David Dayen

Happy to allow a debate on birth control in 2012, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will give Republicans a vote on an amendment to the surface transportation bill authored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), known as the “Freedom of Conscience” amendment.

Late yesterday afternoon, news broke of a tentative deal to extend the payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance and the “doc fix” on Medicare reimbursement rates. Only we shouldn’t say that the deal would extend unemployment benefits, because it wouldn’t extend all of them. There will be cuts to the maximum number of weeks of benefits of anywhere between 10 and 36.

Dayen’s news roundup from Valentine’s day includes stories you might have missed about Boehner’s House, mortgage settlements, Federal Reserve’s [non] enforcement, safety net, Obama’s budget, Nancy Brinker, Liz Warren, Crazy Pete Hoekstra, Herman Cain, Romney’s Maine win, Israel, India, and more.

Almost a week after the announcement of a foreclosure fraud settlement, experts are trying to determine what’s in it, given the absence of a term sheet. This chart at analyst SNL’s site shows one problem: it has a total settlement listed at $25 billion, but just California and Florida’s numbers add up to $26.4 billion.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi released a statement that probably secures passage for a standalone, unfunded payroll tax cut. Meanwhile, the Senate in negotiating changes to unemployment insurance that may shorten it from 99 to 79 weeks or less or impose other restrictions.

TransCanada still has not settled on a route for its Keystone Pipeline that bypasses or protects the aquifer in Nebraska, as requested by Nebraska (GOP) officials. That delay means the project couldn’t come on line until 2015 at the earliest, despite GOP attempts to co-opt the Obama Administration’s permit regime.

Greek lawmakers held up their end of the bargain by agreeing, despite mass riots in Athens, to crushing austerity measures required by the “troika” (the European Union, the IMF and the European Central Bank) in order to receive a new bailout. But the European finance ministers remain hesitant to deliver the bailout funds, claiming to be wary of what they consider past broken promises by Greece.

Underpinning the bishops’ complaint about the Admistration’s rule to require contraception coverage in health insurance is the idea that nobody in America should have to assent to government policies that violate their personal beliefs. This comes as news to committed pacifists.

Mitt Romney, struggling to regain the lead from Rick Santorum in national polls and facing a serious deficit in the key primary state of Michigan, has doubled down on his position against the auto industry rescue, arguing that the industry should have gone through a “managed bankruptcy,” mainly to squeeze out the United Auto Workers.

This week marks the end of the public comment period on the Volcker rule. The usual suspects have all delivered their comments. The huge finance lobby delivered their mass of comments, in particular calls for multiple exemptions and waivers. But a new group, Occupy the SEC, a collection of experts in finance which sprung out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, delivered a 325 page letter to the SEC about the rule reminding the SEC about their obligations to the public.