Next year the U.S. Senate will be different. Specifically, it will be about 15% different. That’s because regardless of who wins, we’ll have new senators from Utah, Kansas, North Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Delaware, and Florida. That’s twelve seats that we know will be changing hands. It’s hard to see how Blanche Lincoln or Arlen Specter can be reelected even if they survive tomorrow’s primaries. And I figure there is at least one other incumbent who is going to lose in November. That’s a lot of turnover, and it will bring a new climate to the upper chamber of Congress.
That’s what I thought about when I read this The Hill piece on Chris Dodd. Senator Dodd is as pleased that the Senate is actually functioning as he is that his Wall Street reforms bill looks increasingly likely to pass.
Dodd, who spoke scornfully of a political atmosphere in which senators no longer share lunch together in the Senate dining club and the same members speak at every weekly caucus meeting, acknowledged the debate may get rougher in the final days, but he’s full of pride over the last few weeks, which could mark the last time he steers a bill through the Senate.
“While history may talk about Wall Street reform, I’m going to feel as good watching the Senate function as I will about the product it produced,” Dodd said in rolled-up shirt sleeves after completing another day of debate on the bill.
We can be quite scornful of the constant call for bipartisanship from the Washington press and centrist politicians, but there is a certain logic to it considering the restrictive rules of the Senate. I can’t see how it’s going to be easier to pass legislation through the Senate will Rand Paul objecting to every effort to spend a dime of money or some Jim DeMint acolyte from Utah trying to out-teabag the teabaggers. I think the next Congress will be completely dysfunctional, particularly in the Senate. It’s a real problem.
