Aides to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell presented the Social Security proposal, which included a method of calculating benefits with inflation. The plan would lower cost of living increases for Social Security recipients. Democrats were swift to reject the offer.

A Democratic aide told ABC News that the proposal was a "poisoned pill" in the current negotiations. However, it should be noted that President Obama has suggested a similar proposal within the context of negotiations on a broad deficit-reduction deal. Such a measure had been taken off the table in discussions over a scaled-back, short-term agreement.

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In all likelihood, the Senate will vote today to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act for a few years, just before the act was scheduled to expire. The House reauthorized it all the way back in September, but the world's most deliberative body likes to take its time (plus Ron Wyden placed a hold on the bill until Senate leaders agreed to at least have a debate on proposed amendments to the Amendments).

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Following the horrifying murder of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school, the debate over gun control has reached fever pitch. Following the mass shooting in July at a Colorado movie theater, Feinstein also called for the ban on assault weapons to be renewed (it was introduced by Bill Clinton in 1994 but has since expired). Feinstein noted that she and her colleagues had been working on the bill for a year, not only in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Feinstein's new bill will  "ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession [of assault weapons], not retroactively, but prospectively, And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets. So there will be a bill," she said Sunday.

[h/t Huffpo]

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To be fair, there was a $10 spending limit.

NBC News reports that the senators exchanged gifts on the Senate floor Tuesday. From NBC, here are some of the highlights.

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Asetoyer was talking about the loophole that prevents tribal authorities, who have jurisdiction over crimes committed on Indian territory by Indians, from having any authority over non-Indian male abusers. That's despite the fact that non-Indian men account for an estimated 80 percent of rapes of Indian women, and that the astronomical rate of abuse of Indian women is well documented by the federal government.

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The letter, posted by conservative columnist Morton Blackwell on RedState.com, urges lawmakers to be strong against the liberals' "current power grabs."

"If Republicans cave in now, when it really counts, next time you will be weaker, because your conservative base will be outraged," the letter says. "Many who worked hard to elect you in the past will never lift a finger for you again."

The letter concludes:

So it’s in the interest of the country and in your personal interest for you to use the power you unquestionably have now to stand firm and not surrender your conservative principles, no matter how loud the clamor of people whose central interest is to advance the left’s agenda.

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"It requires reaching across the aisle and finding partners from the opposite party," said Lieberman. "That is what is desperately needed in Washington now."

The Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut is leaving the Senate in January after 24 years. He said strong bipartisan leadership is needed to solve the nation's most pressing problems, such as the looming fiscal cliff budget crisis. Washington gridlock stands as "the greatest obstacle" to finding compromises to make major progress on those problems, he said.

Lieberman, 70, nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with running mate Al Gore in 2000. He would have been the first Jewish vice president.

He also made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Four years later, he was under serious consideration in 2008 to be then-Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate. He and McCain are friends known for their hawkish views on military and national security matters.

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Judd, who says she is considering a run in 2014, is trailing 47-43 percent behind McConnell, who happens to be the most unpopular senator in the country.

From PPP:

Only 37% of Kentucky voters approve of him to 55% disapprove. Both in terms of raw disapproval (55%) and net approval (-18) McConnell has the worst numbers of any of his peers, taking that mantle from Nebraska's Ben Nelson.

McConnell is predictably very unpopular with Democrats (23/73). But his numbers are almost as bad with independents (33/58) and even with Republicans he's well below the 70-80% approval range you would usually expect for a Senator within their own party (59/28).

Among Democrats, Judd is the top choice for the primary, with 29 percent of the vote, compared to Lt. Gov. Jerry  Abramson who came in second at 16 percent.

PPP surveyed 1,266 Kentucky voters for the survey overall, and 585 Democratic primary voters.

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Such is the coverage of Sen. Jim DeMint's departure from the U.S. Senate to take over the Heritage Foundation. So many words have been spent on this news. I hadn't planned on weighing in, but after watching all the ways it's being spun as some kind of victory for DeMint and the Tea Party, I had to say: Enough!

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To be sure, there was a time a few years back when DeMint’s stature and visibility was dependent on his Senate service. His initial victory in 2004 lifted him from the obscurity of the House to a perch from which he could attract attention from the conservative movement and the national press corps. And he exploited that opportunity for all it was worth, positioning himself as an ideological purist and playing the role of conscientious objector when his fellow Republicans sold out conservative principles (as he understands them). Active involvement in Republican primary races around the country grew out of this, with DeMint launching the Senate Conservatives Fund to provide political and financial support to fellow true believers, even – or especially – if they were up against candidates with substantial establishment support.

