For someone who is trying so hard to become the Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton has introduced an awful lot of new bills in the Senate lately.

Today, it was a bill to study ways to improve the child welfare workforce. Yesterday, it was a bill to help family members who are caring for war veterans who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. Last week it was a measure to crack down on waste and abuse in federal contracting.

Before that, there were bills to help survivors of childhood cancer, extend medical and dental benefits for National Guard members and reservists , and require better disclosure of CEO salaries.

In all, Clinton introduced eight bills this month, after a relative dry spell during the peak of the primaries – four in January, two in February and none in March.

All of which begs the question: What’s the point of introducing new bills at all, if you’re sure you’re going to win the nomination?

When John McCain outlined his health care plan in Florida yesterday, it had the imprints of a House Republican who has been looking for a chance to bring his own experiences with the health care system to the national stage.

Back when there was still a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates, Rep. Michael C. Burgess of Texas, an obstetrician-gynecologist from the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, approached Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney to offer his advice on health care policy. “I didn’t get a lot of interest,” he recalls.

So over Christmas, Burgess called Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s economic adviser. The two had gotten to know each other during Holtz-Eakin’s days as director of the Congressional Budget Office, when he had testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee (Burgess is a member). They kept talking, and Burgess got credit for helping to shape the ideas in McCain’s health care speech.

His input is an example of the kind of outreach McCain has done to build stronger ties with the conservatives in his party, particularly the House Republicans he has sometimes clashed with as a senator. Until now, the most prominent role McCain has played in the health care debate was his co-sponsorship of the “Patients’ Bill of Rights” in 2001 with Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina – not exactly mainstream Republican fare.

Now, though, McCain is in safer Republican territory – particularly with his embrace of consumer-driven health care, the main idea Burgess says he discussed with the McCain team. It’s the notion that consumers would seek more appropriate, and often cheaper, medical services if they had more control over their health coverage.

There's a part of Hillary Rodham Clinton's latest plan to address rising gasoline prices that probably won't get a lot of coverage, but it shows that she – or someone on her staff – has been paying attention to one Senate subcommittee's attempts to find the root causes of the problem.

Her plan, released yesterday, promises to deal with manipulation of the oil and gas markets by closing the "Enron loophole." That's a term Democrats use to point out the fact that electronic trading in the energy markets isn't regulated. Congress carved out an exemption for electronic trading in 2000, largely because – you guessed it – Enron asked for it.

Clinton's plan cites the work of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a Senate panel that has spent the past few years following various threads to figure out why gasoline prices have been so high. A couple of years ago, they looked into a fairly obscure area, speculative trading, to find out if there was any connection.

Their bipartisan conclusion: Speculators were driving up the price of crude oil – which, in turn, makes gasoline more expensive – and federal regulators didn't know about it.

Of all of the Democratic Party’s 300-plus uncommitted “superdelegates,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has some of the best reasons for worrying about the way the nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton is dragging on.

As the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Van Hollen is in charge of making sure House Democrats win their own races in November. He is getting concerned, he says – but not because of how long the contest is going on. It’s the nasty tone, he says, that could be the real threat to congressional Democrats this fall.

“If the campaign gets increasingly negative, the way it has in the past couple of weeks, that hurts our ability to unify the party” in time to make sure Democratic congressional candidates can benefit from a strong turnout in November, Van Hollen told me last week. As a party leader, he’d naturally rather see Clinton and Obama beating up on Republican John McCain – particularly on the top-tier issues of the economy and the Iraq war – than on each other.

“If that negative tone continues, then we’re better off resolving this early,” he said. “If we can keep it positive, and focused on the differences with Sen. McCain, then it could go on longer.”

That’s the concern many Democrats are starting to share. As Bob Benenson reports in today's CQ Weekly cover story, a drawn-out and bitter Democratic nomination fight is about the only hope Republicans have in the Senate and House campaigns this fall. They’re saddled with an unpopular war, a struggling economy and an incumbent president who has alienated most of the country – so the only way they can avoid a total rout is if half of the Democratic electorate walks away from whoever wins the nomination.

