As part of their statements, Landrieu and Lincoln are both claiming they will filibuster a bill with the current version of the public option. Landrieu is demanding a trigger, and claims that she is working on a compromise of that sort with Senator Schumer. Lincoln did not specify a trigger as part of her demands. They join Joe Lieberman, who has been threatening to filibuster a bill with a public option for nearly a month.
It is worth noting that, several months ago, both Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln singed the HCAN statement of common purpose which states:
Our government's responsibility is to guarantee quality affordable health care for everyone in America and it must play a central role in regulating, financing, and providing health coverage by establishing:
A truly inclusive and accessible health care system in which no one is left out.
A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.
So, these Senators are just flat-out liars. Both Lincoln and Landrieu signed a document stating that it was the "government's responsibility to guarantee... a public insurance plan," and now they both claim they will filibuster a bill with a public insurance plan.
Both of them flipped on the card-check provision of EFCA, too. They are just liars. I don't even know why we deal with lying Senators like these. I certainly don't know why we give to organizations that give them money. How can we believe anything either from these two Senators, or from organizations that are funneling them money? They consistently lie to us about the most important, progressive aspects of the Democratic agenda.
So, what we might end up with is a Senate Democratic Caucus that holds 98% of its members but still fails to pass healthcare reform, AND a mob of angry progressives who are screaming for the heads of "the Democrats." This isn't fair, but more importantly, it's self-defeating. If progressives REALLY want to transform America, they'll make an issue of the anti-democratic rules of the Senate which make real change virtually impossible.
Someone around here had a crazy idea along those very lines...I would hope this is one Senator's vote liberals could count on should a filibuster reform measure actually ever reach a vote.
It now seems quite likely that the Senate has the 60 votes necessary to force cloture on the motion to proceed with the health care bill. The final three votes Senate majority leader Harry Reid needed were Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu, but all three now appear to be ready to vote "aye." Here is a rundown of all three:
"This weekend, I will vote for the motion to proceed to bring that debate onto the Senate floor," Nelson says. "The Senate should start trying to fix a health care system that costs too much and delivers too little for Nebraskans."
Nelson indicates that this does not mean he is ready to support cloture to pass the bill, but he is willing to let debate go forward.
Earlier today, Senate #2 Dick Durbin stated that Blanche Lincoln has told Harry Reid she would vote yes. Durbin is now walking back that statement, but really, the gig is up for Lincoln.
Anyway, what was Lincoln going to do--oppose even letting the debate go forward and then ask Democrats to vote for her in 2010? Not bloody likely, especially with a prominent figure in Arkansas still considering a primary challenge. Lincoln is highly likely to be a yes.
Right-wingers are in an uproar over this, but really--I am shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going on in this casino! A member of Congress holding out on a key vote in order to secure funding for her home state or district!? I bet that has never happened before. This is really breaking new ground on Capitol Hill!
Further, while they don't seem to realize it, the right-wing uproar over Landrieu's deal actually makes it virtually impossible for her to vote against cloture now. Due to right-wing publicity, now everyone knows Landrieu is bringing $100 million home by holding out. As such, what is Landrieu going to do--issue a statement that preventing a floor debate on health care is more important than $100 million for Louisiana? Only 9% of Louisianans think she should block the debate. I bet a lot more than that want the $100 million, especially now that everyone has heard about the $100 million.
So, it looks like Democrats have the 60 needed to move forward on debate. The truth is that Reid probably secured the 60 votes before filing the cloture motion. It is a rare day when the leadership doesn't know the outcome of a vote before scheduling it.
The vote will take place tomorrow night, at 8 p.m. eastern, following an all-day debate. Notably, in exchange for the all-day debate, Senator Coburn has dropped his demand that the entire bill be read out loud, which means there will be less droning on C-SPAN2 during Monday and Tuesday of next week.
Last weekend in Singapore, President Barack Obama acknowledged that a comprehensive international climate deal will not be reached during the climate change summit in Copenhagen. While many might view this as a letdown, lowering expectations might actually be a good thing, as Matthew Yglesias notes for the American Prospect. According to Yglesias, the conference can now be framed as a relative success whatever happens, and that will keep the momentum for climate action going after Copenhagen.
