It’s the time of year when Halloween thrill-seekers stalk graveyards in search of goblins and phantasms.

I stalked a cemetery too, this week. For creatures even scarier than ghosts and ghouls.

I was looking for politicians.

Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC was Arlington National Cemetery long before Arlington National Cemetery ever existed. It’s the final resting place for 19 senators and 71 U.S. representatives. They’re joined by a vice president, a world-renowned band leader, a legendary FBI director, an attorney general, the first woman to seek the presidency and a man who was the original Washington insider. And that’s to say nothing of the dozens of markers memorializing America’s deceased political elite.

Tourists may flock to Arlington National Cemetery to spy the graves of the Kennedys and watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. But few journey to the banks of the Anacostia River to pay their respects to America’s first leaders at Congressional Cemetery.

“Every city has old cemeteries,” said Congressional Cemetery Board Chairman Patrick Crowley. “But this cemetery honors the founders of the nation.”

I asked Crowley what the qualifications were for interment. There’s just one.

“Death,” he said.

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The House's health care reform bill runs 1,990 pages and. It's filled with gullies and eddies of arcane, cryptic language that are hard to understand. But one of the chief architects of the measure wants to be clear about one provision: "No government funds will be used to pay for illegal immigrants to get health care coverage," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA).

Waxman points out that the Democrats’ health care reform bill unveiled Thursday contains a “verification status” check if anyone is to receive any federal health care subsides. But there’s a distinction between illegal immigrants being eligible for government-run components of the health care legislation versus what they would be permitted to purchase from private insurance providers.

“Yes,” exclaimed Waxman when a reporter asked the California Democrat if he personally thought illegal immigrants should be permitted to purchase health insurance. “Can they buy a car? They’re people doing business in the U.S.”

Coverage for illegal immigrants is one of the most vexing questions in the health care reform debate . But from Waxman’s vantage point, it’s alright for illegal immigrants to participate in the proposed health care reform regime, so long as their care isn’t subsidized.

“Should an illegal immigrant be allowed to drive down the Dulles Toll Road, paid for by federal dollars?” Waxman asked, referring to a major highway that links the nation’s capital with Dulles International Airport in suburban Virginia. “Should illegal immigrants be allowed to buy health insurance from a private insurance company?”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says he expects the House of Representatives to vote on the health care reform bill no earlier than Thursday, November 5.

A plume of white smoke is sure to emanate from Capitol Hill this morning.

For House Democrats are unveiling their final health care reform bill during a grand ceremony on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.

For months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) regaled the Congressional press corps with platitudes and trifle that the health care legislation was “on schedule” or “on track.” She frequently seasoned this rhetoric with exclamations that the work was “exciting” and “historic.”

And on the day before Pelosi and the Democratic brain trust prepared to roll out the much-anticipated health care package, the speaker never spoke.

In fact, few Democrats said much of anything. And the big rollout was never even made official until the leadership blasted out an announcement via email at 7:36 pm Wednesday night.

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A senior intelligence official conceded Tuesday that the intelligence community has failed to fully inform Congress about some of its spying activities.

Congress is probing what some Democratic lawmakers argue are failures by the Bush administration's intelligence services to inform Congress what they’re doing.

Robert Litt is chief counsel for the Director of National Intelligence. He testified before the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday that the spies didn't tell Congress about a small number of operations. But Litt says the intelligence services have now corrected those omissions and is now informing Congress of its espionage.

Over the summer, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) asked all intelligence services to study and improve the systems they used to tell Congress about what they're doing. 

The ODNI says there were a some minor instances where they found Congress wasn't properly acquainted with various actions. Lawmakers were later brought up to speed.

The law requires the intelligence services to brief Congress about certain types of missions it undertakes.

“We have an obligation to get you the information that you need to provide oversight.  And the scope of what we provide you needs to be adequate to permit you to provide oversight of the intelligence community,” Litt said.

Litt did not discuss what sorts of activities the intelligence services failed to disclose to lawmakers or which agencies were not thorough in briefing Congress.

“I think that when some of the agencies went back and looked at their records, they found a couple of matters where they had determined not to brief. And they relooked at it and decided probably ought to be briefed,” Litt said. “But those were a few isolated instances.” 

