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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No, this is not about the latest energy drink.

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided not to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient called perchlorate that can be found in public water supplies around the country. The scuttlebutt suggests that the Department of Defense would be seriously on the hook if EPA did go after this chemical.

At least three bills already introduced in Congress go after the perchlorate problem.

S. 24, the Perchlorate Monitoring and Right-to-Know Act would amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to require a health advisory and monitoring of drinking water for perchlorate. Cost: about $0.20 per U.S. family.

S. 150, the Protecting Pregnant Women and Children From Perchlorate Act would simply require a health advisory and drinking water standard for perchlorate. Cost: about $0.04 per U.S. family.

In the House, H.R. 1747, the Safe Drinking Water for Healthy Communities Act, would require a national primary drinking water regulation for perchlorate, the thing the EPA just declined to do. No cost estimate on that yet.

So if you don’t want perchlorate in your drinking water or your pregnant friends, one of these may be bill for you. Here’s the current vote on each. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki articles about the bills.

In not one, but two proposed regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency is adding new sites to the National Priorities List. Maybe one of them is in your home town!

Our congratulations go out to:

• Iron King Mine–Humboldt Smelter in Dewey-Humboldt, AZ
• Nelson Tunnel/Commodore Waste Rock in Creede, CO
• Flash Cleaners in Pompano Beach, FL
• Aberdeen Contaminated Ground Water in Aberdeen, NC
• East Troy Contaminated Aquifer in Troy, OH
• Old Esco Manufacturing in Greenville, TX

and to:

• B.F. Goodrich in Rialto, CA
• Raleigh Street Dump in Tampa, FL
• Arkla Terra Property in Thonotosassa,FL
• U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery, Inc. in East Chicago, IN
• Curtis Papers, Inc. in Milford, NJ
• Behr Dayton Thermal System VOC Plume in Dayton, OH
• New Carlisle Landfill in New Carlisle, OH
• Borit Asbestos Tailings Pile in Ambler, PA
• Barite Hill/Nevada Goldfields in McCormick, SC
• U.S. Magnesium in Tooele County, UT

Well, perhaps it’s not congratulations these places should be getting.

There is this thing called the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan. It’s required by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (known as “CERCLA” to us insiders), and it includes a list of national priorities among the known releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants throughout the United States.

This is the National Priorities List, and the EPA uses it to decide which sites warrant further investigation for public health and environmental risks associated with the site and to determine what the EPA might do about it.

So evidently being put on this list is some part of cleaning up toxics, but it’s quite complicated, bureaucratic, and dense. But our congratulations - er, condolences - go out to the new members of the list!

(The Environmental Protection Agency is funded through the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill. Alas, the bill for FY 2009 hasn’t been introduced in either House of Congress yet - even though the new fiscal year starts in less than a month!)

This is a bill so huge, you should fear its wrath if you don’t support it.

It’s “The MEGA.”

Congressional staff put a surprising amount of time and effort into naming their bills in clever ways. If the title of the bill can be made to spell something clever, the bill will be more likely to pass and better for the country, right? (Like the USA-PATRIOT Act!)

So this one’s called “The MEGA.” That stands for Metro Economies Green Act. It’s a name that doesn’t actually mean anything, but it’s probably about some environmental something.

BUT YOU MUST FEAR IT! FEAR THE MEGA AND SUPPORT IT!

Here’s the current vote on the MEGA. Click to vote, comment, learn more, fear the MEGA, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

I wrote about the campaigning on S. 3268, the Stop Energy Speculation Act of 2008, here a few days ago.

The debate has taken a new twist as Republicans have pushed to expand domestic oil production as the preferred way of controlling energy prices.

Well, the World Wildlife Fund wants you to know that oil drilling is a big no-no. They’ve put an ad in the New York Times, and they want you to know about it. According to a release they’ve got out on the wires:

While more drilling would have virtually no impact on gas prices, the ad says, it could have a profoundly negative impact on America’s wilderness and waters and could jeopardize the nation’s billion dollar fisheries industry. WWF, which has a team of scientists and experts based in Alaska, notes in the ad that a major oil spill in Alaskan waters – where approximately half of all U.S. seafood is caught – could have a devastating impact on both the economy and the environment. It further states that oil companies have no proven method for cleaning up major oil spills in Arctic waters, further exacerbating the risk to protected areas.

Ah, the push and pull of legislative debate. To stop energy speculation? Drill for more oil? Fair-minded people can see both sides in both sides. And it looks like Congress will go to its August recess like Hamlet, without deciding.

What do you think? Here’s the vote on the Stop Energy Speculation Act of 2008. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article.