In the comments to today's action post, some have asked why I, and other progressives, are embracing the Senate bill. Here is my blunt answer: 45,000 Americans die every year from lack of health insurance. The Senate bill reduces the number of people uninsured in this country by roughly two-thirds, thus potentially saving 30,000 lives a year. The House bill will reduce the number of uninsured by roughly 75%, thus potentially saving 36,000 lives a year.
By no means does this solve the health care problems we face in America, but this is still a real achievement. Throw in the fact that, against all odds, we managed to get a triggerless public option in the bill, and yeah, I'd vote for the Senate health care bill. And yeah, I will work to pass it.
Right now, we have 56 votes for cloture, and we need to get the last four frickin' members of the Democratic Senate caucus on board. The Adopt-a-State action is a great way to help do this. Please, join in.
The action is going well, too. By a long, long way, more members of the Open Left community are participating in this action than any non-petition action we have run since the Senate whip count campaign over the summer. Already, nearly 4,000 over 7,000 people have clicked through to SEIU's Adopt-a-State action site, just from the email blast. Many more have clicked through from the blog itself.
I'm glad that people are pissed off. I am actually glad that some are not willing to accept the bill. As I wrote earlier today, I believe we need a much larger, hardcore progressive base.
But personally, I support this bill, and I will work to get it passed. If you don't, that's fine, but if you do I hope you will take part in the Adopt-a-State action. This can save lives--a lot of lives--and we are only four frickin' senators away from pulling it off.
The Senate introduced its health care reform bill yesterday, and only four fricking members of the Democratic Senator caucus are standing in the way of passage. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are the only four remaining "Democratic" Senators who have not ruled out joining with a Republican filibuster of health care reform.
What the #%@*!?!
What's worse, these four don't really give a rat's a$$ what you think, even though their vote affects you. Unless you are a resident of Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana or Nebraska, as far as they are concerned, you might as well live on Pluto.
Fortunately, Open Left is teaming up with SEIU to do something about it. Even if you do not live in Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana or Nebraska, SEIU has developed activist tools that allow you to contact voters in those four states, and tell those voters to tell their Senators to get on board with health care reform. Fight back and make a difference--sign up and tell one, or all four, of these "Democratic" Senators to pass health care reform with a public option:
All the efforts we made to retake Congress. All of the efforts we made to retake the White House. All of the efforts we made to find 51 Senators in favor of health care reform with a public option. It took us fifteen years to get to this point, and we still have to deal with four freaking Democratic Senators who might join with Republicans and filibuster health care reform? Aaarrgghhhh!
If you want to stop things from happening, or slow things down to the speed of molasses, being a US Senator is the world's greatest job. And if your entire political party's complete strategy is to kill every single thing proposed, it's a hell of a deal. But ever so slowly, painfully, creakily, the Senate is beginning to move forward on debating health care reform. It looks more and more like Harry Reid has gotten agreement to pass the motion to debate, the CBO has finally scored the bill, and the debate will likely begin next week- or, who knows given all the delaying tactics, maybe after they get back from Thanksgiving. But things are starting to move.
The motion to debate is only the first step, though, in these ridiculous Senate rules. Democrats are as of right now still probably four or five votes short on getting 60 votes to end debate. The same problem we knew about from the very earliest stages of this fight- that four or five conservative Democrats in the Senate and 60 or so progressives in the House are still dug in on seemingly irreconcilable differences on the public option- is still a big fat unresolved problem. Abortion looms as the second most vexing issue. And then there are half a dozen really important and problematic other issues to be resolved. It will be high drama right up to the end, and if anyone tells you they know how it's going to come out, they are fooling both you and themselves.
Reid has a host of alternatives once this gets to the floor, and he and the Speaker and the White House have many different levers of power to use to ram this through if they are willing to use them, so as I have believed all along, I still think something will pass. The question, though, is which factions do the best job of hanging together and negotiating most smartly, and which choices do the key power players make.
