WASHINGTON (AP) — A fear of voting has gripped Democratic
leaders in the Senate, slowing the chamber’s modest productivity this
election season to a near halt.
With control of the Senate at risk
in November, leaders are going to remarkable lengths to protect
endangered Democrats from casting tough votes and to deny Republicans
legislative victories in the midst of the campaign. The phobia means
even bipartisan legislation to boost energy efficiency, manufacturing,
sportsmen’s rights and more could be scuttled.
The Senate’s masters of process are finding a variety of ways to shut down debate.
Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., now is requiring an elusive 60-vote
supermajority to deal with amendments to spending bills, instead of the
usual simple majority, a step that makes it much more difficult to put
politically sensitive matters into contention. This was a flip from his
approach to Obama administration nominees, when he decided most could be
moved ahead with a straight majority instead of the 60 votes needed
before.
Reid’s principal aim in setting the supermajority rule for
spending amendments was to deny archrival Sen. Mitch McConnell a win on
protecting his home state coal industry from new regulations limiting
carbon emissions from existing power plants. McConnell, the Senate
Republican leader, faces a tough re-election in Kentucky.
This
hunkering down by Democrats is at odds with the once-vibrant tradition
of advancing the 12 annual agency budget bills through open debate. In
the Appropriations Committee, long accustomed to a freewheeling process,
chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., has held up action on three
spending bills, apparently to head off politically difficult votes on
changes to the divisive health care law as well as potential losses to
Republicans on amendments such as McConnell’s on the coal industry.
"I
just don’t think they want their members to have to take any hard votes
between now and November," said Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb. And there’s
"just no question that they’re worried we’re going to win some votes so
they just shut us down."
Vote-a-phobia worsens in election years,
especially when the majority party is in jeopardy. Republicans need to
gain six seats to win control and Democrats must defend 21 seats to the
Republicans’ 15.
So Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, probably shouldn’t
have been surprised when his cherished bill to fund the Labor, Education
and Health and Human Services departments got yanked from the
Appropriations Committee’s agenda this month. Word quickly spread that
committee Democrats in Republican-leaning states feared a flurry of
votes related to "Obamacare."
"It’s not as if they haven’t voted
on them before," Harkin griped. "My way of thinking is, ‘Hell, you’ve
already voted on it. Your record’s there.’" Harkin blamed Senate
Democratic leaders.
Two other appropriations bills have run
aground after preliminary votes. The normally non-controversial energy
and water bill was pulled from the committee agenda after it became
known that McConnell would have an amendment to defend his state’s coal
mining industry. McConnell is making that defense a centerpiece of his
re-election campaign and his amendment appeared on track to prevail with
the help of pro-energy Democrats on the committee.
Again, after consulting with Reid, Mikulski struck the bill from the agenda.
McConnell
pressed the matter the next day, this time aiming to amend a spending
bill paying for five Cabinet departments. Democrats again headed him
off.
Democrats privately acknowledge that they’re protecting
vulnerable senators and don’t want McConnell to win on the carbon
emissions issue. They also see hypocrisy in McConnell’s insistence on a
simple majority vote for his top — and controversial — priority while he
wants Democrats to produce 60 votes to advance almost everything else.
Another
measure, financing the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue
Service, failed to get a committee vote last week after speeding through
a subcommittee hearing. Mikulski blamed problems with timing. But it
was known that Republicans had amendments on hot-button issues coming.
Fear
of voting is hardly new. In the last two years of the Clinton
administration, Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., blocked Democrats
from offering a popular Patients’ Bill of Rights, and more. At the time,
Charles Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois were among the
Democrats who cried foul.
These days, Durbin and Schumer hold the
No. 2 and No. 3 Democratic Senate leadership posts and now that their
party is running the place, they’re backing Reid’s moves to clamp down
on GOP amendments.
"You’ve always got senators on both sides of
the aisle of all political persuasions and all regions whining and
complaining how they don’t want to vote on this amendment or that
amendment," Lott says now. "It always frankly agitated me because I felt
like these are big boys and girls." He said "it has gotten worse and
worse and worse."
Republicans say Democratic leaders are trying
especially to protect Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
Landrieu says she hasn’t asked for such
help.
"I’ve taken so many hard votes up here," Landrieu said. "I could take more."