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By Scott Wong (
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SNOWSTORM SHUTDOWN - Members of Congress slipped out of town before the storm hit D.C. last night but the rest of us won't be going anywhere soon. Federal offices in the Washington area are closed today due to the biggest winter storm of the season. So are D.C. government offices and local schools. All runways at both Reagan National and Washington Dulles airports have been shut down. And Metro's bus service has been halted. Capitol Hill has received at least a half foot of snow so far, and more is on its way.

-- States in the South weren't faring any better, write USA Today's Larry Copeland and John Bacon: "Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in Georgia and the Carolinas as a fierce winter storm cut an icy swath across much of the South, bringing traffic to a standstill and stranding travelers. ... More than 100 million Americans are under some form of a winter storm warning, watch, or advisory, the National Weather Service said.More than 4,000 commercial flights were canceled Wednesday, and another 2,000 scheduled for Thursday have already been scrubbed, Flightstats.com reported. At least 12 deaths across the South were blamed on the weather. By Wednesday evening,
some 410,000 customers were without power in the Southeast from the ice storm, with more likely to come, said meterologist Matt Lanza."
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BACKSTORY TO THE DEBT VOTE- Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report for POLITICO: "Miffed that they have long been asked to take tough votes when the GOP leaders voted 'no,' Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski, privately pressured [Mitch] McConnell and [John] Cornyn to vote to break the filibuster, sources said. Murkowski resisted voting for the measure without the support of her leadership team. As the drama grew in the chamber with the vote's prospects in doubt, McConnell turned to his colleagues and said: 'We're not doing this again,' according to a source familiar with his remarks. So McConnell and Cornyn - both facing reelection this year and battling tea party-inspired
challengers in their states - took the plunge and risked the political backlash by voting to break a filibuster, the type of vote the two wily leaders have long sought to avoid in this election season. ...

-- "The leaders later voted against final passage. But McConnell decided not to block the measure because he concluded it wasn't worth repeating yet another crisis-like atmosphere similar to the government shutdown last fall. The end result: 12 Republicans voted to break a filibuster, advancing the measure on a 67-31 vote. On a party-line vote, the Senate passed the bill, 55-43, sending it to President Barack Obama's desk and ending three years of partisan brinkmanship and economic crises over debts and deficits."
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-- The dozen Republicans who voted to break a filibuster were: McConnell, Cornyn, Collins, Murkowski, Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Mike Johanns (Neb.), John McCain and Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), John Thune (S.D.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.).

-- The AP's Andrew Taylor took to Twitter to lash out at Senate leaders for requesting clerks not to publicly announce the ongoing vote tally. Here's a sampling:

@APAndrewTaylor: Typically, vote tallys are announced publicly in real time on C-Span. This one wasn't, seemingly at the request of Republicans.

@APAndrewTaylor: It's impossible to be sure how senators vote if they don't make a gesture. So the public, in this case Wall St. couldn't be sure.

@APAndrewTaylor: But it is not acceptable for investors to be denied information available to lawmakers and their staff.

@APAndrewTaylor: This cannot happen again and the media must demand a public statement from Senate leaders that it won't

@APAndrewTaylor: I fully expect (and have already asked) that the organizations representing the media of Capitol Hill will lodge an official protest.

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SENATE ROLLS BACK CUTS TO MILITARY PENSIONS -- The Wall Street Journal's John D. McKinnon writes: "The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to roll back a recent pension reduction for younger military retirees, underscoring lawmakers' struggles to cut big benefit programs. The measure, which passed in the Senate by a 95-3 vote, heads to the White House, where President Barack Obama is expected to sign it. The cut to military pensions was approved by Congress last December as part of a budget deal that was widely praised for its bipartisanship."
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-- REP. PAUL RYAN, one of the authors of the recent budget deal, is facing a backlash for standing by his decision to include military pension cuts in the package, POLITICO's Austin Wright and Juana Summers report: "The Wisconsin Republican's gambit was viewed as an attempt to get the ball rolling on military compensation reform - something top commanders say is badly needed - and to show that entitlement cuts are possible, that nothing is sacred. So far, it's had the opposite effect, unleashing a massive lobbying campaign and forcing vulnerable incumbents to explain to constituents why they voted to cut benefits for those who've sacrificed for their country. ... On Tuesday, Ryan blasted
the House bill as taking 'a step back' after he cast one of just 90 votes against it."
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NEW GAVELS FOR WYDEN, LANDRIEU, CANTWELL, TESTER -- Darren Goode reports for POLITICO: "The Senate [Wednesday night] confirmed Mary Landrieu as the new chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and former panel Chairman Ron Wyden's move atop the Finance Committee. The resolution, approved by unanimous consent, also greenlights Maria Cantwell's succeeding of Landrieu as chair of the Small Business Committee and Jon Tester's succeeding of Cantwell as chair of the Indian Affairs Committee. The moves were finalized before Majority Leader Harry Reid recessed the Senate until Feb. 24."

GOOD THURSDAY MORNING, FEB. 13, 2014, and welcome to The Huddle, your-play-play preview of all the action on Capitol Hill. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to
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TODAY IN CONGRESS - Both the House and Senate got out of town, just before the storm. House Democrats are holding their annual issues conference through Friday in Cambridge, Md. Neither chamber is in session next week for the Presidents' Day recess.

TRANSITIONS - TARA DIJULIO, who's served three years as communications director for Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), is moving over to the committee side. She's taken a new job as communications director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and ranking member Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). Her first today is Feb. 26.

-- KATHLEEN CONNERY DAWE has been named communications director for Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) in Washington. She has spent more than a decade on the Hill, including nearly five years as communications director for former Rep. Rahm Emanuel.She most recently served as an Associate at Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., where she represented a wide variety of clients on litigation matters, legislative issues, and federal election law. Dawe replaced Crystal Canney, who returned home to Maine and is currently heading up communications for Eliot Cutler's campaign for governor.