Reconciliation is still an option, but even progressives like Harkin and Rockefeller don't want to go there unless they absolutely have to because of the mess it would make of the bill, and the hoops that would have to be jumped through. If both Senate conservatives and House progressives remain dug in, though, dividing these bills into two pieces, the budget related items (including the public option) and everything else, is still the way that Reid might be forced to go. Since that is truly a last resort, he will continue to find the sweet spot that both sides can live with. And if all else fails, he can always just keep the bill on the floor for debate as long as the holdout Democrats want to debate it. Given that the polling numbers I have seen even in conservative states show that voters overwhelmingly want a debate and final vote allowed, that would put those Democrats in a very uncomfortable spot.
I wrote several months ago that ultimately the fate of this bill would come down to who blinks first, House progressives or Senate conservatives. One of them will win the majority of what they want on policy, and one of them will be given a fig leaf that allows them to say I forced a compromise. If it is House progressives who blink, or who let themselves be picked off one by one, not only would the final bill be far worse, I think it will be a political disaster for the Democratic party: bitter division, a disaffected base going into 2010, Republicans attacking full scale with no progressives to raise support and push back. Progressives have already compromised almost to the breaking point, and it is time for the conservatives in the party to do the same.
Some senators are skeptical lawmakers will be ready to tackle another huge issue after finishing health care. "After you do one really, really big, really, really hard thing that makes everybody mad, I don't think anybody's excited about doing another really, really big thing that's really, really hard that makes everybody mad," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said. "Climate fits that category."
Well, dagnabbit, I wish I'd thought of that when discussing future goals with ex-managers during performance reviews. 'No, no, I don't need to move on to any next project, I already did one really, really hard thing this year. And hold my calls, would you? They interrupt my Mahjong Titans time.'
But look, I've seen some of the Senate's other really, really hard work this year, and it sucked. Also, it was clearly written mostly by lobbyists anyway. Which is not only sleazier than having your Mom do your homework, it's lazier. It means these Senators didn't so much as have to supervise the staff manager that told the policy writers to stop screwing around and get that subparagraph on their desk, ASAP. That's like having your Mom's secretary do your homework.
This is some Subgenius level slacking going on up there in the Senate. If these Senators were on the government dime, why, someone might get angry about this. If we were paying for ... oh, right.
In closing, I can only sputter at this point. So I'm turning you over to the immortal inspirational speaking of George W. Bush. Here, in a 2004 debate with John Kerry, our former president laid out a nobler vision of a public service work ethic that, sadly, may deeply disturb Sen. Claire McCaskill:
The Senate health care bill is now online. It is a lot to wade through, but I can tell you a few things right off the bat:
The opt-out public option in the bill will not begin until 2014. This is one year later than even the 2013 date included in earlier versions of the bill.
The opt-out mechanism is simply when states pass a law. So, that means both state legislatures (except in Nebraska), plus a Governor's signature. Now, even if the opt-out public option passes into law, conservatives have an extra year to try and organize against it.
The penalty for individuals not purchasing health insurance will be $95, and also will not start until 2014.
Also, while the Senate bill does not include Stupak language in the House bill, the public option will not cover abortion procedures.
Obviously, in a bill this large, these bullet points just scratch the surface. Consider them appetizers.
1. What's in the bill? The Senate Democratic caucus has just started their meeting on the merged senate health care bill. Wonkroom tweets, via CNN, that the bill will cost $849 billion, and reduce the deficit by $127 billion, over ten years. Via Quick Hits, it will only over 94% of Americans (31 million), which is up from 83%, but below the 96% (36 million) estimated by the CBO for the House bill. So, it actually has a higher cost per person covered than the House health care bill, with less generous subsidies to match.
Over at Fire Dog Lake, Dave Dayden breaks down what to expect in the bill. It appears that, at least for now, it will include the opt-out public option. The triggered co-op, not reconciliation, remains "Plan B.".
2. Will it get to the floor? Earlier in the day, majority leader Harry Reid gave Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln a sneak peak of the bill. The only conclusion to draw from this is that these are the only three Senators who have not committed to vote in favor a motion to proceed on the bill.
