Before the DADT repeal vote on Saturday, the Senate will take up the DREAM Act. Both votes came up as a House amendment to a Senate amendment to a bill, so they only require one cloture vote, a motion to concur. If they invoke cloture with 60 votes, they would only need a simple majority after that, and Harry Reid will fill the amendment tree on the measures, so if something passes, it would look identical to what the House passed. With Senators Bennett and Lugar in the bag, a unified caucus would mean 60 votes. But given the nature of how the vote is being brought up, I think the overwhelmingly likely outcome is that it fails tomorrow.

This was the trade made in the Senate last night; the Dems will get legislative repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a couple judges, and probably the new START Treaty, and the Republicans will get the chance to massively cut spending early in the 112th Congress.

Harry Reid spoke about votes expected in the remainder of the lame duck session. He cited START, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the DREAM Act, the 9-11 health care bill and possibly votes on judicial nominations if an agreement wasn’t reached to move them in a block. As for when, he simply committed to votes on those issues “before this Congress ends,” not before Christmas.

Meanwhile, the Teabaggers are not happy.

There was some concern that the DREAM Act, which had its vote tabled today in the Senate, was basically dead for this legislative session. But the Senate tabled the vote for a decent enough reason – they wanted to take up the House’s version of the bill, which was passed last night.

Let’s recap what turned out to be a busy Wednesday in Congress, particularly in the House.

The Senate will hold four cloture votes today. Now, when the Senate holds chained cloture votes like this, it’s typically a sign that they don’t have the votes to move any of them. The DREAM Act is in there, third out of four (the 9/11 health bill, which has more of a chance of passing, is after it), and the outlook is bleak, especially given the Republican kamikaze of the lame-duck agenda.

If those fail, the Senate could proceed to the defense authorization bill, according to the calendar. That’s the bill that includes the legislative repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. They would reconsider the cloture vote which failed in September.

The idea that the schedule would doom DADT is basically an excuse, and the result of policies taken months and years ago, particularly to have a Pentagon study get released December 1, necessarily squeezing the time frame.

Republicans united in the Senate to block a $3.2 trillion dollar tax cut today, stopping consideration of an extension of tax rates for every worker in America on the first $250,000 of income. The final vote on the motion to proceed was 53-36. All Republicans, at least the ones who showed up, voted against the tax cut. So did Russ Feingold, Jim Webb and Joe Manchin, Joe Lieberman, and maybe more (will get a roll call when it’s up). I’m guessing Feingold just wants all the tax rates to expire; that would fit with his posture as a deficit hawk.

It’s very interesting to see how things are lining up in the Senate. You had the food safety bill pass with 73 votes. Scott Brown came out today in favor of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The DREAM Act will get a vote next week, with somewhat persistent White House backing. The new START arms reduction treaty appears to have picked up legitimate Republican support, with 9 Republicans publicly signaling support. If you didn’t know better, you’d say there was an outbreak of bipartisanship in the Senate.

But all of this is happening under a threat of total obstruction.