Quote:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced today that he's reached a deal with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on some procedural reforms that are intended to help cure the chronic, appalling dysfunction that's bedeviled the Senate since 2006 or so, when Democrats took over the body. Here's a quick list of the formal changes:
- Shorten debate following a cloture vote on the motion to proceed from 30 hours to four.
- Leave the ability to filibuster that cloture vote essentially intact.
- Allow the minority to offer two amendments on every bill.
- Shorten confirmation time for judicial nominees once cloture is invoked.
And two informal ones, which are to be executed without actually changing Senate rules:
- Senators will have to actually be on the floor to threaten a filibuster.
- Time allocated for debate will have to actually be spent on debate.
You can see the full proposals at the bottom of this post.
That's ... something. But the changes fall far short of what reformers had hoped for. In December, I wrote a primer on what the reformers wanted. Here's a list of those proposals and their fate:
- End the filibuster altogether: As expected, Senator Tom Harkin's call for legislation to pass by a simple majority died. The idea was always fringe, even within the hardcore reform group.
- Ban filibuster on the motion to proceed: Though debate after the vote is curtailed, the motion to proceed can still be filibustered.
- Bring back the talking filibuster: This was probably the central tenet of a plan put forward by reform ringleaders Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Tom Udall of New Mexico. It won't be happening either. They wanted to force the minority to actually stay on the floor and speak, just like Long and D'Amato back in the day, in order to hold up business.
- Ban filibusters on House-Senate conferences: No dice, although there will now be only one chance to filibuster bills after they've passed both chambers, rather than three.
- Shift the burden on cloture: Al Franken's proposal to force the minority to come up with 41 votes rather than forcing the majority to produce 60, got nowhere.
So basically all of the major reform ideas came to naught.