Last week, Sen. Feinstein and I went to the Senate floor to try to get unanimous consent to pass the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, S. 223. The bill had been reported by the Rules Committee on a voice vote nearly three weeks earlier and has 35 bipartisan cosponsors. No one expressed opposition to it at either the March 14th Rules Committee hearing on the bill or in the Rules Committee markup when the bill was voted out of committee. We went to the floor because while Sen. Reid had determined that no Democratic Senator objected to passing the bill, the Republican leadership was not as forthcoming. As everyone now knows, Sen. Alexander objected "on behalf of a Republican Senator" to our request for unanimous consent to take up and pass the bill.
Amazingly, some people have tried to argue that, in fact, there is no "secret hold." The Republican leader has denied that there is a hold, but is unable or unwilling to identify the Republican Senator or Senators responsible for the objection. Despite the efforts of bloggers and journalists to identify the anonymous Republican objector, he or she has not come forward or contacted either Senator Feinstein or myself to discuss the bill. The fact is that someone anonymously blocked the bill from being passed on Tuesday, that person has made no effort to resolve his or her concerns with us, and the Republican leadership won’t even tell us who that person is. That’s a "secret hold" in my book!
Some have suggested that an objection was made because Senator Feinstein and I somehow went "out of turn" by asking consent in this way. That is just silly. The Senate passes non-controversial bills all the time by unanimous consent. Just tune into C-SPAN2 at the end of just about any day when the Senate is in session and you’ll see it happen.
I applaud the efforts of concerned citizens over the past week to find out who the objector is. When you succeed, let me know. As I have said before, this bill is as close to a "no brainer" as you can get, and I have no intention of dropping this issue. By keeping the pressure on, we can force the anonymous objector to either come forward and express his or her opposition openly or let the bill go through.
UPDATE: Thanks for the many excellent and supportive comments. Several of you have asked about whether the Senate can get around a hold. The answer is yes, but it can be very time-consuming and could result in the bill being weighed down with unrelated or "poison pill" amendments. Basically, the way to get around an objection to action by unanimous consent is for the Majority Leader to bring up the bill and schedule a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to it. That vote takes place two days after a cloture vote is filed. I have no doubt we would win such a vote handily, maybe even unanimously. But then the bill would be subject to amendment and there are many controversial and contentious campaign finance amendments, or even amendments on other topics that might be offered. And the only way to limit those amendments would be to schedule another cloture vote to limit debate. So the process could take several days under the best of circumstances.
All of that could be done, but there are many other worthy bills competing for floor time. This bill is not controversial. No one has given a single reason to oppose it, or even debate it. It is exactly the kind of good, non-controversial bill that should pass the Senate by unanimous consent, and with your help, I hope it will.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/23/104426/861
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