Ben Nelson seems to be leaning in favor of voting yes, although he doesn't promise to support the bill in its final vote. No indication from Blanche Lincoln. May Landrieu claims to be leaning toward voting against, probably in an attempt to force concessions even before the bill hits the floor. If she does defeat the bill, it will delay the process in the Senate by at least two more weeks, and water it down even further.
3. What is the timeline and process? The motion to proceed vote is expected on Saturday, in order to give 72 hours between unveiling the bill and voting on it. Then again, I'm not sure why, given that this is the motion to proceed, rather than the vote on the actual bill. A complete description of the process required to bring the bill to the floor can be read here.
Really limping forward here. At this point, the best case scenario is that the debate and amendment process will begin on Tuesday, December 1st.
In addition to the release of the Senate health care bill this evening (Senate Democratic caucus meeting, 5 p.m. eastern, with CBO score), the buzz today is that Senate majority leader Harry Reid won't use reconciliation for health care reform. This would reduce the chances of passing a public option in the bill, given that Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu have to committed to voting for cloture on a bill with a public option.
However, the actual article reporting that Reid won't use reconciliation this isn't quite so definitive:
In a meeting Nov. 16 with Democrats who support a Medicare-like public option, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., indicated that he did not plan to try to move a health bill through reconciliation, other Democrats said.
"I'm not going to quote him, but suffice to say, after the meeting was over I thought it was unlikely," said Bob Casey, D-Pa.
Regan LaChapelle, a spokeswoman for Reid, said, "We are not ruling anything out, but Sen. Reid is continuing to work to put together a bill that will garner the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Not sure how much this actually changes anything. "Unlikely" isn't the same thing as "never." Reconciliation rarely came to the forefront in public discussions of health care, which almost always made it pretty "unlikely" that the Senate would use reconciliation. In fact, back in April, the Senate did not even include an option to use reconciliation health care in the budget, and only added it later on at the behest of the House.
The remaining questions are reconciliation are two-fold:
If the current bill reaches an impasse as the final vote nears, is Reid more willing to make concessions to Landrieu, Lieberman, Lincoln, Nelson and others than he is to use reconciliation? The answer is probably "more willing to make concessions."
How late in the game can the bill still be split into two, with the regulatory measures passing through 60 votes and things like the public option passing with only 51? The answer here, I believe, is as late as the conference committee between the House and Senate. Right up until the very end.
Really, it was never very likely that the Senate would use reconciliation, so I'm not sure this changes much. Then again, it was never very likely that the Senate would include a public option of any sort in the health care bill, and that did happen.
There is still a long time to go in this process--a minimum of three weeks until the conference committee, for example. If it is apparent that reconciliation is the only way to get a good bill, it still doesn't seem impossible that it can be used. It is a longshot, but it wlways was a longshot.
The CBO is expected to complete its analysis of the Senate health care bill today. This completes the merging of the Senate Help and Senate Fiannce committee bills, and starts the process of bringing the bill to the floor of the full Senate.
Courtesy of a Senate aide, here is a complete description of the process required to bring the health care bill to the floor of the Senate.
Health Care Process
Leader Reid moves to proceed to an HR bill, which will be the vehicle for the Senate health care bill, and files a cloture motion on the motion to proceed.
Two calendar days later, the cloture motion on the motion to proceed ripens (there has to be one intervening calendar day between the day you file cloture and the day you have the vote)
The cloture vote on the motion to proceed occurs one hour after we convene on the third day (If cloture is filed on Wednesday, the cloture vote is Friday. If cloture is filed on Thursday, the cloture vote is on Saturday, etc)
Assuming 60 Senators vote to limit debate on the motion to proceed and end the filibuster, the Senate invokes cloture on the motion to proceed
Thirty hours after cloture is invoked the Senate will proceed to vote on adoption of the motion to proceed itself (This assumes (a) consent will not be granted to yield back any post-cloture time on the motion to proceed and (b) consent will not be granted to adopt the motion to proceed itself---adoption of the motion to proceed itself is routinely agreed to by UC but Rs could force a roll call vote).