It turns out Barack Obama does have an opinion on John McCain's gas tax holiday idea. He doesn't like it.

From today's press conference in Indianapolis on gas prices:

"You don't know that the oil companies are actually going to pass on the savings to the consumers or whether they're just going to – you’re just going to see an increase in prices when the gas – by the same amount that the gas tax goes down.

"And it would deplete the Highway Trust Fund that we need for rebuilding our roads and our bridges. And I don't want somebody to be able to save essentially $25 bucks – that’s what the savings would yield for the average driver – and now they're potentially driving over an unsafe bridge.

"I think it is a better option for us to use the mechanisms I've talked about, providing a middle-class tax cut that would give people relief not only for rising tax prices, but also home heating prices and rising grocery prices, and, at the same time, go after a windfall profit tax that could be used to provide relief to low-income folks."

Obama's press conference came at a time when Hill Democrats have been scrambling to put together a series of proposals to bring temporary relief from rising gas prices, CQ's Coral Davenport and Edward Epstein report.

The gas tax holiday idea is one of the rare domestic issues where Obama and Clinton actually have a disagreement. She has said she's all in favor of suspending the gas tax for the summer, as long as there's a windfall profits tax to make up for the money the Highway Trust Fund would lose.

Well, that was a surprise. Hillary Rodham Clinton stopped by the Senate again this morning for a pair of votes on a veterans’ benefits bill – the second day in a row she has shown up for votes.

This time, though, Barack Obama wasn’t there. (He was in Chicago.) So her appearance lacked the drama of last night’s vote on a wage discrimination bill, where the two Democratic presidential rivals mingled with their Senate colleagues but stayed as far away from each other as possible.

It did give her bragging rights, though. By voting for the veterans’ benefits bill and against a Republican amendment that would have stripped out benefits for Filipino war veterans, Clinton can say she stood up for another popular cause.

And just in time for her North Carolina event this afternoon on “Solutions to Strengthen America’s Military,” which included – among other things – a promise to fight for veterans’ benefits if she’s elected president. Obama had to settle for putting out a statement about how much he supported the bill.

The bottom line: Clinton added two votes to her Senate record for this year, while Obama and Republican John McCain added none. So has she built a lead over Obama in the number of votes she's made? Or, at least, caught up to him?

Not really. As of today, CQ’s records show Obama has made 50 percent of this year's recorded votes in the Senate, while Clinton has only made 45 percent. (McCain trails with 32 percent.)

So, while Clinton may have edged a little bit closer to Obama, she hasn’t caught up to him yet.

There’s probably some kind of metaphor here, but I can't imagine what it is.

It came down to this: Hillary Rodham Clinton got five minutes to give her floor speech. Barack Obama got a minute and a half.

That's the Senate for you. The Senate doesn't care who you are or how long you get to speak at your rallies. The Senate only cares how much time is left on the clock.

The two Democratic candidates were back tonight, of course, for a vote on a bill to make it easier for victims of wage discrimination to sue their employers. It failed (the bill couldn't get the 60 votes it needed for the debate to proceed), but both Obama and Clinton will be able to say they tried.

In the process, the two candidates created a scene full of intrigue as they caught up with their Senate friends and made gracious conversation with colleagues who are opposing their campaigns.

And all the while, they managed to stay far, far away from each other.

In crass political terms, it usually doesn't make a lot of sense for presidential candidates to return to the Senate for votes. But if Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama show up for tonight's vote on a wage discrimination bill, as they're expected to, they'll be following the basic advice of most political operatives: Only come back when you get a clear advantage out of it.

Sure, there are sticklers who might argue that a senator's job is to show up for votes. But in the thick of a presidential campaign, especially when they're closing in on the nomination or have already won it, there are too many other things to do: Build your campaign organization, raise money, visit swing states over and over again to win every last vote.

That's why veterans of Democratic Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign say a candidate should only come back to the Senate if it's a vote they can brag about on the campaign trail, or one that somehow dovetails with their campaign message.

