The 112th Congress is set to begin on Monday, January 3. Their vacation ends when ours does--- though they have voted to give themselves a couple of days to get organized before starting sessions on Wednesday the 5th (we don’t have that luxury!). Just as a reminder the Democrats still have the Senate majority with 53 seats (two of which are independents that caucus with Democrats) and 47 Republicans---for a total of 100 members. Joe Biden is the President of the Senate and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii is the next in line as the leader of the Senate behind the Vice President since he is the senior. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) will continue as the Majority leader and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) as the Minority leader. There will be 13 new senators. Over in the House of Representatives there are 435 representatives with 6 non-voting members. There will be 242 Republican member and 193 Democratic members. John Boehner of Ohio will take over the job of Speaker from Nancy Pelosi of California. There will be 93 new representatives. Michele Bachman’s (R- Minnesota) Tea Party Caucus had 52 members in the House when it was formed last summer. It is unclear if the new freshman will join her group or form their own. New Tea Party Republicans in the Senate include: Lee(Utah), Paul(Kentucky), Rubio (Florida), Johnson (Wisconsin) and Toomey (Pennsylvania).
I just wanted to give our class a reminder of the change of control Congress will go through next week. It should make for some very interesting new dynamics in the nature of debates and priorities to say the least!
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