Democratic leaders’ failure to secure 60 votes for cloture on the financial regulatory reform bill this afternoon is likely a temporary set-back. But the drama (well, for those of us glued to C-Span2 this afternoon it sure felt dramatic) on the Senate floor this afternoon nicely illuminates the new reality of legislating in the Senate. The chamber’s famed deliberative and flexible institutional practices have ground to a halt under increasingly unmanageable partisan and institutional strains.
Until today, most news coverage of financial services reform gave high marks to the Senate’s consideration of the bill, allowing amendments from both sides of the aisle. Indeed, as Senator Dodd noted proudly last week, the Senate had been able to work its way through amendments for several weeks without a single motion to table or cloture vote. But a closer look at how the Senate floor works today raises doubts about the quality of the Senate’s legislative process. Republicans have denied consent for the Senate to consider numerous high profile Democratic amendments, while Senator Dodd has carefully limited the amendments from the Democratic side. He’s done this by orchestrating “side-by-side” amendments, by occasionally pushing to require 60 votes for amendments that would normally only require a majority vote, and so on.
To be sure, the complexity of financial reform and the time constraints under which the Senate operates might justify efforts to tightly manage the flow of amendments on the floor. But the frustrations on both sides of the aisle– witness Dorgan’s, Harkin’s, and Merkley’s vociferous objections last night on the floor and consider Cantwell and Feingold’s votes against cloture today– are ample evidence of the limits of the Senate’s new procedural practices.
For a detailed look at the emergence of this new Senate, see Steve Smith’s testimony testimony this morning before the Senate Rules Committee during its hearing on the consequences of the filibuster.
Also, check out yesterday’s event at Brookings on the “State of the Senate.” The first panel of Senate “insiders” admitted to Stockholm Syndrome (“The Senate is perfect!”), while the panel of political scientists thought otherwise.
As Walter Mondale said today in testimony before the Senate Rules Committee, “To use an indelicate phrase, the leverage that this institution has does not come from refusing to permit debate. It comes from a free and open discussion of public issues and the public personalities that a president has chosen to serve.” How an intensely polarized Senate (whether between or within the parties) is able to preserve that tradition without some informal or formal adjustments to its Rule 22 bears some consideration.
Oh. And what did the Senate do after the failed cloture vote? They moved into executive session to vote to confirm the promotion of Michael Walsh to be Major General in the Army Corps of Engineers. His promotion had been approved unanimously in committee last fall, but then lingered on the Senate calendar for seven months because Senator David Vitter had placed a hold on his promotion. Why? Because Vitter was mad at the Army Corps. Kudos to the world’s most deliberative body!