Anything else, they say, and you're better off staying away.

Tonight's vote on the Fair Pay Restoration Act, which would make it easier for workers to sue employers over pay discrimination, easily passes the test for Obama and Clinton. They're both cosponsors, and they'll be able to tell Democratic primary voters they stood up for equal pay for men and women.

For John McCain, who won't be here, it would have been a lousy vote to take. He hasn't said how he would have voted if he were here, but many Republicans are expected to oppose the bill. And the Bush administration has threatened to veto it, saying the measure would expose employers to lawsuits years after the alleged discrimination took place.

Given how strongly most Republicans feel about curbing lawsuits, it would be hard for McCain to come back and vote for the bill, although some of his Democratic colleagues will find a way to criticize him for it.

"I'm glad that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama care enough about equal pay for women to come back," Sen. Charles E. Schumer said at a press conference this afternoon. "Senator McCain, who has already won his party's nomination, isn't coming back. Doesn't he care about equal pay and fair treatment for women?"

Still, there's little to be gained in a general election by flying back just to vote against it.

By contrast, if McCain ever gets a vote on his "gas tax holiday" legislation, it would be a good reason for him to return. It's a central part of his campaign economic plan, after all.

But for Clinton, who likes the idea but wants to pay for it through a windfall profit tax on oil companies, and Obama, who hasn't said what he thinks, it probably would make more sense to stay on the trail and meet some more voters.

Did Hillary Rodham Clinton really pass Barack Obama in the popular vote last night, as her campaign is claiming this morning? It depends whether you count Florida and Michigan – the two most hotly disputed states in the Democratic contest.

This morning, the Clinton campaign sent out an e-mail titled, "The Tide is Turning – More People Have Voted for Hillary Than Any Other Candidate." It cited an estimate by the Real Clear Politics Web site that "Hillary has received 15,095,663 votes to Sen. Obama's 14,973,720, a margin of more than 120,000 votes," and an ABC News report that " ‘Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama’ in the popular vote."

Then comes the critical disclaimer: "This count includes certified vote totals in Florida and Michigan" – the two states that, at the moment, aren't scheduled to be seated at the Democratic convention in Denver because they held their primaries earlier than the party rules allowed.

The disclaimer appears to refer only to the ABC News report, but actually it applies to both estimates. As the Obama campaign helpfully pointed out in its own e-mail, ABC's The Note reports that "By one (rightly disputed) metric – the popular vote, including Florida and Michigan – Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama. But without the rogue states, Obama is still up by 500,000 – and if you can find another objective measurement by which she's in the lead, let us know."

Likewise, Real Clear Politics has Clinton ahead only if both Florida and Michigan are counted. Even just allowing Florida (where Obama's name was on the ballot, but he refrained from campaigning on the ground), Obama is ahead by more than 200,000 votes. That could be a significant talking point for the Obama campaign because Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.

Clearly, Clinton's supporters are setting themselves up to make a powerful argument to superdelegates: that giving the nomination to Obama would be an injustice if the voters actually favored her. That's not going to go over well with Obama's backers, of course. At least one party elder – Paul G. Kirk Jr., a former Democratic National Committee chairman and an Obama supporter – already has been trying to shoot down the arguments that anyone, other than the winner of the most delegates, should get the nomination.

"We have a set of rules. Everyone understood them going in. At the end of the day, the way you determine the winner is, you count the delegates," Kirk told me yesterday. When the primaries are over, he said, "the superdelegates should just do the math, find out who won, and embrace that candidate before the convention." But it may be getting harder for "just do the math" when campaigns are warring over their own at times creative approaches to running the numbers.

No matter what happens in the Pennsylvania primary tonight, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton will have to practice their awkward chitchat -- because they just might run into each other on the Senate floor tomorrow.

Both say they're likely to return to the Senate for a procedural vote Wednesday on a bill that would make it easier to sue employers for wage discrimination. Democrats have made the legislation a priority ever since the Supreme Court ruled last year against a woman suing a Goodyear tire plant that for several years kept her salary 15 percent lower than that of her male coworkers.

