The Senate descended into procedural chaos Thursday night as Democrats forced a change in Senate rules and shut down a GOP effort to bog down a Chinese currency bill with a series of unrelated amendments.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s move to suddenly overhaul a key Senate rule without warning infuriated Republicans and put an already bitterly divided chamber on edge as senators from both sides of the aisle traded angry accusations over whether the fight would fundamentally limit the rights of the minority party.
By a 51-48 vote, the Senate voted along party lines to change the precedent and limit how amendments can be considered once a filibuster is defeated. Under normal procedure, the Senate has 30 hours of debate after 60 senators agree to end a filibuster. Amendments can be considered during those 30 hours if each side agrees by unanimous consent to schedule a vote — or if a senator moves to waive the rules, which would then require the support of 67 senators in order to succeed.
But under the new procedure, senators can no longer move to waive the rules once a filibuster is defeated — a battle that threatens to further inflame partisan tensions and stymie legislative action at a time when frustration with Congress is at an all-time high.
While the rules change may not seriously affect the substance of pending legislation, the process employed by Democrats could be replicated in the future to overhaul bedrock rules like the filibuster. For that reason, both parties have tried to avoid employing such tactics to change the rules over the last several congressional sessions, including in a fierce 2005 battle that nearly limited the use of the filibuster.
In this case, Democrats made the change after the presiding officer, Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), ruled against Reid’s point-of-order that “motions to suspend” were considered out of order after a filibuster is defeated. By a narrow majority, the Senate then voted that the decision by the presiding officer was incorrect, thus creating a new precedent in the body.
Democrats said the move was needed to limit dilatory tactics that essentially amounted to a “filibuster by amendment” even after the chamber votes to end debate on a bill.
Outraged Republicans, who serve in the minority, lashed out at Reid (D-Nev.), accusing Democrats of squeezing them out in a body designed to protect the rights of the minority. Republicans also warned that future Senate majorities would be more apt to change the chamber’s rules by a simple majority.
“We are fundamentally turning the Senate into the House,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), pacing on the floor, with his voice rising, referring to the other body’s rules that can limit floor debate.
“The rules of the Senate will be effectively changed to lock out the minority party even more.”
Democrats rejected the concerns, saying that efforts to waive the rules are similar to the stall tactics Republicans have employed time and again. A motion to suspend the rules has not succeeded since 1941, they noted, meaning that such efforts typically amount to political messaging more than anything else. And nothing would preclude them from offering amendments agreed to by both parties before or after a filibuster is defeated.
“If I were in the minority, I wouldn’t do this, I think it’s dilatory and wrong,” Reid said on the floor.
The frustration has been building for months, with Democrats accusing the GOP of slow-walking their agenda to hurt President Barack Obama and Republicans saying they can’t get their amendments considered because Democrats are concerned about taking tough votes.
“The Senate has been completely dysfunctional this year, and this is just one more step in that [direction],” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who earlier this year introduced a plan to overhaul Senate rules to ease partisan gridlock. “There is a great deal that has to be done to restore the functionality of the Senate.”
The latest procedural dispute centered around Republican amendments to a bill aimed at retaliating against China for allegedly undervaluing its currency in an attempt to sell its exports at much cheaper prices. The bill was headed towards final passage after a bipartisan majority defeated a Republican filibuster Thursday morning — even after no GOP amendments had been considered.
After the filibuster was defeated, Republicans had a series of unrelated amendments they wanted debated, including one by McConnell to force the Senate to decide whether to bring up Obama’s original jobs proposal that had caused some controversy among a handful of Democratic senators.
McConnell sought to waive the rules so they could consider the president’s jobs bill — ensuring that there would be no vote on the merits of Obama’s plan — along with six other amendments. But Democrats refused to consider one amendment in particular - a plan by Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns that he says would stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating farm dust. The EPA has said its efforts to crack down on soot pollution would not affect farm dust.
“He wants to run the Senate like he’s king, but he’s not,” an angry Johanns told POLITICO. “No one elected him king.”
McConnell said Reid should not be allowed to pick-and-choose which GOP amendments could be considered, and insisted that the Johanns plan be part of the mix. Faced with a stalemate, Reid called for a vote asking the Senate to ensure that post-cloture motions to suspend the rules are considered out of order - a move that had been quietly debated in Reid’s office since Thursday morning. All Democrats, except for Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted to make the change.
“I didn’t want to change the rules without debate or understanding what it is,” said Nelson, who had conferred with Reid on the floor. “Potentially this would change the rules forever”
The 51-48 vote was not decided until the final minutes as Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) switched to back Reid and then Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) immediately followed suit after animated conversations with Reid.
To an outside observer, it appeared that the votes were tied together, and once Pryor had switched, that this made it easier for McCaskill who was not the decisive vote. But Pryor told POLITICO that he was unmindful of the drama surrounding McCaskill and made his decision independently after consulting with the parliamentarians and his friend, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) about the precedent involved.
“I decided that if it is is a precedent, it is a good precedent against dilatory tactics,” Pryor said. “This would hopefully be a precedent to not open the bills up after cloture for more and more amendments.”
Reid and other Democratic leaders even scrapped a planned meeting at the White House Thursday evening to carry out the fight.
Senators are often very hesitant to change the rules of the body, fearing that it could create a dangerous precedent in the event that they are in the minority. Numerous efforts to change filibuster rules over the years have stalled, including a famous incident in 2005 when then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) failed to invoke the “nuclear option” to limit Democratic filibusters against President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees.
At the beginning of this Congress, Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Merkley tried also to limit filibuster rules, saying they have been abused by a small number of senators in order to bring Senate action to a halt. They, too, failed in their effort.
McConnell said the real problem was that Democrats in the Senate - many of whom are up for reelection next year — didn’t want to take tough votes.
“The fundamental problem here is that the majority never likes to take votes,” McConnell said. “The price of being in the majority is you have to take bad votes. Because in the United States Senate, the minority is entitled to be heard.”
Reid said changing the rules in this case was essentially a very narrow situation - after a filibuster is defeated and when a bill is on its way to passage - and would not harm the minority’s rights.
And Reid, who along with McConnell is a veteran of the chamber and an institutionalist, said it was perhaps time for the two parties to air out their building frustration with one another in a joint caucus meeting behind closed doors. (The caucuses typically meet daily in separate settings.)
The frustration was evident on the floor after the vote. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) objected to senators who wanted to speak on the floor, a highly unusual move. And Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) lashed out at the dysfunction of the institution, while Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) placed the blame on the GOP minority’s obstructive tactics.
“I know there is some hurt feelings here, perhaps on both sides because this hasn’t been easy for me either,” Reid said immediately after the vote. “But let’s not dwell on that. But I want the record to reflect that the fact that we have to do things sometimes that are difficult doesn’t mean that Sen. McConnell and I have any problems with each other. I want to make sure the record is clear in that regard.”
David Rogers contributed to this report.
