No More Mr. Polite Guy

I like the new feistiness from President Obama, as seen through chief nerd Peter Orszag's recent comments, among others.

At a recent lunch with reporters, Budget Director Peter Orszag was asked if he could name a useful idea submitted by Republicans. He couldn't -- and didn't even pretend he'd considered many. When House Republicans put out a budget last week, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "The party of no has become the party of no ideas."

Gibbs probably wouldn't have said that 40 days ago, when the White House was treating the issue of bipartisanship more carefully. But after party-line votes in the House and Senate and minimum flexibility from GOP leaders, Obama aides say that Republicans are not "acting in good faith." Which leads them to two conclusions: One, their acts of conciliation buy them nothing in negotiations with the GOP; two, and more important, they've decided they'll pay no political price for acting in a more partisan fashion.

As Steve Benen notes, the current tactics from the President have yielded no results from the Republican caucus; if anything they've dug in deeper since the election. The midterms are 19 months off and will probably be measured by the state of the economy at that time, so Republicans probably WON'T pay any price for their obstruction. And that obstruction is historic in nature.

Ah, the U.S. Senate—the world’s greatest deliberative body. The chamber designed to be, as George Washington famously described it to Thomas Jefferson, “the saucer into which we pour legislation to cool” the hot tea from the cup of the House of Representatives. It is a body set up to make it difficult to enact laws, with a tradition of unlimited debate and a deference to the intense feelings of the minority over the more casual will of the majority.

Newt (Gingrich) saw nearly all his initiatives, including much of the Contract with America, disappear in the Senate Bermuda Triangle. Gingrich’s problems with Dole and his Senate were both predictable and par for the course. But the Senate today is showing signs of getting even more difficult to deal with. The Senate has taken the term “deliberative” to a new level, slowing not just contentious legislation but also bills that have overwhelming support.

The Virginia Tech bill is a dramatic example, but it is far from the only one. A bill to require senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically—something done for years by members of the House, presidential candidates, and nearly every legislative body out there—has been the victim of revolving holds for months on end. A widely supported ethics and lobbying reform bill was pushed back several times and nearly derailed by a hold placed by Senator Jim DeMint (RSC). A bill to repeal President Bush’s executive order allowing presidents to shield their papers from public view for decades after they leave office has been held up by Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY)—who stepped in after a months-long hold on the bill by Coburn was finally lifted in September.

The rules have simply modified to the point that the Senate really cannot get its business done almost at all. And the filibuster is now routinely Administered, far more than in the past, as you can see in this chart:



As Ezra Klein says:

If you want to understand why the earth is likely to heat and why comprehensive health reform is unlikely to pass and why the government is increasingly letting the Federal Reserve govern its response to the financial crisis, that graph basically tells the story.

I'd take issue with Ornstein on one point: He argues that "the problems here are less the rules and more the culture. And that is not going to change anytime soon." But that's fatalism. Imagine a classroom in which all the children are polite and they can talk whenever they wish. Now imagine that order breaks down, the children grow rude and combative, and the classroom devolves into cacophony. You wouldn't say that we need to wait for the children to be polite again. You'd say we need to change the rules so they're responsive to the behavior of the participants.

If filibusters are now going to become simply a routine instrument to obstruct the will of the majority on even enormously popular issues, with the entire minority willing to hang together, you have to wonder about its utility. Which is why the battle over budget reconciliation is so important. The President yesterday told Democratic leaders that "If we don’t pass the budget, it will empower those critics who don’t want to see anything getting done." That's true. And major investments in health care, education and energy are intrinsically tied up with that budget. If the only way to get them done is to place them in a process where they cannot be filibustered, then so be it. The people called for change last November and they deserve it, indeed they will be in dire straits without it. The rules of a legislative body cannot be held above the good of the country, not anymore at least.

Stupid Hold Tricks

Robert Menendez has been a pretty sharp Senator, and I don't regret making calls for him in 2006. I do regret him falling back on failed tropes of the past to not only frustrate a new era of US-Cuba policy, but to inexplicably stop dedicated professionals from doing their jobs protecting the planet from pollution and climate change.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), a strong supporter of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, is launching a full-on battle this week to remove several provisions from the 2009 government spending bill that would open a small crack in the slammed door of relations with Havana.