"This pay gap is an ugly reflection of the discrimination that still exists in the workplace," Obama said in a statement this morning. "That’s why tomorrow, I will vote for the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to overturn an unfair Supreme Court decision and ensure that workers can seek a remedy for any paycheck that reflects pay discrimination, no matter when they received it." (Ledbetter was the plaintiff's name in the Goodyear suit.)

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines confirmed she plans to return for the vote as well.

Both Obama and Clinton are cosponsors of the Fair Pay Restoration Act, which Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced. It would allow workers to sue employers for pay discrimination regardless of how long ago it occurred, overturning an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission policy -- cited by the Supreme Court -- that says any lawsuit arising from a pay discrimination claim has to be filed within 180 days of the plaintiff's discovery of the alleged abuse. The House passed a similar bill in late July.

The bill may well stop there, since it's not clear that the Senate will get the 60 votes it needs to actually debate the measure. And even if Congress were to pass the bill, the Bush administration is threatening to veto it.

But in the thick of a grinding primary season, Obama and Clinton aren't about to skip a vote that could win them crucial support among Democratic voters. Of course, knowing the Senate, there's always the chance that the vote could slip, and one or both candidates might not be able to make it.

John McCain won't be there for the vote, his Senate office says. Hardly a surprise, since many of his Republican colleagues are likely to oppose the bill and it's hard to see what he'd gain by coming off the campaign trail. But he'll likely get pressed on his position on the measure -- especially as he winds up his present tour through less advantaged communities, facing what he calls "a long hard road" back to prosperity.

In today’s CQ Weekly, I have a story about how John McCain is building his campaign’s Hill outreach operation. But one of the keys to that operation, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, is in a bit of a pickle.

As one of McCain’s closest friends and allies in the Senate, Graham has been serving as an unofficial liaison between the campaign and his Senate colleagues, answering questions and fielding concerns.

And as a McCain surrogate, Graham will be called upon to bash his Democratic Senate colleagues, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, because that’s what always happens in presidential campaigns.

Yet for Graham, Clinton isn’t just some random Democratic punching bag. They’ve actually worked together, co-sponsoring the 2004 law that allows National Guard and reserve members to use the military’s health care system, regardless of whether or not they are deployed. Clinton mentions the law all the time on the campaign trail as one of her best accomplishments in the Senate.

So Graham has had to decide where to set the boundaries on how hard he’ll attack Clinton, if she becomes the Democratic nominee. He says he has come up with a simple rule of thumb: Stay away from personal attacks. Stick to the issues.

John McCain’s “gas tax holiday” amendment didn’t get very far in the Senate yesterday, but its collapse offered a preview of how the debate over his idea is likely to play out in the coming months.

The short version: Democrats say McCain doesn’t pay for the “holiday” – now one of the central pieces of his economic plan – and Republicans don’t like the way the Democrats want to pay for it.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, McCain’s Arizona colleague, gave a floor speech about the amendment – part of which is helpfully posted on McCain’s campaign Web site – and then promptly withdrew it yesterday as the Senate finished its work on a highway technical corrections bill. He agreed not to ask for a vote, in part because Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who was managing the bill, was complaining about the growing list of Republican amendments.

But it also turned out that the Democrats had discussed offering their own version that would have been funded by eliminating some tax breaks for oil and gas companies. That would have been an uncomfortable version for the Republicans to vote against.

It would have been a natural idea for the Democrats, though – because that’s the version of the “gas tax holiday” that Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey offered two years ago.

It turns out the Iraq war isn't the only thing Hillary Rodham Clinton criticizes as a presidential candidate, but supported as a senator.

During Wednesday night's Democratic presidential candidates debate in Philadelphia, Clinton said she would "end" the No Child Left Behind education law because it doesn't do enough to help disadvantaged children. In an exchange on affirmative action, Clinton said she supports a broader goal: to "try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, whoever they are."

"That's why I'm against No Child Left Behind as it is currently operating, and I would end it, because we can do so much better to have an education system that really focuses in on kids who need extra help," Clinton said.