MILLER BECOMES 5TH CALIF. REP. TO HEAD FOR EXITS -- Richard Simon and Jean Merl report for the L.A. Times: "Facing one of the toughest campaigns of any Republican congressman in the country, Rep. Gary Miller announced Wednesday that he would not seek reelection to his Inland Empire seat, increasing prospects for a Democratic pickup. ... His decision sets up a competitive race among at least four Democrats - including an attempted comeback by former Rep. Joe Baca - in a district President Obama won by a wide margin. Miller, 65, becomes the fifth California congressman to head for the exits, further shaking up a once-stable delegation. Democrats Henry A. Waxman of Beverly Hills and George
Miller of Martinez and Republicans Howard 'Buck' McKeon of Santa Clarita and John Campbell of Irvine have announced they are retiring when their terms end."
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PAUL VS. OBAMA SUIT SPURS LAWYER FIGHT -- Andrew Zajac and Phil Milford report for Bloomberg: "A legal challenge to the National Security Agency's telephone data surveillance program by Senator Rand Paul was followed by a dispute between two high-profile Republican lawyers over authorship of the complaint. Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein wrote the complaint and was replaced as its author by Kenneth Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia, according to Fein's spokeswoman. The document 'was completely misrepresented as Cuccinelli's. Bruce wrote the entire thing,' said Mattie Fein, Bruce Fein's representative and ex-wife. Further, Mattie Fein said, 'Bruce hasn't been paid yet.'

-- "Paul's suit, which names President Barack Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and other top security officials, alleges that the government is collecting phone data about U.S. citizens 'without any belief by defendants at the time of collection or retention or searches that any of the information is connected with international terrorism or an international terrorist organization,' in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches."
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OBAMACARE CLEARS THE TOWER: 3.3 MILLION SIGN-UPS - David Nather reports for the hometown paper: "The Obamacare rollout is changing in front of our eyes - turning from a running joke into one big shoulder shrug. And that's good news for the White House, because at this point, even basic competence is good news. That's the lesson of the new enrollment numbers the administration released Monday, which showed that more than 3 million people signed up for private health coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law by the end of January. It's behind the original expectations, but way ahead of the disaster scenarios that had looked possible during the worst months of the troubled
rollout last fall."
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THE HAPPY MINORITY? - John Bresnahan reports from the House Democrats' retreat: "As they begin their annual legislative retreat in Cambridge, Md. - with scheduled appearances by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden - House Democrats presented a unified, somewhat happy minority, which in itself is a contradiction in terms. Pelosi and House Democrats were largely responsible for Tuesday's House passage of a 'clean' debt ceiling increase for another year, followed by a close Senate vote on Wednesday. ...

-- "Democrats were also pleased by Obama's executive order raising the minimum wage for several hundred thousand federal workers, which plays into their drive to raise the wage nationally to $10.10 per hour. ... And Pelosi and her top lieutenants - many of whom played big roles in the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act - were very happy to hear that more 1 million Americans had signed up for state and federal health exchanges during January, bringing the total Obamacare sign-ups to 3.3 million."
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BRAGGING RIGHTS: SINK VS. JOLLY - Our own Alex Isenstadt reports from the ground in St. Petersburg, Fla., on the fight for national bragging rights: "Unfolding in one of the few remaining competitive House districts, the contest has become a proxy battle among the national parties for bragging rights heading into the November midterm election. Democrats are determined to blunt the prevailing wisdom that 2014 is destined to be an electoral bust, possibly ending with Republicans padding their House majority and taking the Senate. Republicans see a chance to deliver an irrefutable statement that momentum this year is on their side. The vessels for those outsize expectations are Democrat Alex
Sink, who fell a percentage point shy of becoming Florida governor in 2010, and Republican David Jolly, who spent more than a decade toiling for the man he's looking to succeed, the late GOP Rep. Bill Young, before taking up a new career in Washington's bustling influence industry.

-- "Each passing day leading up to the March 11 election brings fresh evidence of how badly each side wants a win. Vice President Joe Biden went to Florida on Wednesday to raise money for Sink - a rare foray by the White House into a single House election. Both national parties, plus an array of outside groups, have combined to spend an eye-popping $6 million on TV ads, a figure that's poised to soar over the next four weeks. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio campaigned with Jolly on Monday, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is slated to fundraise for him on Friday."
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FOR COCHRAN, PORK-BARREL POLITICS IS HARD SELL IN MISSISSIPPI - Bloomberg's John McCormick in Jackson, Miss.: "There was a time when it was a good thing for a politician to bring home the bacon, or in the case of U.S. Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the shrimp. In today's divided Republican Party, it can get you in hot water. That's where Cochran, 76, finds himself as he faces Tea Party-aligned challenger Chris McDaniel, 41, a state senator who has criticized the six-term incumbent's federal spending largess, even as many of the dollars flowed back to Mississippi. The $25 million Thad Cochran Marine Aquaculture Center in Ocean Springs, Mississippi -- which operates research and
education programs and includes shrimp, blue crab and red snapper -- is the sort of beneficiary of federal dollars called into question in a Republican primary that will help show how the party defines itself going forward."
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WEDNESDAY'S TRIVIA WINNER - Eric Parker was first to correctly answer that former presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis's father-in-law, Harry Ellis Dickson, was an associate conductor of the Boston Pops and the first violinist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

TODAY'S TRIVIA - Eric Parker has today's question: With the French president and King of Jordan in town this week, name the first foreign dignitary to address the House of Representatives in its chamber. The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day's Huddle. Email me at
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