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Congress spent the week preparing for their more than a month long recess by finally passing the extension of the Federal unemployment benefits. This $34B bill was passed in the Senate on Tuesday, just minutes after the newest Senator from West Virginia was sworn-in as the 100th United States Senator for the 111th Congress. The vote to break the filibuster and pass the bill was successful because of the newest Senator and with the help of the two GOP Senators from Maine, Senators Collins & Snowe. GOP efforts to use unspent stimulus funds to pay the $34B tab associated with the bill failed as a well as a handful of other ideas offered by the GOP. One of these ideas was an effort by Sen. DeMint (R-SC) to prohibit any funds to the Department of Justice to be used in connection with the ongoing lawsuit by the Obama administration suing the state of Arizona. The administration launched their law suit as a result of the Arizona Senate Bill 1070 which deals with enforcement of immigration laws. This effort to block funding failed by a vote of 43 to 55. The House quickly passed the Senate bill and POTUS signed the Federal unemployment benefits bill Friday morning.

Another piece of unfinished business that made some progress this week in Congress was the much over-due Iraq & Afghanistan war supplemental appropriations bill. The funding bill began its journey through Congress in late February with POTUS making the $33B request. In May, the Senate added more spending making the total cost around $60B. The House added more pork, which was the proverbial straw that broke the camel back as far as the Senate was concerned. Late Thursday night, the Senate conducted a vote to see if they could break the GOP filibuster objecting to the House spending. The Senate failed to overcome the GOP objections so the Democratic leadership stripped all of the $20B in extra House spending and sent that bill back to the House for their consideration. Defense Secretary Gates has been warning Congress all week that they need to pass this bill before they leave for their upcoming August recess. This bill will be considered next week in the House.

 While the House was waiting for Senate action on unemployment and the War supplemental, they passed HR 1469 the Child Improvement protection act. This bill allows background checks from FBI searches for organizations that serve youths. Presently only about 1/3 of states have current access of FBI searches. The House also passed the U.S. Manufacturing enhancement act, by a vote of 378 to 43. This bill includes hundreds of tariff suspensions and reductions so that American manufacturers will find it easier to obtain the materials they need to produce goods, grow their business, and create jobs. This tariff relief in this bill hopes to add billions of dollars to the in the form of thousands of manufacturing jobs.