When the Senate passed the legislation in 2001, however, Clinton was one of its biggest boosters.

It was her first year in the Senate, and as a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Clinton was deeply involved in the debates over the bill, from start to finish. She wasn't one of the key negotiators, but she was involved enough to get one of her provisions into the law -- a measure to allow federal funds to be used to recruit high-quality teachers and principals.

When the Senate approved the final version of the bill, Clinton praised it not only for the teachers provision, but also for its increase in federal aid to New York schools.

"Passing this landmark legislation sends a clear message that all American children deserve a world class education. The education funding included in the bill could not come at a better time for hard-pressed school districts throughout New York," Clinton said in a  December 2001 press release after the Senate approved the final version.

"As we continue to set high expectations for students, we must provide them with the resources they need to help them on their way. And I'm proud that this legislation does just that for New York City -- by providing nearly $176 million dollars in new funds for the city's students."

The presidential campaign is about to crash into the Senate again -- this time because of John McCain's "gas tax holiday" idea.

It got decidedly mixed reviews from Republican leaders yesterday when McCain proposed it in a speech on the economy. But now, he and his Arizona colleague, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, are about to introduce it as an amendment to the highway technical corrections bill the Senate is debating now.

The idea, as McCain explained it in his speech in Pittsburgh yesterday, is to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and the 24.4 cent diesel tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day as a way to help families who are struggling with rising gas prices.

The amendment could be filed Thursday, which raises the prospect that a vote could come later in the day, if Senate leaders reach an agreement on what amendments to allow. If the Kyl-McCain amendment is one of them, that, in turn, raises the possibility that McCain would return to the Senate for the vote.

There's no guarantee that a vote would come that soon, McCain's aides say. But they note that if it does happen, he'll be in Washington tomorrow anyway.

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania thinks his colleagues, the three presidential candidates, should spend a little more time helping the Senate solve its own problems.

So he was a bit disappointed when he asked Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama, in writing, to say whether they would sign a petition to move several stalled judicial nominations out of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- and all three, basically, blew him off.

Obama was the only one who even answered his letter. But Obama's letter, which Specter read on the Senate floor this morning, didn't come close to taking a stand on the "discharge" petition. Instead, Obama said he'd be happy to leave the issue to Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

"As a former constitutional law instructor, I fully appreciate the important work that our federal judges do and the need to fill judicial vacancies," Obama wrote. But "since I am not a member of the Judiciary Committee, I would defer to Chairman Leahy on the scheduling of any committee votes on these pending nominations, and I would defer to Senator Reid on the scheduling of any floor votes."

Not good enough, Specter said.

"No senator can delegate to anyone else his constitutional responsibilities," Specter said in his floor speech. "The Constitution does not refer to the Judiciary Committee. The Constitution does not refer to the majority leader ... The Constitution says, senators vote."

It seems that the gun owners' vote in Pennsylvania is too important for Barack Obama to let Hillary Rodham Clinton have the Second Amendment field to herself.

Even on the anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre.

This morning, the Obama campaign organized a conference call to trumpet an endorsement of its candidate from the American Hunters and Shooters Association, a group that tries to be a moderate alternative to larger organizations like the National Rifle Association. Group representatives on the call said he has proven he supports people's right to own guns for sporting and hunting.

They determined that on the basis of a single Senate vote: a 2006 measure by Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana that banned the confiscation of firearms in emergencies. Obama voted for the measure, which became an amendment to that year's homeland security spending bill. Clinton opposed it.

When he was a presidential candidate, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. got annoyed when everyone suggested he was really running for Secretary of State.

Now that he's out of the race, it's getting harder to deny.

Whose secretary of State? Biden hasn't endorsed. For now, he is trying to do what many Democrats have been unable to do: turn his party's fire against McCain, rather than taking (or avoiding) sides as Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton carve each other up.

