Good Tuesday morning. Flooding in the Midwest and a heat wave along the East Coast forces one to consider whether there has been a single week of normal weather in the last few months. Here's what a humid Washington is watching this morning:

-- The Senate will vote on cloture motions on the Consumer-First Energy Act and the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act, before taking confirmation votes on three judicial nominees. The House takes up a number of feel-good resolutions including one to posthumously award the Congressional gold medal to Constantino Brumidi, the painter responsible for many famous works throughout the Capitol building. On a more serious note, the House will consider a bill that would reinvest in the country's rail system, one that would reauthorize NASA funding, and, potentially, a supplemental funding measure for the wars Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush is in Slovenia at an EU summit before heading to four other countries on a farewell tour.

-- For two candidates who claim to be different kinds of politicians, Barack Obama and John McCain sure spend a lot of time attacking each other. Obama, in a speech on the economy yesterday in Raleigh, North Carolina, kicked off what is likely to be a two-week long attack on McCain's economic proposals and record, all in an effort to shift the focus of the presidential race to the struggling economy. The Republican candidate, the New York Times has Obama arguing, would represent little more than a third term of President Bush.

-- As for his own plan, Obama is pushing a more involved federal government, including an additional round of stimulus checks and an emergency foreclosure prevention fund. The Democratic nominee wants an additional $50 billion boost to the economy, citing rising energy costs and unemployment figures, as CNN Money reports. Congressional Democrats plan to go along, the Times writes, with the House potentially voting as early as Thursday on extending unemployment benefits for some who can't find work.

-- Meanwhile, John McCain spent much of yesterday raising money at events in Washington and Richmond and slamming Obama for his association with Democratic super lawyer James Johnson, the man tapped by Obama to head his vice presidential search team. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal wrote that Johnson received reduced rates on a few mortgages from Countrywide Financial, which Republican officials spent Monday claiming were improper, as the LA Times reports this morning. Johnson is the former CEO of Fannie Mae, the federally-backed company that buys mortgages from Countrywide and other lenders; he left the company in 1998. Through his lawyer, Johnson maintains the lower rates are nothing unusual for "extraordinarily low-risk" borrowers.

-- Still, Republicans pounced. "I think it suggests a bit of a contradiction talking about how his campaign is going to be not associated with people like that. Clearly he is very much associated with that," McCain said of Obama. While Obama's campaign called the story "overblown and irrelevant, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds was not so forgiving: "There is nothing 'overblown and irrelevant' about millions of Americans facing foreclosure and Barack Obama entrusting his most important decision as a presidential candidate to a man who has accepted millions in special loans from a subprime mortgage lender. The Obama campaign's reaction is even more appalling considering that they were the first to criticize the Clinton campaign for ties to Countrywide and subprime lenders," he said.

-- Johnson and his fellow veep-vetter, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, were busy on their own yesterday, stopping by Capitol Hill for chats with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others in a combination courtesy call and brainstorming session, as Washington Wire writes. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters that the duo offered a lot of names. (Meanwhile, McCain's own team is hard at work, using Google to track down his own prospects, as the candidate joked at a fundraiser yesterday, per Reuters)

-- McCain will keep up the heat on Obama on two fronts today: In interviews with Fox News' Carl Cameron and NBC's Brian Williams yesterday, McCain compared Obama to former President Jimmy Carter, Jonathan Martin writes, invoking high energy prices and a poor record on national security as well as, one might argue, comparable periods of malaise. "At the center of Barack Obama's plan is a scheme last tried under Jimmy Carter that only increased our dependence on foreign oil," Bounds said in a statement this morning, continuing the attack. McCain himself will hit Obama this morning in Washington, accusing the Democrat of wanting to raise taxes on every demographic group in the country.

-- Messianic Reference Of The Day: Few doubt that Democrats are getting along better with evangelical voters than ever before, but this could be just too much fun: Obama is launching the Joshua Generation project to attract evangelical voters his way, CBN's David Brody writes. Brody, who has seen some Democrats make fake overtures to evangelical voters, says this one is a real effort to attract faith-based voters to Obama's campaign behind issues like poverty, the situation in Darfur and climate change. Still, for a campaign that has tried to be careful on the whole Messiah comparisons, trying to associate oneself with the person who brought the Israelites into the promised land is a little less than subtle.

-- Today On The Trail: McCain addresses a small business summit put on by the National Federation of Independent Businesses and eBay this morning in Washington. The second day of Obama's economic tour takes him to St. Louis, Missouri, where he will address health care issues at a hospital and work alongside a nurse. Both candidates spoke to CNBC recently on the economy, and those interviews air in a special this evening. Meanwhile, national Democratic leaders are holding a unity rally at DNC headquarters in Washington.