Harry Reid takes to the Washington Post to explain why the Democrats changed a rule in the Senate last week. We told Reid and the rest of the Senate Dems that they’d be unable to get anything done if they didn’t deal with the filibuster. They didn’t listen. Even the move Reid made to address McConnell’s latest outrageous obstruction doesn’t change much. But let’s listen to Reid:
At the beginning of this Congress, many of my Democratic colleagues wished to change the rules of the Senate to limit the minority party’s ability to kill important, job-creating legislation with arcane parliamentary maneuvers and needless delay. I opposed this rule change, believing we needed to preserve the right of the minority to offer amendments.
Rather than limiting those rights, we came to an understanding with Republicans, who agreed to respect the Senate’s tradition of conciliation in the interest of getting things done. They agreed to stop forcing procedural votes for the sake of slowing down legislation, and we agreed to preserve the minority party’s right to block bills when necessary.
Since then, Republicans have failed to abide by that agreement. Rather than working with Democrats to pass job-creating legislation, they have used procedural maneuvers to kill several common-sense bills — including a noncontroversial small-business loan program — that have previously passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. They have twice nearly shut down the government and forced our nation to the brink of default for the first time in its history.
Rather than listen to people like David Waldman and me, Harry Reid “came to an understanding” with the Republicans. They would not delay legislation just for the sake of delay and Harry Reid would not punish them for their unprecedented obstruction in the last Congress. Let me translate this for you. In the last Congress, when depending on the day the Dems had 56-60 Senators, the Republicans filibustered everything just to make it so less stuff could be accomplished overall. Even when the Dems were able to easily get 60 votes to have a vote on something, the Republicans were able to force thirty hours of post-cloture debate (pdf). They chewed up weeks of legislative time in the Senate, forcing Reid to delay confirmation votes or simply give up on having people confirmed. Hundreds of bills from the House of Representatives died not because they didn’t have support but because the Senate didn’t have any time to debate them.
The Senate had ceased to function, and even a 59-member majority couldn’t impose its will. In this Congress, the Republicans relented somewhat on the simple stalling tactics. More judges have been confirmed. But Reid still considers himself double-crossed.
Here’s what happened:
On Thursday morning, we seemed to be on the brink of passing a bill to curb unfair currency manipulation by the Chinese government, a practice that has cost millions of American manufacturing jobs over the past two decades. The bill — which is supported by business and labor interests — had garnered a bipartisan supermajority not just once but twice. With passage virtually assured, the minority reached for the only tool left to try and derail the bill, confronting us with a potentially unlimited number of votes on completely unrelated amendments.
This was post-cloture, meaning it was after Reid asked for cloture, waited 30 hours, and had a successful vote to invoke cloture. That should mean that you have no more amendments and there is a simple majority up-or-down vote on the bill. However, McConnell asked for a suspension of the rules, which has not been done successfully in the Senate since 1941. He was delaying for delay’s sake. And, additionally, he was doing it to force uncomfortable votes on the Democrats.
Reid tried to negotiate.
We offered votes on four amendments, and they wanted five. We offered five votes, and they wanted six. Finally, we offered votes on seven amendments, including a vote on an outdated version of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, with which Republicans were seeking to score political points. Still, Republicans refused. They came back with a demand for nine votes that required suspending the Senate’s rules. The same logic that allows for nine unstoppable motions to suspend the rules could lead to consideration of 99 such motions.
Under the circumstances, it’s disturbing that Reid allowed himself to be pushed around for as long as he did. McConnell finally became so unreasonable that Reid actually learned the lesson we’d been trying to teach him back in December. The Republicans will not act in good faith and you cannot make gentlemen’s agreements with them. If you don’t play hardball with them they will roll you every single time.
I know it would be nice if this were not the case, but it is. And people are frustrated as hell about it. People are taking to the streets over it. This is just one small example of Reid acting like he understands his situation. But nothing has really changed. He’s still liable to play Charlie Brown to McConnell’s Lucy and try to kick the football. We know how that works out.