The White House formally threatened a veto of the House version of a surface transportation bill, opening the question of whether any long-term bill will get signed before March when current funding on roads and bridges expires. Between the terrible House version and the Senate’s, it’s choosing between one with a bunch of disastrous elements, and another which has none of those but which is too small for the task at hand.

After its FBI Director told Congress that the revisions to the defense authorization bill did not satisfy his concerns with the bill, the White House issued a statement of Administration policy saying that they would not veto the bill, despite an earlier threat.

The House passed its payroll tax cut Christmas tree of a bill yesterday, with a minimal amount of defections from the conservative wing of the caucus. The final vote was 234-193. Fourteen Republicans voted against the measure, while ten Democrats (Barrow, Boren, Boswell, Braley, Cardoza, Donnelly, Loebsack, Matheson, Ross, Walz) voted for it. The President has promised a veto, and the bill is DOA in the Senate.

Two major year-end pieces of legislation were readied yesterday, and in this case, House and Senate negotiators reached agreement on the measures, expecting to pass them by the end of the week. First, appropriators agreed to a $1 trillion omnibus spending bill covering the rest of the fiscal year (to September 30 of next year) on domestic spending. They also agreed on the defense spending bill, which still allows indefinite detention of suspects.

Earlier in the week, I wrote about how David Cameron wanted to use his leverage as a non-Eurozone member of the EU to wring concessions as a condition of signing treaty changes. At the EU summit, he presented his aims: basically, softening a financial transaction tax that the other countries in Europe want, and other policies that protect British banks. Because you need all 27 members of the EU on board with the preferred fiscal policies that really only affect the 17 countries in the Eurozone, Cameron thought he had the power to hold out. So Cameron vetoed the revisions to the Treaty of Lisbon. And then the Eurozone leadership, essentially France and Germany, went around Britain and negotiated a bunch of Eurozone side deals.

Republicans claim to support the concept of extending the payroll tax cut for 2012, but oppose the pay-for in this bill of a 1.9% surtax on millionaires. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon already thought he was paying twice that much, according to remarks from earlier today.

House Speaker John Boehner announced his party’s year-end legislation that would extend the payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance benefits and a patch to prevent a 27% cut in Medicare reimbursement to doctors. The legislation also includes poison pills which the President already vowed to reject, designed as sweeteners to get conservative members on board.

Mark Udall’s amendment to strip out indefinite detention provisions from the defense authorization bill failed today, and the bill will likely pass the Senate with the provisions intact. This sets up a possible, but not certain, Obama veto.

President Obama promised to veto any Congressional attempt to undo the trigger of spending cuts from the Super Committee’s failure. But he’s left unclear how Congress can be induced to renew unemployment benefits or other stimulus measures.

Palestine submitted their petition to the United Nations Security Council for membership as a state today, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a rousing speech before the General Assembly in support of the measure. So what happens next?