Menendez fired a broadside at the Obama administration yesterday for backing a provision buried in the $410 billion spending bill, which must become law by next week in order to keep the government running. The New Jersey senator, a Cuban-American, objects to language in the bill that would allow Cuban-Americans to visit relatives on the island once a year and end limits on the sale of American food and medicines in Cuba. [...]

The WaPo reports today that the senator has held up two Obama science nominees in an attempt to twist the arms of his fellow Dems.

First of all, Menendez is hopelessly behind the times. The majority of his fellow Cuban-Americans SUPPORT lifting the travel ban, because they understand that the policy of isolation has completely failed. So do wild-eyed liberals on foreign policy like Richard Lugar. But worse, Menendez is taking his temper tantrum out on two very qualified candidates who have nothing to do with this spat.

But Menendez isn't just making his case to continue with a failed policy, he's now blocking two White House nominees -- Obama's choices to be the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- to get the senators' attention on his Cuba-related concerns.

So, to summarize, Menendez supports Obama's nominees, but won't let the Senate vote on them until after he's done complaining about a subtle change in a foreign policy that hasn't worked after more than five decades of attempts.

Markos and Kevin Drum have more. The worst part of this is that you have a liberal Democrat abusing the ridiculous Senate holds process, which encourages others to do the same:

And he's not alone. It seems that multiple anonymous senators are now holding up Holdren and Lubchenco's nominations, as Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told CQ:

"It's infuriating," said Rockefeller, who backs Holdren and Lubchenco's hiring. "They're brilliant scientists."

Science advocates said they are frustrated by the blocking of administration officials they argue are needed now more than ever. The holdup could slow timely science and environmental policy work between Congress and the administration, particularly the spending of roughly $21.5 billion dedicated to science in the economic recovery package.

Thanks a lot, Sen. Menendez. I hope it's worth it.

(Hey, maybe he and Fidel Castro can do a Bloggingheads about it...)

Dr. No Lives

So today the Senate tried to ruin Tom Coburn's day by packaging over 30 bills that he has held up despite overwhelming bipartisan majorities into one "Tomnibus" bill.

Engineered by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, the bill includes 35 of the most irresistible-sounding measures stuck on the docket, including the Mothers Act and the Protect Our Children Act.

There are items to commemorate “The Star-Spangled Banner” and to try to curb pornography, cut drug use and help victims of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Officially known as the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, the catchall legislation includes a measure to improve life for victims of paralysis, which Mr. Reid calls the Superman bill in tribute to the late Christopher Reeve.

The obvious intent is to apply a little legislative Kryptonite and embarrass Mr. Coburn into dropping his procedural objections to the measures while highlighting his willingness to put roadblocks in front of bills that have support from all corners — a textbook case of what Democrats view as extreme Republican obstructionism.

A lot of these bills have Republican sponsors, and all of them have overwhelming support. Kagro X, writing for Daily Kos, put it this way: "here's the question going into the vote: Will Senate Republicans flip on their own legislation, just to back up the paranoid theories of a crazy doofus whose main concern in life (besides crossword puzzles) appears to be the growing menace of teenage bathroom lesbians?"

But Senate Republicans, nothing if not a loyal group, decided to go crashing down with the Coburn ship, backing up the wackadoo from Oklahoma just enough to stop the bill in its tracks. The final cloture vote was 50-35, with 10 Republicans shrinking from their duty and not voting.

"Holds" like this hold up because Republicans have more loyalty to each other and their party than they do to the country. A hold like Chris Dodd trying to stop the march of the surveillance state and expansive executive power failed because Democrats have no such fealty.

...Just to update, this was a good move by Reid. We now have Senators like Susan Collins on the record as voting against treatment for stroke victims, stopping child predators, victims of paralysis, homeless youth, and about 20 other popular programs.

Fighting Obstructionism

It looks like the series of popular bills that Tom Coburn (R-Lesbians in the Bathrooms) has put holds on are going to be combined into a Coburn omnibus that should get a final vote next week. Sen. Reid's office is calling it the Advancing America's Priorities Act. They are a series of health care provisions, environmental provisions, scientific provisions, and homeland security provisions, all of them with broad bipartisan support. The Congressional Budget Office has debunked Coburn's ridiculous spin that these measures would increase the deficit; these aren't appropriations, but provisions to direct spending, so they don't add a dime to the total fiscal cost.

