The answer is, as I read it, not a lot.

One of the plaintive cries of La Slaughter's Broken Promises report (PDF), which is a mine of information on the practices of Brer DeLay as Maj Leader, was that he stuffed the floor schedule with legislative junk (as here, on page 2):

House Republicans continued to squeeze out real debate on controversial issues in the House by devoting more and more floor time to suspension bills.  In the 108th Congress, Republican leaders apparently decided that the House should spend two out of the three days of its already abbreviated legislative week on non-controversial legislation, such as bills that name post offices and congratulate sports teams.  At the same time, they allowed less time and fewer amendments and votes on the serious, substantive legislation the House considers.

My scan of the DDs, regrettably, showed them stuffed with just the sort of bills the report decried.

For instance, on March 5, the House's sole legislative product was a dozen suspensions (that is, bills brought to the floor under an accelerated procedure, and requiring a 2/3 majority to pass).

Now, I recognize that pols need to show a bit of leg to their low information constituents, and footage of a rep standing in the House chamber orating about some local hero or landmark given Federal recognition is good for business.

But even local news has its limits; five minutes of the rep spouting would surely provide ample footage; and with a single vote on ten such bills, the House could process all the dross bills its members reasonably need in little more than an hour each sitting day.

Of the 11 weekdays in my 'sample', one day was not a sitting day; four days were taken in dealing with what appeared to me to be substantial bills:

HR 800 (EFCA) (March 1)
HR 720 (water pollution control) (March 9)
HR 985 (whistleblower protection) (March 14)
HR 1362 (government acquisition practices) (March 15);

and on six days, it was just dross.

There is of course the argument that there is no point in the House processing bills more quickly than the Senate can absorb them.

And the general experience (as well as that more specifically in the 110th with HR 1 (the 9/11 bill) is that the Senate is bound to take much longer than the House on any bill.

I don't like that argument.

For one thing, a leadership never has more momentum and a blanker sheet of paper to work on than at the start of a Congress.

(There may be more pressure to produce at the end of a session; but that reduces leadership control as well as the sales resistance of their troops!)

For another, they never know what unforeseeable intervening event may happen and derail all plans (eg 9/11, of course).

And, for a third, this majority leadership in particular did make a big thing of sane legislative process (in New Direction as well as Broken Promises).

Finally - of course, the 110th's main function for the Dems is as a stall on which to set out their wares to the 08 voters. Not, I hasten to add, to put 08 prez candidates in a policy straitjacket, but to allow customers - or the media on their behalf - to get a feel for the sort of substance that a Dem trifecta might deliver in the 111th.

My reading is that the surge coup (whatever good it does in Iraq) has worked a treat in DC in a sort of slowmo wrong-footing of the Dems, from which they have to get their balance once more.

Iraq hasn't taken up that much time on the House floor; but I'm pretty sure that it has taken up a lot of leadership time and attention that otherwise would have been devoted to domestic legislation.

How well the Dem leadership deals with the challenge will be seen as much in how they keep on track with the rest of their agenda than in their handling of the Iraq issue itself.