Why the Senate Is Sitting on 309 Bills

[The Straight Story]

Why the Senate Is Sitting on 309 Bills
The "hold" is a tactic so juvenile that it isn't even in the Senate rules. Yet it's never been more common, and it's keeping important legislation at bay

By Madisonian design, the U.S. Senate is meant to be the saucer that cools the passion of the House of Representatives. In the 111th Congress, it's become a freezer. There are currently 309 bills that have passed the House and sit waiting for action—any kind of action—in the Senate. The legislation on ice affects everything from improved training for commercial flight crews to extending life insurance benefits for disabled veterans. This is not trivial stuff.

Any number of tactics can halt a bill. Previous generations favored the stay-up-all-night filibuster, which, for expediency's sake, has been replaced with the mere threat of a filibuster. (Thus the Democratic gambit to use so-called reconciliation, with its need for a simple majority, to ram through health-care legislation.) Many of the 309, however, have been buried by a single tactic, the secret "hold," which allows any senator to halt floor consideration of any matter. The hold isn't in the Senate rule book; it's an informal practice that, as viewed by Donald Ritchie, the Senate's official historian, is "symbolic of the hardening of party lines and polarization. Even with Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, people didn't block things like this."

Walter Oleszek of the Congressional Research Service says the origin of holds "appears lost in the mists of history." The clearest beginning dates to Lyndon Johnson's tenure as Senate Majority Leader between 1955 and 1961, when one could proclaim a nomination "personally obnoxious," according to Johnson biographer Robert Caro. For decades its use was benign; if a senator was running late to a vote, hadn't read a bill, or just wanted to seek a few small changes, he could phone in a hold. The late Ohio Democrat Howard Metzenbaum, never able to get on the Finance Committee, held up tax bills to give himself time to go over them and make sure he wasn't being hoodwinked.

Now a senator or aide simply calls the party's secretary and announces that he or she is halting a bill's consideration, with his or her identity disclosed to the party leader but not to the other side. The Honest Leadership & Open Government Act of 2007 amended the Senate rules—even though holds aren't in the rules—to require public notice of a holder's identity after six days. So what did senators do? Find a way around the rule by "tag-teaming"—in which one senator releases a hold after five days and another swoops in immediately to put on another hold. Then they trade places indefinitely. Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, can't say exactly how many Republican holds there are and who placed them. His "strong suspicions" aside, he's not allowed to know.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177030174852.htm

[izquierdista]

1. Declare a "no holds" bar

Just show up one Monday morning Harry, bright and early, like 7 am, and start at the top of the list.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Where in the hell were Democrats during Smirky's reign of terror?

Why didn't the Dems freeze the GOP during GW Bush? This is just another bit of evidence that the majority of Senators have become the lap dogs to industry.

[KittyWampus]

3. Because the Republicans are really small and need booster seats?

[no_hypocrisy]

4. What are they doing 9-5?

Sitting in their offices, receiving "well wishers"? Long lunches? Computer porn?