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Ignoring a veto threat, the Senate voted 98-0 for the legislation that authorizes money for weapons, aircraft and ships and provides a 1.7 percent pay raise for military personnel. After a decade of increasing Pentagon budgets, the vote came against the backdrop of significant reductions in projected military spending and the threat of deeper cuts from the looming "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and tax increases.

The bill reflects the nation's war-weariness after more than a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, the messy uncertainty about new threats to U.S. security and Washington belt-tightening in times of trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Spending solely on the base defense budget has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, but the latest blueprint reins in the projected growth in military dollars.

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But just two years ago, senior Democrats were saying things like this: "I'm totally opposed to the idea of changing the filibuster rules. I think that's foolish.” And: “I’m so vehemently opposed to the ideas to fundamentally change the rules of the Senate.” That was Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who really hated the filibuster, but there were others.

“I think as torturous as this place can be, the cloture rule and the filibuster is important to protect the rights of the minority... My inclination is no,” Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor told The Hill's Alexander Bolton when asked about reform in 2010.

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Within hours of the amendment's approval, civil liberties advocates pointed out significant problems that remain in the NDAA, while lawyers noted that the amendment may even fail to achieve its intended purpose regarding the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Under the 2012 act, any person suspected of terrorism or substantial support for terrorism in the U.S.could be held without trial indefinitely. To ensure the writ of habeas corpus, the newest draft includes the following:

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1. It’s (probably) unconstitutional: The filibuster appears nowhere in the Constitution and was actually created by accident years later on the advice of the guy who killed Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr.

The Senate didn’t realize it had created a loophole for senators to keep debate open forever until after it was too late, and senators have been trying to get rid of it since 1841. Appropriately, the word "filibuster" comes from the Dutch word for “pirate." In 1917, the Senate created the cloture rule, which allows a supermajority to end a filibuster (the original 67-vote threshold was lowered to the current 60 votes in 1975).

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Susan Rice has done a "great" job as U.N. ambassador without explicitly endorsing Rice to be her successor.

Updated 4:36 p.m.:

In a subsequent interview with MSNBC, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R.-N.H., agrees with Senator Collins that the 1998 embassy bombing "raised some very important questions" about Susan Rice's fitness for Secretary of State. What are those questions? Ayotte's not sure:

As I understand it, you know, Senator Collins raised the questions about what her role was there. she has asked for answers about what her role was with respect to embassy security and embassy security requests that were made prior to those two -- the attacks on our embassies there and so I don't know that those questions have been answered but I think they're important questions that were raised by Senator Collins and I certainly respect her experience in this area.

Neither senator addressed why the embassy bombings are of greater concern now than there were in 2009 during her honeymoon nomination process to be U.N. ambassador. According to a Nexis search, Collins had zero to say at the time about Rice being in a sensitive, high profile foreign policy position.

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The other argument is that Democrats are being hypocritical in calling for reform, because they defended the filibuster just a few short years ago when they were in the minority, and thus their efforts should be dismissed out of hand. “Then-Sen. Obama thought it would be wrong to make the changes when the Republicans were in the majority; then-Sen. [Joe] Biden thought it was a bad idea when the Democrats were in the minority; and Harry Reid thought it was an awful idea when he was in the minority because he said no one group should be able to run roughshod over the other group,” said Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who holds the No. 4 position in the GOP leadership.

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Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, is pushing to reform the filibuster, but is facing opposition from Republicans. “I think the backlash will be severe,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said of Reid's plan. “If you take away minority rights, which is what you’re doing because you’re an ineffective leader, you’ll destroy the place. And if you destroy the place, we’ll do what we have to do to fight back.”

From Politico:

Here’s what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering: banning filibusters used to prevent debate from even starting and House-Senate conference committees from ever meeting. He also may make filibusters become actual filibusters — to force senators to carry out the nonstop, talkathon sessions.

“It will shut down the Senate,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Politico. “It’s such an abuse of power.”

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Overriding those changes, though, is a thinning of pragmatic, centrist veterans in both parties. Among those leaving are some of the Senate's most pragmatic lawmakers, nearly half the House's centrist Blue Dog Democrats and several moderate House Republicans.

That could leave the parties more polarized even as President Barack Obama and congressional leaders talk up the cooperation needed to tackle complex, vexing problems such as curbing deficits, revamping tax laws and culling savings from Medicare and other costly, popular programs.

"This movement away from the center, at a time when issues have to be resolved from the middle, makes it much more difficult to find solutions to major problems," said William Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a private group advocating compromise.

In the Senate, moderate Scott Brown, R-Mass., lost to Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who will be one of the most liberal members. Another GOP moderate, Richard Lugar of Indiana, fell in the primary election. Two others, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Olympia Snowe of Maine, are retiring.

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