Upon adoption of the motion to proceed, the Senate will be on the Health Care bill
Leader Reid will immediately be recognized to offer the complete Senate substitute amendment to the Health Care bill
Under the rules (Rule XV, to be exact), an amendment must be read before debate can begin on an amendment. (This is routinely waived by UC (you'll often hear Senators ask consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with when an amendment is offered) but Dr. Coburn has threatened that he will not agree to waive the reading of the substitute amendment). Reading the entire substitute amendment would take several days.
Whether read aloud in full or not, at this point, the substitute amendment will be pending and the full amendment process will begin when we return from Thanksgiving Recess.
Democrats, in return, say they'll force Republicans to stay on the floor continuously throughout the exercise. At least one Coburn ally will have to remain on the floor to object to unanimous consent requests to dispense with the reading. Whether they'll be able to require the presence of more than one Republican, though, remains to be seen.
The long and short of it is that, starting today, the Senate health care bill will be debated in public for two weeks before debate starts on the Senate floor. The Thanksgiving holiday, and all of these procedural hoops, delay the process tremendously compared to the House. All of this is just to start debate on the health care bill on the Senate floor, and there will be many more hoops to jump through once that begins.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion to introduce the health care reform bill to the Senate floor. That motion was supposed to be for today, November 16th, which would have forced the cloture vote on the motion to proceed with the bill tomorrow. If that vote succeeded, it would have started the debate and amendment process on the health care bill on the floor of the Senate tomorrow:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Tuesday laid the groundwork for the Senate's healthcare reform debate to start next Tuesday.
Reid filed a motion to introduce the bill on Monday, Nov. 16. Anticipating a Republican objection, the bill would be pushed onto the Senate calendar.
"A motion to proceed to the bill would be in order the next legislative day," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.
However, it is November 16th, and there isn't going to be a vote on the motion to proceed tomorrow. What's taking so long?
Neither the vote on the motion to proceed--nor the 60 votes needed to pass cloture on that vote--will materialize until Reid finalizes the bill, and introduces it to the public with a full CBO report. That process, unfortunately, is ongoing and taking longer than expected. Reid's office is still in talks with the CBO, tweaking the bill to meet President Obama's targets and rounding up the 60 votes needed on the cloture vote on the motion to proceed:
The complex legislation, which Reid is taking a free hand in writing based on two committee-passed bills, must not exceed Obama's specified price tag of $900 billion over 10 years, and it must not add to the deficit. Ultimately it must be able to get the 60 votes needed to advance in the 100-member Senate.
"We've sent them a list of options; they raise questions. We answer them, we raise other questions, they answer them. The goal is to put together the best bill possible," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Friday. "Senator Reid made a decision a while ago that he wants to get this right before taking it to the floor."
The process is complicated. About 11 p.m. last Tuesday, the budget office sent Mr. Reid 11 pages of questions about his legislation. On Wednesday afternoon Mr. Reid's staff met with budget office officials. And the back-and-forth continues.
Clearly, if Reid has not yet introduced the bill with a full CBO report, they have yet to meet all of their goals in the legislation. They might still not have satisfied the four remaining problem Senators: Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson (Evan Bayh no longer appears to be a member of this group). They might not have met President Obama's goals of cost or deficit reduction. Unions might still be pissed as a tax on high-value health insurance plans. Senate progressives might be upset with the lack of subsidies in the bill. Whatever it is, they have still not met all of the goals, and thus are not ready for the motion to proceed vote.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, predicted during an interview on the liberal "Bill Press Radio Show" that the Senate will have the 60 votes needed to call up the healthcare bill this week. But Harkin said senators will not begin amending the legislation until after the Thanksgiving break.
Harkin offers up the best case scenario---a vote on the motion to proceed before Thanksgiving. This means that floor debate and amendments will not start until, at the earliest, Monday, November 30th.
To compensate for this latest delay, the Senate is going to stay in session during Saturday's in December. It remains to be seen whether or not the Senate can still pass a health care bill early enough in December to leave a conference committee enough time to reconcile the House and Senate bills before Christmas. If they fail to do so, then President Obama will not sign health care reform into law by the end of the year.
It is a pretty narrow window, raising the possibility that the health care fight will drag on into January.
It's like we're in a Saturday morning kids scifi show... the goodguy robot (in this case MSNBC) is telling us that the Repubs are getting ready to attack the Senate's vote on a Health Care Plan any way they can.
To start with, more than one of the Repub Senators (led by Lamar Alexander - R, TN) have called for new "Town Hall" meetings, like the ones the House members had in August - and it looks like the groups of lobbyists are ready to bus the same people in.
Even as he is bringing a health care bill with an opt-out public option to the Senate floor next week, Harry Reid is making it clear that he is open to a triggered co-op if he is unable to find 60 votes for cloture:
Even as Senate Majority Leader Reid seeks votes for a healthcare bill with a public option that states can opt-out of, Reid has allowed Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., to work on what one aide called a "Plan B" if Reid cannot line up 60 votes for cloture.
Carper said he and some other senators, whom he declined to name, are working on an alternative public option if the opt-out falls short.
In states where private insurers fail to offer affordable coverage, Carper said the alternative would permit them to set up a non-profit board, likely appointed by the president, to offer insurance.
Yikes! A triggered co-op!
If there is any bright side to this, it lets us all know what is at stake in the Senate fight over the next few weeks. Either we round-up the five problem Senators--Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson--to vote for cloture, or else the Senate will bring a triggered co-op to the conference committee. Those are pretty high stakes.
In addition to applying pressure on the five problem Senators, one move we need to make is to push for reconciliation, not a triggered co-op, as the fallback plan. Right up until the end of the process, the bill can still be split into two parts: one with the new regulations that requires 60 votes to reach cloture, and one with the public option and subsidies that can be included in the budgetary process and which cannot be filibustered.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will send a health care bill with an opt-out public option, and without Stupak amendment language, to the floor of the Senate next week. From The Hill:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Tuesday laid the groundwork for the Senate's healthcare reform debate to start next Tuesday.
Reid filed a motion to introduce the bill on Monday, Nov. 16. Anticipating a Republican objection, the bill would be pushed onto the Senate calendar.
"A motion to proceed to the bill would be in order the next legislative day," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.
Given the 60-vote culture in the Senate, it will take 60 votes either to remove the public option from the bill, or to add the Stupak language to the bill. This makes either pretty unlikely (especially the addition of the Stupak language).
This does not mean Reid has secured the votes to pass a public option. It does mean that Reid has likely secured the votes to start the amendment and debate process on the health care bill.
Unless the Senate uses the reconciliation process, or unless it uses the nuclear option (which it won't), it will have to pass three, 60-vote threshold, cloture votes on the health care.
The first will be to start debate. The second will be to end debate and proceed to a simple majority vote on the bill. The third and final vote will happen after the conference committee with the House, to end debate on the bill once again and proceed to one last simple majority vote. TNR summarizes the process here.
It is likely that Reid has secured the votes to start the debate and amendment process on the floor of the Senate. There was always minimal opposition to starting debate, even among the five "problem" Senators on health care: Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanch Lincoln, and Ben Nelson.
The significance of this is not that Reid has secured the votes to start the amendment and debate process so much as it pushes the timeline for passage of the overall bill forward. If Reid had not filed a motion to introduce the bill this week, then the earliest floor debate would have started in the Senate would have been the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. This ups the process by at least two weeks, and gives real hope that the bill will be passed into law by the end of the year.
To chime in on Chris' ambitious proposal to kill the filibuster, I'd like to add some context, and a possible starting list for the 7 Democratic Senators that Chris argues would be needed to effect its demise.
When Lieberman announced he would filibuster the public option, it soon emerged that Lieberman had once crusaded against the filibuster, even going so far as to make an effort to significantly limit it in 1995.
Lieberman (and Harkin) introduced a measure that would effectively end the ability of minority to indefinitely delay action, by providing for a series of decreasing thresholds needed to invoke cloture, until eventually a majority (of Senators "chosen and sworn", not present) could invoke cloture. While it was not total destruction of the filibuster, it was the end of the ability of 41 Senators to kill major legislative priorities of the majority.
The amendment was introduced at the start of the 104th Senate, just after Gingrich and Lott swept into power in the 1994 blowout. His timing suggests he agreed with Chris' theory that a Republican Senate majority may be necessary to do this. After all, the Republicans had just taken over the Senate for the first time since 1986, and might be tempted to collude with a few Democrats in giving themselves the power to rule by simple majority. As it turned out, in 1995 they were not prepared to do so. A few days later the amendment was "tabled" (killed) in a roll call vote of 76-19. The 19 who voted "nay" on this motion are the most likely candidates for Senators who would be most open to eliminating the filibuster. Of them, the following Senators are still in office:
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenburg (D-NJ)
Lieberman (I-CT)
Pryor (D-AR)Update: This was the father of the current Sen. Pryor.
Additionally, Leahy (D-VT) and Rockefeller (D-WV) didn't vote on the measure and are listed as "not present."
Ruling out Lieberman of course, that leaves 7 living Democratic Senators who have actually voted to significantly damage the power of the filibuster. Pryor, as a member of the "Gang of 14" (along with Lieberman) in 2005 is probably not going to go along, but if Leahy or Rockefeller joins, and the other 6 still feel the same, Chris may already have his Gang of 7.
Inside, the text of the Lieberman/Harkin amendment, and Lieberman's complete speech that day. I rather hope if Chris' plan comes to pass, another Senator rises to support it and reads it verbatim just to spite Holy Joe.
For months, I have been calling for the complete elimination of the filibuster in the Senate. Many Open Left commenters have agreed upon the need and desirability for its elimination, but one question remains: is there any realistic hope of rounding up 51 Democratic Senators to actually destroy it?
I have been thinking about this for a while, and I do actually have a realistic action plan to make it happen. It contains four steps:
Build an activist base. The first step is to build a base of progressive activists who support eliminating the filibuster. This is done by making the case about how the filibuster prevents progressive governance in America.
Public education campaign through calling bullshit. The next step is to use the activist base to engage in a public education campaign. This effort will be centered on calling "bullshit" whenever a member of Congress or the media claims that 60 votes are needed to pass legislation in the Senate. We use emails and phone calls to those pundits, reporters and members of Congress to make them admit that 60 votes are not actually needed, given the nuclear option.
Get other progressive blogs and organizations to support the campaign. As the public education campaign continues, we work to gather endorsements to eliminating the filibuster from as many progressive organizations as possible.
Get seven Democrats in the Senate to support eliminating the filibuster, even when Republicans are in the majority. The fourth and final step will be to gather public commitments from seven Democratic Senators to support the elimination of the filibuster through the nuclear option, even if the push to eliminate it comes when Republicans are in the majority.
As soon as step for is achieved, the campaign will be won. This because a public commitment from seven Democratic Senators guarantees that the filibuster will be destroyed once Republicans retake the Senate, which will happen eventually.
Back in 2005, Republicans had up to 48 Senators in favor of destroying the filibuster for judicial nominees. In the end, they were only denied by the defection of seven Republicans who helped form "the Gang of 14." If we can secure seven Democratic Senators who support eliminating the filibuster, once they are in the majority, Republicans cannot be stopped by such a gang ever again. Hell, it is pretty unlikely that there would even be seven defecting Republicans Senators next time around, given that the party is in the midst of successfully purging any member of Congress with even a whiff of moderation about them.
Once we have seven Democratic Senators in support, they will collectively present a letter to the entire Democratic Senate caucus stating "either destroy the filibuster now, or see it destroyed when Republicans are in charge." At that point, I would hope that Democrats would respond by destroying the filibuster while they still have a majority. However, if we have to wait until Republicans are in charge, so be it. Either way, we can nuke it with only seven Democratic Senators in support.
So, that's how we win the campaign. It may very well require Republicans winning back the Senate, but over the long-term it is necessary for progressive governance.
After eight years of Bush, and fourteen years of either Bush or a Republican Congress, the current legislative fights over health care, climate change, and stimulus spending are a breath of fresh air. Even if the type of legislation we are achieving is inadequate to solve the scope of the problems we face in those three areas, at least progressives actually have a role in crafting legislative policy now. That is something we haven't been able to really say since 1994.
