Congresspedia Review: Last Week in Congress (Sept. 17-21, 2007)

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It was heady week in Congress, with developments in two investigations of members Congress and a series of votes on Iraq deployments, habeas corpus for War on Terror detainees, health insurance for low-income children, trade with Peru, a seat in the House of Representatives for Washington, D.C., the housing credit crisis and MoveOn's controversial ad. The headlines are below, but you can find more details, including how your members of Congress voted, by clicking through the links to the full Congresspedia articles. Remember, Congresspedia is a wiki, so if you'd like to add anything, just click "edit."

• The federal corruption investigation into Sen. Ted Stevens and his relationship with VECO, an oil services firm, deepened on Friday when it was revealed that the FBI had been taping conversations between Stevens and VECO CEO Bill Allen, who has been cooperating with authorities as part of a guilty plea to bribery charges. The CEO has admitted to paying for at least part of a renovation of Steven's home, which was raided by the FBI and IRS in July.
• Fighting off allegations of secret land deals in Central America, Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) announced on Friday that he will not seek reelection in 2008.
• The Nevada Senate race heated up as Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns announced that he would resign and run for the seat occupied by Sen. Chuck Hagel, who is retiring.
• Sen. Larry Craig made an unexpected return to the Hill just two weeks before his expected resignation. Craig had stated before that he was reconsidering the resignation, though his spokesman said that one of the things he was doing there was "working on transition."
• The District of Columbia Fair and Equal Voting Rights Act of 2007, which would give both D.C. and Utah another vote in the House of Representatives, was filibustered in the Senate, falling just three votes short of the required sixty votes for cloture. D.C.'s delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, blamed the failure on three Republican senators who abandoned their previously stated support for the bill.
• On Wednesday the House ethics committee let its deadline pass for a decision on whether to appoint a sub-committee to investigate Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) over an assault charge in August. The charge stemmed from an incident at a D.C. airport when an airport employee says Filner pushed him aside to enter a restricted baggage claim area. Ethics committee chairwoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) refused to comment on the matter.
• Many Senate Democrats, including Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who had strongly opposed other possible attorney general nominees, expressed approval of Michael Mukasey, the White House's nominee.
• On Thursday the Senate took the time to approve a resolution condemning MoveOn's "General Betray Us" ad that questioned whether Gen. David Petraeus's testimony last week before Congress was twisted to suit the political ends of President Bush rather than being an honest appraisal of the situation in Iraq. The resolution passed, 72-25, and received support from many Democrats.
• On Wednesday Democrats again were unable to break a Republican filibuster denying a vote to an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) that would have largely mandated that troops rotating in and out of Iraq be given a minimum rest period before being redeployed. Every Democrat and seven Republicans voted to break the filibuster, which was sustained by four votes. Voting to keep the filibuster were Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), the latter of which had said he supported the measure before finally voting against it.
• The House and Senate reached a bipartisan agreement to re-authorize the Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) with an additional $35 billion over five years to provide health coverage to 10 million uninsured children from low-income families. The amount was lower than the $50 billion the House had approved and far higher than the $5 billion that President Bush had requested. The president issued a veto threat on the bill, angering many congressional Republicans.
• The Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement passed a major congressional milestone by being approved by the Senate Finance Committee along an 18-3 vote. While the agreement was revised to include provisions protecting labor rights and the environment, it is still opposed by some environmental and labor groups who say it lacks guarantees that the provisions will actually be enforced.
• On Tuesday the House passed a bill that is aimed to ease the housing sub-prime credit crisis by a vote of 348-72. The Expanding American Homeownership Act affects the Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages for low and mid income house buyers in order to encourage banks to make them the loans. The bill would direct up to $300 million a year to an affordable housing fund and raise the limit on the size of a mortgage the FSA can insure from $417,000 to as much as $729,750 in order to account for high housing prices on the coasts. It would also allow the FSA to insure the refinancing of loans for tens of thousands of borrowers who were unable to meet their payments after their initial, low-payment periods expired. A vocal minority of Republicans opposed the bill, with Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) calling it "an experiment in socialism."
• Senate Republicans sustained a filibuster that prevented a vote on the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007. The bill would restore the right of War on Terror detainees to challenge their imprisonment in court, which was stripped by the Military Commissions Act. Every Democrat and six Republicans voted for the bill. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) voted against it.
• Finally, on Thursday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) warned that Congress might have to stay a month or two past the target adjournment date in late October if progress was not made on passing various appropriations bills.