This bill will put Republican Senators in a bind:

Here, in no particular order, is a list of such Senators, and the legislation they partnered on:

Senator Thad Cochran - introduced - Stroke Treatment and Ongoing Prevention Act (S. 999/HR 477)
Sen. Christopher S. Bond - introduced - Vision Care for Kids Act (HR 507/S. 1117)
Sen. Sam Brownback- introduced- Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act (S. 1810/HR 3112)
Sen Domenici, Pete V - introduced - Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act (S. 2304/HR 3992)
Sen Vitter, David - introduced - Enhancing the Effective Prosecution of Child Pornography (S. 2869/HR 4136)
Sen Lugar, Richard G. - introduced - Reconstruction and Stabilization Civilian Management Act (HR 1084/S. 613)
Sen Coleman, Norm - introduced - Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization Act (HR 1678/S. 840)
Sen Stevens, Ted - introduced - Ocean Exploration, Mapping & Research (HR 1834/HR 2400/S. 39)
Sen Snowe, Olympia J. - introduced - Integrated Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act (S. 950/HR 2342)
Sen Voinovich, George V. - introduced - Appalachian Regional Development Act Amendments of 2008 (S. 496)

Coburn blocked every one of those bills - and every one of them will be in Reid's package next week.

Republicans in the Senate played politics with their power as long as they could. But now they're very, very unpopular, and their party's brand is in the gutter. Putting politics over substance by standing with Coburn may have been possible for this bunch even a year ago.

But now?

I never put it past Republicans to hang together to the bitter end, but on this one it seems like they'll either see the light, or be ushered out the door. There's a reason, incidentally, that a bunch of them don't even want to be seen at their own party's convention. They'd rip the word "Republican" off the ballot if they could get away with it.

Wyden Steps It Up

It's mostly FISA for me today.

On the floor of the Senate, Ron Wyden today stepped up on two fronts. He first emphasized that the secret documents that include the legal justifications made by the Office of Legal Counsel for warrantless surveillance have only been offered for view by members of the Intelligence Committee and a few of the members of the leadership and not the full Senate. It is nearly impossible to get a full sense of this program, how the President and the executive branch sees their responsibilities under the law, and why they feel the telecom industry should be immunized from any illegal conduct, without seeing those documents. Senator Reid has actually asked the Administration to let all Senators see those documents, and Wyden went even further.

First, Wyden engaged in a dialogue with Senator Dodd about how the Senator from Connecticut, a 26-year member of the body and a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is barred from viewing the documents. Next, he referred to Senator Whitehouse's discussion of the legal opinions and the implications they had for executive power. By allowing this legislation to go through without full disclosure of what the executive branch feels are its responsibilities under the law, we essentially allow their arguments to go unchallenged and give them the imprimatur of the Congress.

The second thing that Wyden discussed was his amendment in the Intelligence Committee, which was passed on a bipartisan basis, that would safeguard those Americans traveling overseas from being subject to warrantless surveillance. This was considered a poison pill from the standpoint of the Administration, but it's actually a very simple provision that would extend civil liberties and basic Constitutional rights to every American no matter their geographic space. Wyden explains it here:

Under current law, before conducting surveillance on an American citizen within the United States, the government must establish probable cause before a criminal court for law enforcement cases, or before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for intelligence cases. This means that the U.S. government needs a court-approved warrant to deliberately tap the phone conversations of an American living in Medford, Ore., or in Arlington. This protection, however, is not extended to Americans outside the country. If the U.S. government wants to deliberately tap the phone conversations of those same Americans on business in India or serving their country in Iraq, the attorney general can personally approve the surveillance by making his own, unilateral determination of probable cause.

During the Senate intelligence committee's consideration of legislation that would revise FISA, I offered an amendment that would require the government to secure a warrant from the FISA court before targeting an American overseas. This amendment, which was co-sponsored by Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), was approved by the committee on a bipartisan vote. Since then it has been upheld by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I look forward to its consideration by the full Senate this week.

According to Wyden today, the chairs of the Intelligence Committee have come to him and suggested that there may be some unintended consequences as a result of this common-sense amendment. They are trying to work this out in a manager's amendment off the floor. But Wyden made clear that, if the result of that amendment doesn't meet with his approval, he will block unanimous consent on the bill.