It also won't be something that we can say after 2010, if 51 Senate Democrats don't join together to abolish the filibuster at some point between now and January, 2011. If Republicans make a net gain of three Senate seats or more in the 2010 elections (which is pretty likely according to current polling), Democrats will simply not be able to achieve cloture on any major legislation put before the Senate.
The watered down stimulus package passed the Senate with only 61 votes. The watered down health care and climate change bills will pass the Senate with somewhere between 60 and 62 votes. This is a pattern we will continue to see on every major piece of legislation before the Senate, since only Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are willing to compromise with Democrats at all. It also means that there is no hope of compromise with Republicans if they net only 3 seats in the 2010 elections.
It is possible that Mike Castle and / or Rob Simmons might be among the new Republican Senators, and that they might be willing to compromise with Democrats on major legislation. Even so, a net loss of only three Democratic Senate seats will give Mike Castle and / or Rob Simmons effective veto power over the entire Democratic legislative agenda, much in the way that Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu and Olympia Snowe wield that veto power right now.
If only 51 votes are needed to pass legislation through the Senate, it would effectively be the same thing as Democrats gaining 10 seats in the Senate. No matter what political price Senate Democrats may face for the apparent hypocrisy or partisanship of destroying the filibuster, it can simply never equal to a net Senate gain of ten seats. We are just not going to lose ten Senate seats because we destroyed the filibuster.
Further, given the crises we face both as a country and as a species, allowing an even more conservative Republican Party to regain a veto over American policy is far, far worse than any esoteric argument about the "deliberative" tradition of the Senate. Further, after the way Republicans have acted in 2009, if anyone still thinks that meaningful bipartisanship can be achieved on major legislation, they are living in a fantasy world.
Engaging the fight over health care, climate change, stimulus spending, and other major legislative priorities is good. However, it is likely that this will all come to an end in only thirteen months if the 60-vote culture of the Senate remains in place. Getting rid of the filibuster--which can be done with only 51 votes--is necessary to ensuring continued Democratic governance beyond 2010.
At the absolute latest, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe will join the Senate Democratic caucus by Tuesday, June 12, 2012. She may not actually register as a Democrat, but she will start caucusing with Democrats by that date--or even earlier. Here is why:
Snowe is up for re-election in 2012.
The Maine primary is held on the second Tuesday in June. So, in 2012, this means June 12th.
Snowe is losing to a generic conservative primary challenger 59%-31%, among likely Republican voters.
Maine has a closed primary system, meaning that only registered Republicans can vote in Maine Republican primaries. Same day registration is allowed, but that won't change the outcome in such a lopsided campaign.
It is a rock-solid guarantee that conservatives will primary Snowe from the right in 2012. Not only is she pro-choice, but her lifetime Progressive Punch score on critical votes is identical to Arlen Specter's (27%). If they are not going to primary challenge Snowe, they are not going to primary challenge anyone. And we all know they will keep running primary challenges.
In 2012, all major Republican Presidential candidates will endorse Snowe's inevitable primary challenger. This is both because that challenger will comfortably lead Snowe in the primary, but also based on the pattern we just witnessed in NY-23. It didn't take long for all leading Republicans to fall into Hoffman's camp once he proved more viable, and more popular among the Republican base, than the moderate Scozzafava.
Republican Presidential candidates looking to appease the base will make sure that he entire Republican establishment lines up behind Snowe's primary challenger.
In the past, Harry Reid has approached Olympia Snowe about joining the Senate Democratic caucus. He confirmed this to me over the phone more than three years ago, right after the 2006 elections.
Without establishment support in her own party, trailing badly in the polls, and with an offer to join the Democratic caucus, Snowe will bolt the Republican Party and join the Democratic Senate caucus by June 12th, 2012, at the very latest.
So, sometime in the next 945 days, Senate Democrats will pick up another seat.
Might be a time to start preparing a primary challenger to Olympia Snowe of our own in 2012.
In the comments to 