A Tale Of Two Clotures

The Senate voted on two cloture resolutions yesterday. One passed and one failed. What they both had in common was that Ben Nelson (D-NE)-- who has voted only voted with the Democrats 44.65% of the time on tight contested roll calls-- crossed the aisle for both, helping the GOP thwart his own party on one but just casting one of his habitual meaningless crazy votes on the other.

The bill they're debating in H.R. 4213, Tax Extenders Act of 2009, which is the wide-ranging economic package Bunning was blocking all last week. Of the two amendments Reid tried moving yesterday, first up was one written by Patty Murray (D-WA) to extend the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and provide emergency funding for summer employment for young people. She sought $1.3 billion to create something like half a million summer jobs. Technically it wasn't a cloture that they had to overcome, but a budgetary point of order by Judd Gregg (same thing, 60 votes needed.) In the end, it had a healthy majority, 55-45, the bitter and hateful conservative minority, under the Senate's arcane, conservative rules, triumphed. Joining all the obstructionist Republicans were 4 ConservaDems, Claire McCaskill (MO), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Warner (VA) and Jim Webb (VA).

That was in the morning. After a long break the Lords and Ladies filed back into their chamber and voted on an actual cloture amendment on Max Baucus' amendment that would, in effect, end the GOP filibuster on extending unemployment benefits and tax credits. With Nelson firmly ensconced with his Republican allies, Reid and Baucus needed to find a few Republicans who were willing to stop trying to just bring down the whole country in their party's orgy of obstructionism. They came up with seven which included the two arch-conservatives from Georgia, Chambliss and Isakson (who were, perhaps both responding to a recent poll showing they both had terrible approval ratings back home), Thad Cochran (MS), the retiring George Voinovich (OH), Maine's two relative moderates, Collins and Snowe and... good ole Tea Party fave Scott Brown, who hasn't exactly been the 41st vote he promised he would be but instead is someone trying to carve out a reasonable and plausible reputation as a moderate who could actually be re-elected in a normal Massachusetts election against a candidate who isn't sleep walking.

So, despite some last minute compromising late in the day to try to save the summer employment bill, it looks like that will be another notch in conservatism's gun handle, while the overall bill will pass with a simple majority. Speaking of which, Speaker Pelosi's blog carried an interesting post Monday about how a simple majority in the Senate for the first portion of the healthcare bill is compatible with the law and the framers' intent. She points to a NY Times chart of the history of reconciliation bills since 1981. Here's a piece of that chart: