There's a front page diary which states that:
The procedure for tomorrow is that votes on the outstanding amendments will begin at 10:00. After these votes happen, they'll have the cloture vote. When Leahy and Dodd say they will filibuster, it means that they will vote against the cloture vote on the bill to continue debate. If they are successful in preventing 60 votes for cloture, the debate can continue for as long as 30 hours. If they fail to prevent cloture, Dodd has four hours reserved for him and his colleagues like Leahy to convince enough fellow Dems to vote against final passage.
If this is an accurate statement, then we are being lied to, the Senate is violating its own rules and perpetrating a sham.
Follow below the fold for more.
Cloture is defined as the Senate procedure for limiting debate. The procedure for cloture is set out in Senate Rule XXII. The relevant portions read:
- Notwithstanding the provisions of rule II or rule IV or any other rule of the Senate, at any time a motion signed by sixteen Senators, to bring to a close the debate upon any measure, motion, other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, is presented to the Senate, the Presiding Officer, or clerk at the direction of the Presiding Officer, shall at once state the motion to the Senate, and one hour after the Senate meets on the following calendar day but one, he shall lay the motion before the Senate and direct that the clerk call the roll, and upon the ascertainment that a quorum is present, the Presiding Officer shall, without debate, submit to the Senate by a yea-and-nay vote the question:
"Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?" And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn -- except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting -- then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.
...
After no more than thirty hours of consideration of the measure, motion, or other matter on which cloture has been invoked, the Senate shall proceed, without any further debate on any question, to vote on the final disposition thereof to the exclusion of all amendments not then actually pending before the Senate at that time and to the exclusion of all motions, except a motion to table, or to reconsider and one quorum call on demand to establish the presence of a quorum (and motions required to establish a quorum) immediately before the final vote begins. The thirty hours may be increased by the adoption of a motion, decided without debate, by a threefifths affirmative vote of the Senators duly chosen and sworn, and any such time thus agreed upon shall be equally divided between and controlled by the Majority and Minority Leaders or their designees. However, only one motion to extend time, specified above, may be made in any one calendar day.
(An aside here: I've seen several statements to the effect that it takes 41 votes to defeat cloture. As the first bolded passage shows, this is false. It takes 60 affirmative votes to pass cloture, regardless of how many are present.)
As the second bolded passage shows, 30 hours is the normal limit to debate if cloture succeeds. If it is true that the unanimous consent agreement limits debate to 30 hours if cloture fails, then this cloture vote is a sham. Either debate is limited or it isn't. If it is despite the result of the "cloture" vote then that is no cloture vote at all.
So does the UC really say this? I've hunted for a couple of hours and can't locate the full text of the UC. I did locate several summaries here, here and here. Here is a representative summary:
At 10 a.m., the Senate will resume consideration of S. 2248, the FISA bill , and shortly thereafter begin a series of stacked roll call votes on pending amendments, in the following order: • Whitehouse amendment #3920 (compliance reviews) (60 votes required); • Feinstein amendment #3910 (exclusive means) (60 votes required) ; • Feingold/Webb amendment #3979 (sequestration); • Dodd/Feingold amendment #3907 (strike immunity); • Feingold amendment #3912 (certifications); • Bond amendment #3938, as modified (WMDs); • Specter/Whitehouse amendment #3927 (substitution); and • Feinstein amendment #3919 (FISA Court); (60 votes required).
At 12:30 p.m., the Senate will recess until 2:15 p.m. for the weekly policy lunches. Following the disposition of all amendments and the Rockefeller/Bond substitute amendment #3911, the Senate will VOTE on cloture on S. 2248, as amended. If cloture is invoked, the post-cloture debate time will be divided as follows (5 hours, 15 minutes in total):
Senator Dodd, 4 hours; Senator Feingold, 15 minutes; Senators Leahy and Hatch, 20 minutes each; and The Majority and Minority Leaders, 10 minutes each.
Following use or yielding back of the post-cloture debate time, the Senate will VOTE on passage of S. 2248, as amended. Following passage of the bill, the Senate will take up H.R. 3773, the House-passed FISA bill, strike the bill language, insert the language of S. 2248, as amended, and pass H.R. 3773, as amended, by unanimous consent.
Cloture has been filed on the Conference Report to accompany H.R. 2082, the Intelligence Authorization bill.
Note, there is no mention of any limit if cloture fails. So I am tentatively concluding that the interpretation given of the UC is false and this is in fact a real cloture vote rather than a`sham. If so, our task is to persuade enough senators to vote against it to prevent the "aye" vote from reaching 60. Note, we don't need 41 "no" votes. A non-vote is as good as a "no" although it sure would be nice to have our presidential candidates adding their weight to the persuasion.
If anyone can find a link to the full text of the UC, please post it and I will update this diary.
Call your Senators in the morning!