes

H.R. 7110
Making supplemental appropriations for job creation and preservation, infrastructure investment, and economic and energy assistance for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes
Costs $547.01 per family

S. 1046
The Senior Professional Performance Act of 2007
Costs $0.05 per family

H.R. 4120
The Effective Child Pornography Prosecution Act of 2007

S. 2932
The Poison Center Support, Enhancement, and Awareness Act of 2008

S. 1382
The ALS Registry Act
Costs $0.62 per family

H.R. 7060
The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Tax Act of 2008

H.R. 3068
The Federal Protective Service Guard Contracting Reform Act of 2007
Costs: $0.00 per family

H.R. 6045
The Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant Act of 2008

Congress has all the planning skills and foresight of a teenager.

Y’know how when mom and dad are coming back from their weekend away, the kid tries to do all the chores for the weekend in the last hour? That’s Congress.

So as we wrap up the current Session, Congress is racing to do all the things it should have done all year long. Members are throwing every pet project they’ve got at the leadership, hoping to get it through before the Congress ends.

Sure, we’ve got spending decisions for fiscal year 2009, and this financial services bailout, but let’s try to get through dozens of other bills at the same time.

Here’s a look at all the bills that were on the House floor just yesterday. Lots of them are simple and straightforward, but nothing kept Congress from addressing them all through the year.

Congress waited until the last minute and most assuredly isn’t showing these bills, or the really big issues before it, the care it should. We citizens haven’t gotten much of a chance to look them over either.

H.R. 3018
The Family Self-Sufficiency Act of 2007

H.R. 3402
The Calling Card Consumer Protection Act

H.R. 3232
The Travel Promotion Act of 2007

H.R. 6950
The Stephanie Tubbs Jones Gift of Life Medal Act of 2008

H.R. 1014
The Heart Disease Education, Analysis Research, and Treatment for Women Act

H.R. 6946
To make a technical correction in the NET 911 Improvement Act of 2008

H.R. 1343
The Health Centers Renewal Act of 2007
Costs $102.88 per family

S. 2932
The Poison Center Support, Enhancement, and Awareness Act of 2008

S. 1810
The Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act
Costs $0.17 per family

S. 1382
The ALS Registry Act
Costs $0.62 per family

H.R. 6568
The Tom Lantos Pulmonary Hypertension Research and Education Act of 2008

H.R. 6901
The Meth Free Families and Communities Act

H.R. 6469
The Organ Transplant Authorization Act of 2008

H.R. 1157
The Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act of 2007

H.R. 758
The Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2007
Costs $0.00 per family

H.R. 4544
The Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2007

H.R. 4120
The Effective Child Pornography Prosecution Act of 2007

H.R. 6045
The Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant Act of 2008

S. 1046
The Senior Professional Performance Act of 2007
Costs $0.05 per family

S. 928
The Homeowners Protection Act of 2007

Of all the threats facing our nation today, you probably weren’t aware of this one: submarines. No, we’re not talking Soviet nuclear subs or German U-boats. These are privately owned and used for transporting drugs.

Not to worry, though, your Congress is on the case, with no less than four - count ‘em four! - bills to get at the submarine scourge.

For example, H.R. 6295 would prohibit “operation by any means or embarking in any submersible or semi-submersible vessel that is without nationality and that is navigating or has navigated into, through or from waters beyond the outer limit of the territorial sea of a single country or a lateral limit of that country’s territorial sea with an adjacent country.”

Thanks goodness! I feel safer already.

S. 3198 does something similar, specifically citing the threat of drug trafficking using submarines.

S. 3351, the Drug Trafficking Interdiction Assistance Act of 2008: same thing using more words - and (more words? yep!) it was introduced by vice presidential candidate Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE).

Rounding out the field is S. 3526, which creates a federal felony for operating or embarking on an international voyage in a submersible or semi-submersible vessel without nationality.

Where do we place the blame for the submarine scourge? Perhaps narco-traffickers, who prey on our children and deserve all the firepower we can lay down in their direction. Perhaps it’s the counter-productive drug war, which we can only win by abandoning. For my part, I blame the Beatles, who came up with the idea of a drug-laden submarine in the first place.

Not being much of a daytime TV guy, I didn’t clue into this very fast, but a lot of site traffic here this week has been coming to S. 1738, the Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2007. The source? None other than Oprah Winfrey.

No, she didn’t have the good sense to call out WashingtonWatch.com specifically on her show, but she did put the word out to her viewers that the bill is must-pass legislation, and they have gone out to make it so, including by coming to the site to register their comments. Details on Oprah’s public policy push on the Oprah blog. Yes, there’s an Oprah blog.

