The way members of Congress speak in the official record has gotten significantly simpler according to a new analysis by the Sun Light Foundation. While the Constitution and Declaration were written at grade levels 15-17, today’s speeches come in at about grade level 10. Whocuddanode?

Today should be a bit better; the Senate will probably confirm two nominees to vacancies at the Federal Reserve after having rejected other nominees for these positions previously.

The House passed yet another extension of the federal surface transportation bill. This one also goes for 90 days and would take the highway trust fund from June 30 to September 30, 2012.

As expected, House Republicans attached some riders to the bill, including one that drew a White House veto threat.

The job approval rating of Congress, while still atrocious, has managed to improve slightly in the last few months according to Gallup. Currently 17% approve of the job Congress is doing and 79% disapprove.

I think Republicans have real vulnerabilities in this fight, which will play out over several months. John Boehner has no room to maneuver. He clearly cannot pass a budget or even a continuing resolution with his preferred cuts. And if he gives in to the White House and passes something at the $1.047 trillion level, he’ll lose substantial amounts of Republicans to his right. So far in his tenure, Boehner has not secured a deal that would require large amounts of Democrats for passage. But that appears to be his only option short of a shutdown.

President Obama will sign the JOBS Act today, a bill that sprung from his own Jobs and Competitiveness Council, a group with 19 corporate executives and 2 labor officials. Dealbook reports that Wall Street companies have begun to scour the bill for provisions that they can use to their advantage. Because that’s how it works, right? Congress writes the legislation, and only afterwards does Wall Street look to see how it benefits them! They never try to influence the process or write the legislation themselves, that would be untoward.

Let’s briefly recap Congress’ busy day yesterday, as they head out for a two-week recess (Spring Break ’12 Cancun?).

House Republicans have passed the Paul Ryan budget resolution, a sweeping plan that slashes long-term mandatory spending, goes under the discretionary spending targets set by the debt limit deal, cuts taxes for the rich and corporations, changes Medicare to a voucher program, eliminates Pell grants for hundreds of thousands of students, and generally authorizes just about every conservative wet dream you can name. And after all that, Ryan’s budget doesn’t even balance until 2040, because it’s nearly impossible to do so without anything on the revenue side.

The vote was relatively close, with the budget passing 228-191.

After two days of trying and failing to pass a short-term extension of the surface transportation bill, Republicans will now use the regular process to try to force their extension through, with just days to go before a shutdown of federal transportation funding.

The most interesting portion of the night was the vote on a plan modeled on Bowles-Simpson, the plan from the chairs of the 2010 catfood commission. Reps. Jim Cooper (D-TN) and Steven LaTourette (R-OH) introduced the budget, which includes all the elements of Bowles-Simpson, including the tax increases, entitlement cuts, and magic asterisk for health care. And to prove that nobody in Washington cares about deficit reduction as much as they talk about it, the Bowles-Simpson plan crashed and burned, attracting only 38 votes.