Earlier today, in a speech at Georgetown University, the Delaware Democrat laid out a case against Republican John McCain's foreign policy views, particularly his support of the Iraq war and his warnings about the consequences of a hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"When it comes to Iraq, there is no daylight between John McCain and George W. Bush. They are joined at the hip," Biden said. Moreover, he added, McCain's argument that Iran and al Qaeda would gain strength in Iraq if the United States left is "laden with irony" because neither was a threat in Iraq before the invasion.

McCain's campaign declined to respond to Biden's speech, but he has said both threats – together with the prospect of civil war if U.S. troops leave too soon – are serious enough to justify a continued U.S. presence in Iraq.

John McCain's call today for a “summer gas tax holiday” wasn't exactly an instant hit among Republican leaders in Congress. Maybe it will just take a while for them to warm to the idea.

In a speech in Pennsylvania this morning on his long-term economic strategies, McCain proposed suspending the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and the 24.4 cent diesel tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day as a way to help families who are struggling with rising gas prices.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio was open to the idea, reports CQ's Edward Epstein.

“I think it's frankly worth consideration. It's worth taking a look at,” said Boehner. Over the long run, though, the nation still needs to conserve more, develop other energy sources such as biofuels and nuclear power, and “go get those natural resources that are in the United States and go produce them,'' he added.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, however, was a bit more lukewarm.

“I just heard about it,” McConnell said when asked about McCain's idea at a press conference this afternoon. “We'll be thinking about it, and we'll see if it has any merit.”

This weekend, Hillary Rodham Clinton sounded like the best friend of gun owners throughout the country after Democratic rival Barack Obama seemed to disrespect them. It’s almost as if she thought no one was going to check her Senate record.

In Indianapolis on Saturday, Clinton scolded Obama for suggesting that people in small-town Pennsylvania “cling” to guns, religion, and anti-immigrant sentiments to deal with their frustrations at economic hard times. (You may have seen a few thousand clips on cable news about this.)

“You know, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a matter of Constitutional rights,” Clinton said. Moreover, she added, “People of all walks of life hunt – and they enjoy doing so because it’s an important part of their life, not because they are bitter.”

So Clinton must have spoken up for gun owners’ rights a lot during her Senate years, right?

Only if voting to extend the ban on assault weapons, require criminal background checks for purchases at gun shows, and allow lawsuits against gun manufacturers can all be considered speaking up for gun owners.

See if this storyline sounds familiar. Republican proposes carving out part of a social safety net program and shifting the money into savings accounts. Democrats balk. Nothing happens.

Social Security, right? Yes, but it's also the likely future of a piece of John McCain's proposal to overhaul the unemployment insurance system.

In a largely overlooked section of his speech on the economy Thursday , McCain suggested diverting some unemployment insurance taxes into "Lost Earnings Buffer" accounts, which workers would get to keep after retirement if they haven't spent the money by then. The idea, he said, is to give unemployed workers an incentive to find jobs quickly.

Under the traditional unemployment insurance system, "benefits are the same regardless of whether a job is found quickly or slowly. There is no reward for work, or getting to work quickly," McCain said in his speech. Under his plan, traditional unemployment insurance would be a "backstop" in case workers spend their accounts in less than 26 weeks.

The controversy about President Bush's Social Security overhaul plan, of course, was that it was based on a similar idea: shifting some of the taxes into private savings accounts that workers would own. Democrats and liberal groups raised a ruckus, saying such a change would destroy the program, and the idea was quickly shelved.

Here's the thing about being a senator and running for president: When you use the campaign trail to call for the passage of one of your bills, you call attention to the fact that you're not actually there to help make it happen.

This morning in Indianapolis, Barack Obama said the Senate should take up a bill he introduced a year ago that would allow shareholders to vote on executive compensation packages. The shareholders wouldn't have a veto, exactly, since the vote would be non-binding, but it would give them a way to throw tomatoes at executives who seem to be paying themselves ridiculous amounts of money.

"We’ve seen what happens when CEOs are paid for doing a job no matter how bad a job they’re doing. We can’t afford to postpone reform any longer. That’s why Washington needs to act immediately to pass this legislation," Obama said.