The House Intelligence Committee launched a probe of the intelligence community over the summer after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) exclaimed at a contentious May press conference that the CIA "lied" to her about using advanced interrogation techniques on detainees.

Democrats on the House Intelligence panel say there as many as five episodes where Congress was kept in the dark. CIA Director Leon Panetta told the committee in June that it failed to alert Congress about operations targeting al Qaeda.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told FOX that “it is the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to be clear and candid with the United States Congress. Director Panetta has made a relationship of trust, confidence, and respect a top priority."

Some Republicans on the Intelligence Committee, including ranking member Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), argue that the House inquiry is politically motivated and is an effort to shield Pelosi from criticism after her allegation that the CIA failed to tell her the truth.

Forty is the new 30.

And on Capitol Hill, “surveying” is the new “whipping.”

The House Democratic leadership this week launched its first official effort to poll where lawmakers stand on the massive health care reform bill. The process provides leaders a metric to gauge whether they the votes to pass the plan. It also lets them know where there are potential problems so they can tweak the legislation.

A senior House Democratic leadership aide indicates that this nose count is not a formal “whip.” Instead, it’s just a “survey.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the chief architects of the health care reform legislation. He characterized the count as a cordial exercise.

“You hold out what the proposal is and you say ‘Are you there? Can we count on you?’” Waxman said. “And when they say they are there, we count on them.”

But this process is not always as pleasant as Waxman described.

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House Democratic leaders are sharing preliminary cost analysis of their health care reform proposals with their rank-and-file members.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) "scores" or analyzes the cost of such proposals.

The House asked the CBO to scrub three different scenarios. A senior House leadership aide familiar with the numbers told FOX that all three plans reduce the deficit over 20 years. CBO crunched two of the three options. But did not yet have an evaluation of a plan that could "trigger" a government-run health care plan, known as the "public option."

"We're excited by the CBO numbers," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who then shared the figures with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in a sit-down meeting.

The CBO cost analysis could make or break the bill in the House. Many moderate and fiscally-conscious Democrats are concerned the measure could cost too much. And a bill that busts the federal deficit could cost Democratic leaders votes.

"We're in an excellent place with the caucus with what they've put out," Pelosi said of the CBO's analysis. "We have to live by what they (CBO) put out."

But there was no final CBO score on the health care reform plans.

It's thought that Democratic leaders could be inching closer to bringing a health care reform bill to the House floor once they get a final CBO evaluation.

"We're just about there," Pelosi said.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has signaled that he'd like to have a health care reform bill on the House floor in the next few weeks.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) sets the daily slate of business on the House floor.

But when he cancelled last Friday’s House session, Republicans pilloried Hoyer for trimming the schedule.

But count Hoyer among those unhappy about the decision.

“When you hear the grumbling, count me among the grumblers,” Hoyer said Tuesday after a meeting with reporters. “I’m not happy about it.”

The problem is that House has increasingly worked “short” work-weeks this fall. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised long work weeks at the start of the year And Congress certainly met that mark during the first six months as the House tackled an economic stimulus plan, an increase in insurance for children and a controversial energy and climate bill. But the pace stalled as lawmakers work off-stage on a health care reform bill and await Senate action on a host of annual spending bills which the House already approved.

“Send us work,” Hoyer said of the Senate late last week. “I’m not just going to hold people here to twiddle their thumbs.”

But on Tuesday, Hoyer was quick to note he wasn’t criticizing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

“I think Reid has the most frustrating job in American government,” Hoyer said. “It’s difficult to move things in the Senate.”

Meantime, even as the House awaits Senate action on a number of bills, lawmakers huddle almost daily behind closed doors on assembling a bill to reform the nation’s health care system.

“We’re working like Trojans on health care reform,” Hoyer said late last week.

A four-year-old boy in the tony Washington, DC suburb of Potomac, MD woke up from his nap at Montessori school.

And then promptly gave it to his classmate.

His classmate then took it home. She leafed through the book “Where the Wild Things Are.”

A few days later, she gave it to her nanny.