So now this is the SECOND potential hold being put on this bill. It's clear that Wyden understands that his amendment represents a roadblock to signage for the President, and that the scheme will be to strip it out. He has now thrown down the gauntlet and announced his intention to block the bill if that takes its course. Of course, Harry Reid only honors the holds that the President likes, so it's unclear what effect this will have, or if a compromise will be reached and it will not come to that. However, adding an additional Senator's hold to the bill complicates the chances of it getting out of the Senate that much more.

The Republican arguments about this bill are absurd, claiming that as long as the Attorney General writes a note that something is legal, then it is (apparently Congress has no role), claiming that legal counsels for major corporations shouldn't be expected to know US law, etc., etc. But I think the biggest news of the day so far is Wyden's attacking the bill from a completely different angle, seemingly with the knowledge that a bipartisan amendment passed by both the Intelligence and the Judiciary Committees is about to be stripped out of the final bill.

Some Holds Are Bigger Than Others

I don't know if you watch as much C-SPAN as I do. If you did, and you didn't know anything about the workings of Congress but just watched it like a TV show, you'd think the leader of the Senate was Tom Coburn (R-OK). He's always on the floor, making speeches, sometimes lasting an hour or longer, and he seems to have something to add to every bill that's up for consideration. Most of the time, he doesn't like them. He doesn't like them because they cost money, and Coburn considers deficit spending to be a bigger moral issue than abortion. Listening to his speeches, you'd think they were replays, except for the fact that he sports a salt-and-pepper beard these days. The speech is always about passing debt on to our children and grandchildren, and how this is a moral tragedy, and how Republicans have lost their way on the issue of federal spending, and that we should look to see what current programs are working before spending money on new ones.

These sound like fairly noble ideas on the surface, but in reality, Tom Coburn doesn't want the Senate to spend any money. He would never vote to increase revenues, and he would never vote for new programs. He just wants to drown the government in the bathtub. And so, Coburn has scrupulously put a Senatorial hold on practically every single spending initiative that the Senate has sought to pass.

Coburn, a physician who served in the House before he was elected in 2004, has rankled the collegiality of the Senate by putting roughly 80 holds on bills for new heritage areas. He even placed a hold on a bill designed to close a loophole that allowed Cho Seung-Hui to buy the gun he used in his deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech this year.

Quizzed about his holds, Coburn reached into his pocket and brought out a card he carries with a printout displaying each of the bills on which he has a hold and its author.

Coburn is very proud of his holds, which according to another account number a hundred. He has a page on his website explaining the hold process and how he uses the unanimous consent rule to block consideration of anything he thinks includes "secret spending." He has put holds on bills like suicide prevention for veterans, naming a post office after Rachel Carson, and perhaps worst, investigating the murder of civli rights leaders like Emmett Till (UPDATE: Emmett Till was a teenage kid from Chicago who was murdered for looking at a white woman. It became a major civil rights cause, but he was not a leader. H/t Brian Pitts):

Legislation to beef up investigations into unsolved murders from the civil rights era looked like it would breeze through Congress.

The House passed it 422-2 last summer. Its Senate sponsors included some of the most senior Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

But the bill has stalled since the House vote in June. Its supporters acknowledge that prospects are slim this year with just days left on the legislative calendar. The breakdown offers a case study in how even the most popular legislation can get caught up in Washington gridlock.

The Senate sponsor of the "Emmett Till Act" is Chris Dodd. Unlike Sen. Coburn, he has placed holds only in those instances where he has considered it absolutely necessary. And unlike Sen. Coburn, his holds are ignored by the Democratic leadership.

Here's Harry Reid's spokesman crying crocodile tears about the Coburn hold:

"It's absolutely outrageous that one senator and one senator only appears to be blocking us from passing this piece of legislation," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Yes, but there's nothing you can do about it, right? I mean, if one Senator wants to block consideration of a bill, I guess he can just do it...

Unless that bill gives amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms.

Harry Reid has no problem respecting the one hundred holds from Tom Coburn on all sorts of legislation, but will ignore Chris Dodd's. That's the bottom line, and given that, you have to conclude that Harry Reid is the one doing the holding.

Chris Dodd is heroically calling for a filibuster, but the real issue here is the issue of ignoring the rules of the Senate. Harry Reid is picking and choosing which Senators he will listen to. The fact that Chris Dodd came within one vote of defeating him for Minority Leader back in 2004 wouldn't have anything to do with this, would it?