So why hasn't the Senate passed the bill already? Because it's been sitting in the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee since last April. Obama has been on the campaign trail most of that time.

And so has the committee chairman, Democratic Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut.

If you were watching both the presidential campaign and Capitol Hill today, you saw parallel universes – each concerned with the housing crisis, but not really talking to each other about it.

The Senate passed a housing bill that even its own sponsors didn’t seem to like very much, because it was one of those mushy compromises. But at least a bill got out of the Senate, with lots of promises to try to make it better in the final negotiations.

Meanwhile, two of the presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, were out talking about what they’d do about the housing crisis if they become president someday. So how did they vote on the housing bill? Umm, they didn’t.

Still, their dueling speeches give a pretty good idea of what they’d try to do about the crisis if either of them wins the White House – and how far they’d get with the senators they’d have to work with.

If you’re Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, do you bring up a Hillary Rodham Clinton bill that has a direct bearing on one of the latest flashpoints in the Iraq debate?

Or do you skip all the headaches that would cause and settle for some really tough finger-wagging at the Bush administration?

It’s not an academic exercise, as you probably guessed. The latest argument between Congress and the White House is about a long-term security agreement the administration is negotiating with the Iraqi government that, among other things, would authorize U.S. troops to stay in Iraq beyond the end of this year.

This is an issue Clinton has latched onto with full force. She introduced a bill back in December that would force the Bush administration to get congressional approval for the agreement. And she brings it up every chance she gets – including Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq, where she grilled Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker about why the administration didn’t plan to submit the agreement to Congress.

Soon enough, Clinton could have a couple of chances to try to bring up her legislation on the Senate floor – if she wants to come off of the campaign trail long enough to do it.

It sounds like Barack Obama may have been thinking through the consequences of a troop withdrawal from Iraq after all.

At today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq, Obama raised a question that gets right to the heart of the debate that will play out in the presidential race – whether the United States could withdraw troops from Iraq without setting off a bloodbath even worse than the current violence.

Would it be possible to maintain the status quo, Obama asked – even a “messy, sloppy status quo” – with a force level as low as 30,000 troops?

As she sat in today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq, Hillary Rodham Clinton had a dilemma. She had promised to be at a 12:30 press conference promoting a bill to fund health screenings for newborns. But as the hour approached, she still hadn't had her turn to ask her questions.

That's what you get when you're a leading presidential candidate, but you only rank 10th out of 13 Democrats on the committee.

Which would she choose? Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker? Or newborn screenings?

They listened to the same testimony, they've seen the same events. But Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, the celebrity members at this morning's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq, gave pitch-perfect performances in weaving completely different narratives out of the same sets of facts.

Both senators acknowledged the recent increase in violence, particularly in Basra, where the Iraqi government has had to send security forces to fight Shia militias. But McCain used that episode to issue a warning clearly aimed at his Democratic rivals: that withdrawing troops now, before Iraq is truly secure, would only make the violence worse, and even lead to civil war and genocide.

“While the job of bringing security to Iraq is not finished, as the recent fighting in Basra and elsewhere vividly demonstrated, we're no longer staring into the abyss of defeat and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” said McCain. Leaving now, he said, would “exchange for this victory a defeat that is terrible and long-lasting” and “constitute a failure of political and moral leadership.”

By contrast, Clinton, who didn’t get her turn to speak until long after McCain had left, argued that the Basra fighting and the lack of progress toward political reconciliation are the best arguments for an “orderly process” of withdrawing troops and shifting the focus to Afghanistan and global terrorism.

“It might well be irresponsible to continue the policy that has not produced the results that have been promised time and time again,” she said.

From the look on his face, it’s possible that Barack Obama was plotting the entire general-election strategy in his head this morning while he was waiting for the ambassador nominees to finish talking.

As he chaired today’s confirmation hearing for five ambassador nominees in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama started out by giving the hearing his full attention. But as the opening statements droned on, he got that faraway, droopy-eyelid look that veterans of lengthy congressional hearings know too well.

He even praised one of his colleagues, Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, for “setting a good example for brevity” in his own opening statement.