According to its summary, the bill would establish a Special Counsel for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction within the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, improve the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, increase resources for regional computer forensic labs, and make other improvements to increase the ability law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute predators. Cost: about $5.00 per U.S. family.

These things all sound wonderful, but the inner skeptic would like a gut-check about:

• The Size of the Problem - Our country seems especially prone to Internet-based “moral panics” where real but contained problems are blown out of proportion by our friends in the television media and made to seem like nationwide epidemics.
• How Well These Policies Will Control the Problem - A knotty problem like this doesn’t have to be solved by policies like this, but they should cost-effectively control it. I don’t know that a lot of federal spending will do it when it might take an entirely different route like education in schools to get the problem of child predation adequately addressed. SO many problems get money thrown at them in Washington, D.C. without results.

So, again, welcome Oprah fans! I’ve been working on a good name for you - Oprahphiles? Oprahmaniacs? - without success. But we’re glad you’re here all the same.

Here’s the current vote on your bill, S. 1738, the Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2007. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or read the wiki article about the bill.

I wrote here six weeks ago about how the telecommunications subsidy programs run by the Federal Communications Commission were poorly run and subject to waste, fraud, and abuse.

Well, evidently, the FCC got the message and has cleaned up its act! Or started to . . . . Or at least they did something.

Today, the agency has debarred a Mr. George Marchelos from from the schools and libraries universal service support program (often called the “E-Rate program”) for three years. Marchelos was recently convicted of participating in schemes to defraud the E-Rate program and of engaging in bid rigging on E-Rate projects for certain school districts. (Here’s a look at part of his indictment.) He must be devastated that he can’t rig bids or defraud this particular corner of the government for a whole three years.

Interestingly, Marchelos was a witness at a congressional hearing on problems with the e-rate program back in 2004. (The House Commerce Committee says his testimony will be online “as soon as possible after the conclusion of the hearing,” which evidently is something more than three years.)

So you can go ahead and pay your telephone taxes again with the confidence of knowing that waste, fraud, and abuse have been squeezed out of this program - ummm, for three years at least.

The mighty power of the WashingtonWatch.com blog demonstrates itself again! I posted here at 5:37 p.m. on August 5th about searching laptops at the borders and the bill to require reasonable suspicion for doing so.

Undoubtedly in direct response to my raising the issue, the Department of Homeland Security’s Deputy Commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Jayson Ahern, rushed out an explanation for the Department’s policies. At 5:40 - just 3 minutes later! - he wrote:

In the 21st century, terrorists and criminals increasingly use laptops and other electronic media to transport illicit materials that were traditionally concealed in bags, containers, notebooks and paper documents. Making full use of our search authorities with respect to items like notebooks and backpacks, while failing to do so with respect to laptops and other devices, would ensure that terrorists and criminals receive less scrutiny at our borders just as their use of technology is becoming more sophisticated.

Alas, Ayhern’s argument doesn’t hold any water. Data is entirely different from physical items. It can be shipped across the border on the Internet. Searching digital devices for noxious ideas or whatever will only turn up the wrongdoing of nincompoops so dumb as to present no danger to the country.

The comments on his post make this point a dozen ways. Restricting the DHS to inspecting data devices when it has reasonable suspicion is, well, reasonable.

Thanks for responding, Jayson, but you should have thought about it a little more than three minutes.

A top bill on WashingtonWatch.com this week is H.R. 5843, which would “remove federal penalties for the personal use of marijuana by responsible adults.” It’s gotten hundreds of comments over the last few months.

The terms of the bill are simple:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no penalty may be imposed under an Act of Congress for the possession of marijuana for personal use, or for the not-for-profit transfer between adults of marijuana for personal use.

Possessing 100 grams or less of marijuana is presumed to be for personal use, as is not-for-profit transfer of one ounce or less. Public use of marijuana could be penalized up to $100.

Yesterday, I came across a very interesting Web site, with a very interesting video about marijuana criminalization. It’s called MarijuanaConversation.org.

Why is the video so interesting? Because it’s hosted by Rick Steves! Yes, that Rick Steves! The quirky travel documentary guy from PBS!

It’s worth having a conversation about marijuana criminalization. We spend a lot of money on law enforcement and a lot of money imprisoning people for possession crimes. We also give up a lot of liberties - law-abiding citizens do - because of the difficulty law enforcement has enforcing drug crimes.

That’s not the only consideration, of course. Drugs do a lot of harm, and this video does not present the pro-criminalization side. So let’s have that conversation - especially if you disagree with the video and disagree with the vote on H.R. 5843.

You can start by voting, commenting, learning more, or editing the wiki article on H.R. 5843.