Senators Squabble, Leaving Unfinished Business

Dec. 12, 2007— -- Senators are behind on a lot of their work. Way behind.

A temporary funding fix expires Friday. Without some action, the federal government will run out of money over the weekend. The list goes on from there.

But Wednesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was talking about swimming pools.

"The leading cause of death in 20 states in the United States for children to age 14 is getting caught in the drains of swimming pools," Reid said on the Senate floor before pointing out that Democrats want to pass bipartisan legislation -- the Pool and Spa Safety Act -- to address the issue of dangerous swimming pool drains.

But an anonymous hold has been placed on the Senate bill. Reid implied it is part of a campaign of Republican obstruction that has plagued his first year as Senate majority leader.

"It passed the house with three dissenting votes -- 418-3," Reid said of the pool drain bill. "Children are dying while we're here, not able to proceed on something like that. I say, there are over 100 issues just like that. It is not right," he said, accusing Republicans of "obstruction on steroids."

So when the Senate came to order Wednesday morning in order to illustrate Reid's point, Democrats set aside the farm bill and asked for "unanimous consent" to pass 10 or more mostly nonobjectionable bills.

Included are all the legislative pieces that Democrats and President Bush agree should be passed to address the foreclosure crisis; several bills to help veterans, including those with traumatic brain injury; a bill to create an a registry for those with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease; and a bill, named for Christopher Reeve, to increase funding for paralysis.

Republicans are expected to object to each and every one of the bills, even though most would be expected to pass the Senate easily.

Senate Republican leaders have objected to some of the bills because they would prefer an alternative and want the chance to get a vote on it. In the case of the pool legislation, a single Republican, who in the past has usually been Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, is on a personal crusade against what he calls pork barrel spending.

By midway through the Democrats' attempt to seek unanimous consent on their bills, Republicans had caught on and offered unanimous consent requests of their own.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asked for unanimous consent to move back to the farm bill. GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas asked for unanimous consent to move immediately to consider a troop funding bill. These requests were denied by Democrats, who were intent on asking for their own unanimous consent agreements.

It is the right of Coburn and Republicans to object as long as neither party controls 60 votes; the two parties have to work together to get anything passed.

In the grand Mr. Smith Goes to Washington spirit of the Senate, any one senator can draw out debate. Only if 60 senators agree to vote to cut off debate can a filibuster be broken.

These days, however, filibusters are not dramatic, all-night speeches on the Senate floor. Rather, senators simply respect one another's right to object to a bill.

When Democrats staged an all-night debate on Iraq to protest Republicans who were filibustering a vote on withdrawing troops, Democrats still failed to get a final vote on their proposal, although they did have a majority of Senate votes. More on that HERE.

So nothing gets passed without 60 votes. Republicans have insisted on a 60-vote threshold 59 times so far this Congress. Democrats call this a filibuster record. Republicans say it is protecting their rights and accuse Democrats of being unreasonable negotiators.

"Partisanship and refusing to work with the minority may get you a headline, but it won't get bills signed into law," Senate Minority Leader McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, just before Republicans objected to Democrats' first unanimous consent request -- to pass a bill .

Don Stewart, McConnell's communications director was a bit more blunt.

"The question you should be asking is why, on Dec.12, with only one appropriations bill signed into law, the troops in the field not funded, the energy bill incomplete, the farm bill on the floor and the AMT [alternative minimum tax] not fixed, the Democrats have blocked out the entire morning for a political stunt?" Stewart wrote in an e-mail message.

"It's hard to complain about obstruction when they are obstructing Senate business with this silly little stunt," Stewart added.

Coburn, by far the most audacious blocker of bills, defended himself on the Senate floor.

"At $1.3 billion per day, we are going into debt and it's not our debt," Coburn said of the national debt. "It is our children's debt."

He objects to the Federal Housing Administration bill because he does not want the federal government to overextend itself into the mortgage business. He objected to a bill that would authorize the government to raise funding for an ALS registry and paralysis research because, he said, "our hearts are big, but we're not looking at the big picture."

"All of these bills could have been on the floor with debate," Coburn said, lamenting that Senate leaders have been seeking backroom agreements to control debate on bills instead of throwing things onto the Senate floor for debate. "I would have lost most of my amendments," Coburn admitted.

But he will stick to his guns, blocking bills Wednesday that would create the ALS registry because, he said, "the American people would benefit from the debate" on the Senate floor.

It is unclear that even if Democrats had gained consent to proceed to a vote on any of the measures that they would have had time to debate and vote on them.

The bill Democrats will temporarily set aside while they ask for all these consent requests is the farm bill, which it took Democrats in the Senate more than a month to get on the Senate floor. Republicans wanted to be able to offer amendments on nonfarm bill topics, and it took all this time for Democrats to relent.

Senators must get back to the farm bill before they can proceed to passing legislation to fund the federal government. Something must be done, either a temporary fix or a catch-all omnibus spending bill, by Friday or the federal government runs out of money.