Today In Washington

You Could Have Predicted It. The lame-duck House Democrats have decided  their first piece of business next week will be voting to spend $12.8 billion on an important political constituency that turned decidedly against them on Election Day.
That group, of course, is the elderly, who broke decisively for the Republicans. The bill would deliver a $250 check to all 51 million Social Security recipients. The idea is to compensate for the fact that old people won’t be getting any cost-of-living increase in their benefits — for the second straight year — because there hasn’t been much inflation to speak of.
The bill is on course to pass the House despite considerable Republican opposition — a last hurrah for sponsor Earl Pomeroy, who lost his bid for a ninth term in North Dakota last week. But the idea remains a dead letter in the Senate, where the GOP will unite against it on the grounds that it’s both unnecessary and unpaid-for.
House Democrats’ other priorities for next week are bills to expand nutrition programs and to offer conditional legal status to the children of illegal immigrants who go to college or join the military. The debate over the Bush tax cuts — Obama continues to sound a hard line, even as his underlings negotiate for a limited extension of the cuts for both the middle-class and the rich — won’t be joined until after the one-week Thanksgiving break.
The Final Numbers. Republicans are on course for a final election gain of 65 House seats. The number has been at 60 since the morning after the election. But, the more officials pore over provisional and absentee ballots in the contested elections, the more things look good for five additional challengers to incumbent Democrats. In descending order of their current leads, they are:
Nurse and community activist Renee Ellmers, who’s ahead of Bob Etheridge by 1,650 votes in central North Carolina.
One-time DJ and lawyer Blake Farenthold, who’s maintained a steady 800-vote lead over Solomon Ortiz on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Ann Marie Buerkle, who’s a New York state health care lawyer and has 700 votes on Dan Maffei in the Syracuse area.
Entrepreneur Randy Altshuler, who has a 400-vote edge over Tim Bishop at the eastern end of Long Island.
Financial adviser Joe Walsh, who has a similar edge over Melissa Bean in the suburbs north of Chicago.
The GOP gain in the Senate is clearly set at six, because both potential winners of the one undecided race, in Alaska, are Republican. And another day of counting write-in votes only solidified the view that Lisa Murkowski will get a second full term, because so many of the write-in votes for her are spelled correctly and are otherwise unambiguous — meaning attorney Joe Miller won’t have much of a legal leg to stand on.
Ellmers, Farenthold and Walsh would be the biggest upset winners in the most expensive midterm election ever. While the Chamber of Commerce has been fingered as taking the most aggressive stand in putting millions behind so many of the pro-business Republican candidates who won, a look at campaign finance data shows that many of the big-name Democrats who lost had more than enough money to spend.
Down the Aisle? So now the other congressional Sanchez sister is getting married, too? That’s what several of Loretta Sanchez’s friends are telling Roll Call’s Heard on the Hill column. They say the 50-year-old Orange County Democrat, who just won a tough race for an eighth term, is engaged to retired Army Col. Jack Einwechter. (Her office hasn’t confirmed it yet.) It would be her second marriage. Her younger sister, Linda Sanchez — who’s represented a nearby part of southern California in the House since 2003 — married Jim Sullivan in April 2009, about a month before she gave birth to their son, Joaquin.
Mark the Time. The House and Senate plan the same time for the start of their lame duck sessions: 2 p.m. on Monday.