The statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Chruchill is blanketed in snow on Parliament Square, central London on December 18, 2010, during a winter storm. (LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)
Don’t blink Wednesday. If you do, you might miss something that has become in recent years very rare in Washington: Congress will be doing multiple things at once.
In the morning, a House-Senate committee will be discussing a compromise 2014 budget resolution and how to craft a set of long-term fiscal proposals at the same time a House panel will be examining Obamacare’s sluggish start. In the afternoon, another House-Senate conference committee will be working on a compromise Farm Bill.
Intercepts readers have a stake in one of those, with the budget committee expected to examine how to replace the remaining nine years of sequestration cuts with other deficit-paring items. (Your Defense News Congressional Correspondent will be live-tweeting any noteworthy tidbits from that session here.) But there’s another event on Wednesday that you likely will find interesting: A bipartisan group honors World War II’s “British Bulldog.”
Secretary of State John Kerry will join congressional leaders in the Capitol Building’s Statutory Hall to dedicate a bust of Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
“Placing a bust of Churchill in the Capitol is a fitting recognition of his service to the cause of freedom and his friendship to the United States,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement. “We will come together to salute this great statesman and honor his legacy of persistence, determination, and resolve.”
The occasion will feature a bipartisan list of speakers: Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Your correspondent is just back from a holiday in London, which included a tour of Churchill’s underground WWII command center. Below is a pic I snapped of the door leading to the room where Churchill and his War Cabinet made countless strategic and tactical decisions.
You can watch the bust-dedication ceremony live at 11 a.m. (EST) on C-SPAN.
A door leading to the room where Churchill met with his top generals during World War II inside his underground command center in London. (JOHN T. BENNETT / DEFENSE NEWS)