Since today’s the day that all three of the presidential candidates will be on the Hill to grill Gen. David H. Petraeus about how the Iraq war is going, let’s take a moment to check the record – the whole record – on how Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton voted on the war before they were running for president.

They both have their favorite debate lines. Every chance he gets, Obama reminds his audiences that, unlike Clinton, he spoke out against the war when it wasn’t popular to do so.

But he wasn’t in the U.S. Senate yet at the time, so Clinton likes to point out that for his first two years in the Senate, he kept voting to fund the war and didn’t push very hard to end it. “When he had a chance to act on his speech, he chose silence instead,” she said at the George Washington University last month.

It’s true, as far as it goes. Obama did vote to fund the war throughout 2005 and 2006 – and even voted against a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops.

And so did Clinton.

Three days ago, the new War on Poverty began. And if you listen closely today, you can tell that it’s probably already over.

It started when Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech in Memphis in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., promised to appoint a cabinet-level “poverty czar” to work full-time to address the plight of poor people:

"I believe we should appoint a cabinet level position that will be solely and fully devoted to ending poverty as we know it in America. A position that will focus the attention of our nation on the issue and never let it go. A person who I could see being asked by the president every single day what have you done to end poverty in America? No more excuses. No more whining, but instead, a concerted effort."

It was a fitting venue for Clinton to float the idea, since the King family has long promoted it. Not to be outdone, John McCain put out his statement on poverty a few hours later, which read, in part:

"Martin Luther King III has done his father's legacy proud this week by courageously insisting that our nation's next leader do something about the poverty that ensnares more than 36 million of our citizens. I will answer his call, and tell him and the American people today that I will make the eradication of poverty a top priority of the McCain Administration."

What do you call a race where three sitting senators are the last viable candidates for the presidency? The joke pretty much writes itself: a reality show where all of the contestants talk too much.

But it’s also a serious – and unprecedented – development: No previous election has pitted sitting members of Congress against each other as the major-party nominees – let alone sitting U.S. senators.

We’re calling this historic state of affairs “Beyond the Dome” – since that’s where one member of the Senate club is certain to end up after Nov. 4. That’s an amazing prospect in itself, because as much as senators love to picture themselves in the Oval Office, they generally make lousy candidates: The last sitting senator to win the presidency was John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, back in 1960.

Between now and November, we’ll try to capture the stories of Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain. There will be snippets, observations, anecdotes – little slices of history about their Senate records, facts that may or may not help their case on the campaign trail, glimpses at how their colleagues are reacting to the race.

And we’ll link you to deeper stories that explore the tensions that inform a major campaign issue or describe a political dilemma that connects Congress to the campaign trail.

Over time, these stories and snippets should serve as a distinct Congress-eye-view of the 2008 campaign, and give a sense of Capitol Hill’s unique role in forging its shape and substance. That doesn’t mean this blog will be deadly serious all the time, but it will try to deliver enough substance and context to capture what’s at stake.

This week, for example, McCain, Clinton and Obama are all coming back to the Hill to hear Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testify about the latest developments in the Iraq war. The two are appearing at back-to-back hearings on Tuesday: the Senate Armed Services Committee in the morning, where McCain and Clinton are members, and Foreign Relations in the afternoon, where Obama is a member.

The candidates’ questions could be entirely predictable. But there’s also the chance that the questions they put to the war leaders will go off script, in which case the hearing could make for compelling campaign theater and a significant moment in Congress’ ongoing battle with the administration over the conduct of the war.

And as long as he's here anyway, Obama will chair a hearing on, of all things, ambassador nominations while he's waiting his turn to grill Petraeus.

Also, in today’s CQ Weekly, I have two stories about Obama. One is about race in politics, because I like the easy ones. The other is about one of his bills – creating stronger penalties against tactics to mislead or intimidate minority voters – that was actually moving but probably won’t get any farther now, thanks to presidential politics.

As we go along, please let me know what you think and how we can do this better. Tips are always welcome, and yes, venting is okay too.