In between reinstating every hunter's sacred Second Amendment right to nail Bambi with an AK-47, and mischievously meddling in local affairs to pass a one-chamber bill to weaken public safety in the nation's capital, the National Rifle Association and its busy-beaver allies quietly scored another legislative coup -- this one without even trying.
Now attention has turned to other matters, such as Senator Chambers' bill to repeal Nebraska's death penalty.
Republican negotiators aim to hash out differences between the two chambers' bills in time to get a package to the president before Christmas.
Opponents do not have the votes in the Senate to kill the House bill, but amending it -- open to any Senator -- would force House and Senate negotiators to hammer out a compromise of the competing chambers' bills.
Under both chambers' bills, the FDA could consider adverse events as part of a drug-approval review, but only if such complications are "critical to determining the safety" of the drug.
Mr. Boehner could also amend the bill to include a one-year extension of the payroll tax reduction and some conservative policy riders to make it acceptable to a majority of his conference, and hope that the Senate would return to negotiate a new bipartisan conference measure based on the two chambers' bills.
But now that the language is included in the version approved by the Senate, it will be part of discussions by the bicameral conference committee that will merge both chambers' bills into a single piece of legislation to be send to President Trump's desk.
At that point, House and Senate leaders and their advisers were meeting at the White House and on Capitol Hill, negotiating over the differences between the two chambers' bills.
Both chambers' bills, by reducing or eliminating state and local tax deductions, could lead states to decrease their taxes, shrinking a key source of revenue the current infrastructure plan wants to see increase.
During the event, Labrador said "it would be crazy" for House Republicans to go to conference with the Senate on immigration and attempt to combine the two chambers' bills.
