I've seen a lot of diaries and comments recently complaining about Republican filibusters and ways of getting around the 60 vote requirement. I count at least one, two, three, four, five, six of these diaries just in the past week. You'd think, based on the outrage, that the Republicans were blocking every bill from coming up for an up-or-down vote. Turns out, not so much. I took a good hard look at the 111th Senate and, in short, filibusters have not been a problem thus far.
There have been 5 cloture votes thus far in the 111th Senate. Of those, 1 was meangingless*. The other 4 cloture votes have been: two separate votes on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (which preserved millions of acres of wilderness, open space, national parkland, and national forest), the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, and the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009.
*This would be the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus bill). The stimulus required 60 votes to pass, regardless of a filibuster, because it increased the deficit in the middle of the fiscal year, in violation of the rules of the Congressional Budget Act. I'm going to ignore this cloture vote for this reason.
The first cloture vote on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act was a motion to proceed to consider the bill. It was the first roll call vote of the year, and 20 Senators (mostly Republicans) had yet to show up for the new session. The 12 'nay' votes strike me less as hyperpartisan obstructionism and more so as saying "we're not ready to begin yet."
The second cloture vote on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act was a motion to end debate on the bill. For one thing, our good friend Russ Feingold (D-WI) voted 'nay' on the motion and then voted 'yea' for passage of the bill; 4 Republicans did the same thing. For another thing, 2 Republicans voted 'yea' for cloture and then voted against the actual passage of the bill.
The cloture vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act included 12 Republicans voting 'yea' for cloture and then voting against the actual passage of the bill. On the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, 2 Republicans voted 'yea' for cloture and then voted against passage of the bill.
If a Republican votes for cloture, but then against passage, this signifies a willingness to allow the bill to pass despite their opposition. On the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, 2 Republicans did this. On the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, 12 Republicans did this. And on the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, 2 Republicans did this. And that's not even counting the Republicans who have crossed over to vote for the actual bills themselves: 6 Republicans for D.C. voting rights, 9 Republicans for children's health insurance, 5 Republicans for equal pay, 3 Republicans for economic stimulus, and 19 Republicans for land preservation.
Other bills have been passed by the Senate this year, and have not been subject to cloture motions. The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 was passed by the Senate and was not subject to a cloture motion. The Digital TV Delay Act, a minor amendment to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the "Saxbe fix" for Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and Dianne Feinstein's bill to prohibit the sale and counterfeiting of Presidential inaugural tickets were all passed by unanimous consent.
In addition, 86 Presidential nominees have been confirmed by the Senate. The vast majority have been confirmed by voice vote, and only 6 have required a roll call vote (Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor, William Lynn III as Deputy Secretary of Defense, Eric Holder as Attorney General, Daniel Tarullo as a Member of the Board of the Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State). The only nominee that has been subject to a cloture motion was Hilda Solis, and that motion for cloture was withdrawn before coming to a vote.
Every other vote (roll call or otherwise) taken by the 111th Senate has been either a meaningless, symbolic resolution or a formality of the rules.
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While I'll be the first to agree that the Republicans have been voting against Democratic bills for purely political reasons (i.e., the House vote on the stimulus package), filibusters have yet to be a problem this Senate. In the 110th Senate, of course, they were a huge problem. But we're not yet seeing that repeat itself. Now, I'll be protesting just as vigorously as anyone else the moment this actually happens, but at the moment, I'm rolling my eyes at the pre-emptive outrage.
UPDATE: I decided to compare how we're doing this year to the Senate session last year, just as a note of comparison... In the 2008 Senate session, there were 51 cloture votes out of 215 total roll call votes (24% of all votes). In the current Senate session, there have been only 5 cloture votes out of 73 total roll call votes (7% of all votes). Big difference. And, as I pointed out above, of the 5 votes, 1 of them was meaningless (the stimulus) and at least 1 of them appears to be legitimate (the first vote of the year).