Harry Reid has set up two rules for the United States Senate; one under the normal standards of conduct that have held for 200-plus years, and one for bills that he really really has to pass or the President will get mad at him. Earlier this year, Reid ignored a hold placed by Sen. Ron Wyden and confirmed an assistant Secretary of the Interior that Wyden had issues with. Sen. Wyden dropped an important amendment into the flawed Intelligence Committee bill on FISA that the President opposes, which would force the government to get a warrant to spy on Americans overseas. I guess we'll see if Reid strips that amendment out of the bill, and if he holds the same respect for amendments that he does for holds.

The point is that Harry Reid has made Tom Coburn the most important member of the United States Senate. He's made Chris Dodd, a member of his own party, irrelevant. And he's made himself into a joke. We cannot go into 2008 with this laughingstock of a leader in the Senate.

Wiretapping Update: Hold, What Hold?

Chris Dodd's noble action yesterday doesn't squash the telecom immunity bill entirely, but it's supposed to slow it down and make it such a pain in the ass that nobody in their right mind would push it forward. Harry Reid is not in his right mind.

Tim Starks of Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring the Senate’s surveillance bill up for floor debate in mid-November. That’s despite the hold that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) plans to place on the measure — something first reported by Election Central’s Greg Sargent.

I’m a bit confused here. This just doesn’t happen. So I chatted with someone I know with extensive Hill experience, who said:

“I can’t think of one time when Harry Reid went around his own. It’s just not normal for a leader to do that to his own side. Sometimes you’ll go around Republicans, sometimes they’ll use holds to be “spoilers,” but that happens to the other guy. You just don’t do it to one of your own.”

Indeed, the bill passed out of the Intelligence Committee, with only Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold opposed. Wyden did manage to place a poison pill in there:

An amendment by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who opposed the bill for its inclusion of telecom immunity, requires the government to obtain a warrant when targeting an American overseas for surveillance.

Last night, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "We have strong concerns about that amendment. We certainly could not accept it."

Bond called the provision "problematic" and said that if it is not modified, passage could be difficult.

Jeez, it's almost like that those on the side of the rule of law are in the minority again. Putting poison pills in our own bills to knock them down? Unbelievable.

I have to hand it to Dodd again. He's fighting the good fight here, and he's the perfect person to take this on. One reason, besides the bully pulpit of running for President, is that he has already announced that he will not seek a run for re-election to the Senate. So the prospects of retaliation mean less to him. Still, this takes a lot of guts, which Barack Obama, who put out a nice little press release but hasn't gone to the same lengths, doesn't have in the same way. Obama did put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky, which was huge, but look at the countervailing interests here. Opposing a Bush appointee is different from opposing Bush, the Republicans, and powerful telecom companies all at once.

And I'm as puzzled as Atrios about the idea of immunizing any party from breaking laws, given that there's legislation preventing ex post facto laws from being enacted.

UPDATE: If you want to know why Democratic leaders would be pushing to give telecom companies a free hand to break American law, this is a handy blog post.

Top Verizon executives, including CEO Ivan Seidenberg and President Dennis Strigl, wrote personal checks to (Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay) Rockefeller totaling $23,500 in March, 2007. Prior to that apparently coordinated flurry of 29 donations, only one of those executives had ever donated to Rockefeller (at least while working for Verizon).

In fact, prior to 2007, contributions to Rockefeller from company executives at AT&T and Verizon were mostly non-existent.
But that changed around the same time that the companies began lobbying Congress to grant them retroactive immunity from lawsuits seeking billions for their alleged participation in secret, warrantless surveillance programs that targeted Americans.

The Spring '07 checks represent 86 percent of money donated to Rockefeller by Verizon employees since at least 2001.

There are times when I really hate how perverted our political system has become.

UPDATE II: Dodd now vows to filibuster the bill.

Are you willing to go to the mat to restore the Constitution?

Just last night, we heard there are plans to disregard Senator Dodd's intention to place a hold on a FISA bill that includes amnesty for telecommunications companies.

That would be a pretty extraordinary move, but Chris Dodd has pledged to stop this horrible bill any way he can.

So if the hold is not honored, he is prepared to go to the Senate floor and filibuster.

Rolling back the Bush Administration assault on the rule of law has been a major focus of Chris Dodd's work in the Senate -- and it's also a centerpiece in his campaign for President.