Later in the week, the nanny went for drinks at the Liberty Tavern in Arlington, VA. She hobnobbed with young professionals and sipped pinot noir.

The nanny then left them with a cocktail far more potent than the ones they were nursing at the bar.

One of the young professionals went to work two days later at a big law firm on K Street in downtown Washington. She chatted over coffee in the break room with a third-year-associate at the firm.

And then she gave it to him.

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Lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill have wondered for months if the Senate could ignore usual Senate procedure and bypass a threatened filibuster just to approve health care reform.

Most of this chatter has just been speculation. But if anyone had any doubts that Congressional leaders might try and end-run around Senate tradition, all they needed to do was watch an otherwise innocuous meeting of of the House Ways and Means Committee Thursday morning.

The Ways and Means Committee built the bus that some Democrats believe could be used to shuttle the health care reform bill across the finish line. In essence, the committee structured and “packaged” the health care reform bill in such a manner that it would allow the Senate to exploit a budgetary loophole to skirt a filibuster threat.

Lawmakers can filibuster almost anything in the Senate. But senators can cut off a filibuster if they can round up 60 votes. Thus, 60 votes is what’s really needed to approve a health care reform package.

But if the Senate falls short of that mark, lawmakers could tuck the health care reform measure into the annual budget reconciliation process that Congress wrestles with each year. Reconciliation synchs up the U.S. tax code and the revenues the government brings in. And reconciliation measures are given special protections under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. No filibusters are permitted and a simple majority is necessary to approve such bills.

Republicans know they can’t halt a determined majority in the House on health care. But they can gum up the works in the Senate where a host of moderate, Democratic senators remain skeptical of the health care reform bills crafted by the Senate leadership. However, structuring the bill in such a way that allows it to be scooped up in the reconciliation process could torpedo the GOP’s Senate trump card.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the top Republican on the House Budget Committee and a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee painted a grim parliamentary picture for GOP efforts to halt health care reform.

“The secret of the week is that Democrats pulled the trigger on the nuclear option,” Ryan said. “They built their vehicle today.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) said that the committee’s maneuver “is strictly procedural.” But he noted that the “action was necessary because there is a possibility that a handful of Senate Republicans could choose to engage in partisan tactics to stall this important health reform bill.”

Rangel added that this move was to “simply preserve the option of advancing health reform legislation.”

But Ryan believes the change in posture means that using reconciliation to pass health care reform could be a fait accompli.

“Why create the option if you don’t intend to use it,” he said. “And the fact that you created it enhances the chances that you will use it.”

Many Senate Democrats, including Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd (D-WV) remain skeptical of using the budget reconciliation process to approve health care reform. Earlier this year, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) dismissed ideas of stuffing the health care bill into recompilation. But conceded that “it is more than theoretically possible.”

Three House committees approved health care reform bills in July. The Education and Labor Committee included a provision that would allow the Senate to consider its version under reconcilation rules.

House and Senate leaders hope to start debate on their respective health care reform bills later this month or in early November.

Remember on Sesame Street when they’d do the segment “Which of these things is not like the others?”

They’d show one group of kids, all jumping rope. And then another child, doing his own thing, playing football.

Well, time to play that same game again. Only Congressional style. Select the item below that doesn’t match the others.

The Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. National Work and Family Month. John William Heisman. The University of California-Irvine men’s volleyball team. The Apollo moon landing. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI). And the University of Florida Gators.

The House of Representatives has voted to honor all of these people and events this year.

Except one.

The House commemorated the 98^th anniversary of Kappa Alpha Psi. It voted in support of October as National Work and Family Month. Lawmakers doffed their hats to John William Heisman for his contributions to the game of football. The House marked the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing. It saluted John Dingell for becoming the longest-serving House member. And the House congratulated the University of Florida for winning the national championship in college football.

Like Florida, the UC Irvine Anteaters men’s volleyball team won the national championship in their sport, too. But the House won’t fete its players, the same way it voted to honor Kappa Alpha Psi, National Work and Family Month, John William Heisman, the moon shot, John Dingell and the Florida Gators.

That’s not to say the House wasn’t planning on glorifying the Anteaters. It was.

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