The Congressional Budget Office came out with a cost estimate today for S. 3297, the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, which has also been called the “Coburn Omnibus.” It combines 36 pieces of federal legislation into one.

Yesterday, adding up all the pieces of the Coburn Omnibus, we came up with about $65 per U.S. family. When we crunch the CBO estimate into its per-family cost, we get just over $70.00.

If you’re curious, more on our methodology is here.

What do people think of all this? Here’s the current vote on S. 3297. As always, you can click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma didn’t come to Washington, D.C. to grow the government.

A long time critic of federal spending and power, he has made prolific use of “holds” to prevent legislation he doesn’t like from moving forward.

Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reached his wit’s end. He has cobbled together into one bill a long list of measures that Coburn has been working to slow or stop. He’s hoping to roll over Senator Coburn and move them all forward. The bill is S. 3297, the Advancing America’s Priorities Act. But the nickname it has gotten is the “Coburn Omnibus.”

Majority Leader Reid is expected to try to bring the bill to the Senate floor later this week.

We have done our best to figure out which bills have been rolled into the Coburn Omnibus, using a copy of the bill he posted on his Web site. Thirty-six bills are listed below. The last would authorize the construction of a greenhouse in Suitland, Maryland.

Coburn has reportedly said the bills in the Coburn Omnibus would create 77 new federal programs. By our count, passage of the Coburn Omnibus would spend just under $65 per U.S. family, though six of the bills do not have cost estimates.

[UPDATE: Staff for Senator Coburn have noted to me that they count 35 programs the bill would create. The 77 number reported on FoxNews.com is the number of total programs Coburn has been holding up. Our count of 36 comes from treating an ocean exploration bill and an ocean mapping bill as separate.]

HEALTHCARE PROVISIONS

• S. 1382, the ALS Registry Act - $0.62
• S. 1183, the Christoper and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act - $0.85
• S. 999, the Stroke Treatment and Ongoing Prevention Act
• H.R. 20, the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act - $0.16
• S. 1117, the Vision Care for Kids Act of 2008
• S. 1810, the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act - $0.17

JUDICIARY PROVISIONS

• H.R. 5524, the Reconnecting Homeless Youth Act of 2008
• S. 535, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act of 2007 - $0.58
• S. 2304, the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act of 2008 - $4.34
• H.R. 4120, the Effective Child Pornography Prosecution Act of 2007
• H.R. 4136, the Enhancing the Effective Prosecution of Child Pornography Act of 2007
• S. 1210, the Drug Endangered Children Act of 2007 - $0.18
• S. 1079, the Star-Spangled Banner and War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission Act - $0.03
• S. 1738, the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008 (Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2007) - $4.93

ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS PROVSIONS

• H.R. 2964, the Captive Primate Safety Act - $0.15
• S. 2707, the Chesapeake Bay Gateways and Watertrails Network Continuing Authorization Act - $0.04
• S. 2844, the Beach Protection Act of 2008 - $2.56
• S. 496, the Appalachian Regional Development Act Amendments of 2008

FOREIGN RELATIONS PROVISIONS

• H.R. 1469, the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act of 2008 - $3.76
• H.R. 1084, the Reconstruction and Stabilization Civilian Management Act of 2008 - $5.75
• H.R. 2798, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation Reauthorization of Act of 2008 - $0.66
• S. 2020, the Tropical Forest and Coral Conservation Reauthorization Act of 2008 - $0.65
• H.R. 1678, the Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization Act of 2008 - $0.93
• H.R. 3320, the Support for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Act of 2008 - $0.05

COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION PROVISIONS

• S. 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement Act - $1.85
• S. 675, the Training for Realtime Writers Act of 2007 - $0.62
• H.R. 3352, the Hydrographic Services Improvement Act Amendments of 2008 - $5.92
• H.R. 1834, the NOAA Undersea Research Program Act of 2008 (National Ocean Exploration Program Act) - $2.36
• H.R. 2400, the Ocean and Coastal Mapping Integration Act - $1.03
• H.R. 5618, the National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act of 2008 - $2.69
• S. 950, the Integrated Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act of 2008 - $6.36
• H.R. 4174, the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act of 2008 - $0.70

HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS PROVISIONS

• S. 1446, the National Capital Transportation Amendments Act of 2008 - $10.40
• H.R. 390, the Preservation of Records of Servitude, Emancipation, and Post-Civil War Reconstruction Act - $0.12
• S. 3175, the Predisaster Hazard Mitigation Act of 2008 - $6.18

RULES AND ADMINISTRATION PROVISIONS

• H.R. 5492, To authorize the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to construct a greenhouse facility at its museum support facility in Suitland, Maryland, and for other purposes - $0.02