Reid: Nuke or firecracker?

In Thursday’s Senate squabble over the American Jobs Act, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) employed an arcane Senate rule, not used in decades, attempting to stall the Senate from, moving forward.  Harry Reid (D-NV), employed the exact tactic, previously called the “nuclear option”, apparently in a fit of pique, to make a minor change in the rules.  While I cannot help but enjoy seeing the Republican Senate leadership snivel with their panties in a huge bunch, I have to question the wisdom of Reid’s move.  He used a howitzer to crush a mosquito.

As explained at length here, Harry Reid’s Thursday night power play set a very narrow new precedent in the Senate. But it was a power play nonetheless. Setting aside its less-than-modest real impact, it required using the same "nuclear option" tactics Republicans threatened in 2005 during the fight over judicial filibusters. If in 2005 the GOP was threatening to detonate a massive H-bomb over a major city, last night Harry Reid set off a rusty old fission devise in the empty desert. Both nukes, very different impacts.

But Republicans are steamed. Steamed doesn’t really even begin to describe it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was practically trembling in anger Thursday night. On Twitter, NRSC chairman John Cornyn (R-TX) called the move "tyranny". And a Senate GOP leadership aide sent me the following remark, suggesting Republicans will remember this whenever they take the majority.

"Democrats are remarkably short-sighted–they forget they’ll be in the minority someday and will have to live with THEIR rules," the aide said.

In other words, setting new precedent is the new precedent, so Republicans will do it to. And they can do it to much greater consequence… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <TPM>

Here is the best description I could find of exactly what happened.

…What exactly happened? In brief (well, Senate-style brief), Senate rules prohibit non-germane (unrelated) amendments on the Senate floor after cloture has been invoked on a bill.  In other words, unless all senators consent, senators can only offer germane amendments once debate has been limited on a bill.   McConnell and Reid appear to have been negotiating an agreement that would have allowed Republicans to offer seven non-germane amendments post-cloture.  But then a GOP senator moved to suspend the rules (which requires a two-thirds vote) so that he could offer non-germane amendments, including at least one related to the president’s jobs bill.   Frustrated with the Republicans’ tactics, Reid raised a point of order that the Republican motion was dilatory. Under Senate rules, dilatory motions are not in order once cloture has been invoked.  The parliamentarian advised the presiding officer to rule that the motion was in order, the presiding officer did just that, and a vote ensued on whether or not to sustain or overrule the chair’s ruling.  Appeals of the chair require only a majority vote to pass, and Reid mustered all the Democrats save Ben Nelson to vote to overturn the chair.   In practice, this means that the Senate tonight set a new precedent, by which I mean a new interpretation of the Senate cloture rule:  Under cloture, a motion to suspend the rules to offer a non-germane amendment may now be declared dilatory… [emphasis added] 

Inserted from <The Monkey Cage>

I have been calling on Senate Democrats to use this exact procedure for years to change the cloture rules Republicans have abused to require a sixty vote supermajority on virtually every bill that comes to the floor, thus making the Senate the place to kill all things progressive.  I have also supported its use to end the practice of individual holds.  In the past, Reid’s argument has always been that it is too severe a tactic to use, because once out of the bag, it will be used again, if Republicans ever get the majority.

As much as I want to see it proceed, the AJA will not be ratified, because House Republicans lack the courage to allow a vote on it, let alone support it, so what is going on in the Senate is largely a matter of political posturing.  For Republicans to pretend to negotiate, and then throw in a monkey wrench at the last minute, after wasting as much time as possible, is nothing new.  For Reid to invoke “nuclear” tactics over a “pop gun” dispute, having refused to do so, when it really mattered, is unconscionable!

Now that the cat is out of the bag, the only way Reid can redeem himself is to use the tactics again to change the rules that do matter.