1115.org

Setting the stage:

Just before the August recess, the Senate was set to vote on a bill introduced by Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) that would create a public, searchable database of all federal grants and contracts. Envisioned as a Google-like website, it would provide free, immediate access the information, which can be alarmingly difficult to obtain.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously passed the measure July 27th, and S.2590 seemed to be speeding on its way to full Senate passage when, in the dark of night, an unknown Senator placed a “secret hold” on the bill. According to Senate courtesies, the bill will never come to a vote as long as the hold continues.

The question(s):

Who knows the identity of the secret holder? How is the holder’s identity kept secret? And why is this practice even honored?

Background “answers”:

First things first: the holder’s identity is known to the holder and to either Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) or Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and possibly a leader’s secretary. It could be known by others, but according to practice a hold is placed merely by telling your party’s Senate leader or secretary. That’s the word from Don Ritchie, associate Senate historian. (Vice President Cheney, who is also the President of the Senate, cannot place a hold on a bill, Ritchie confirmed.)

Oddly, proponents of “secret holds” believe they’re not a minor quirk of Senate procedure, but actually an important part of what keeps the Senate functioning, Ritchie told me. Despite this, the practice of honoring secret holds has no basis in law. It has no basis in Senate rules. And it has no basis in Senate precedents — a byzantine collection of many hundreds of rules developed over time by lawmakers, collected and codified by the Senate parliamentarian.

In fact, the practice was briefly banished in 1997.

Then-Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) agreed that for the 106th Congress, anyone wishing to hold a bill had to tell the bill’s sponsor and the chair of the appropriate committee. But the ban on anonymity didn’t last.

“They needed it,” Ritchie said. “What they found, I think, was that if you force people to identify themselves, they become less cooperative.” In other words: if the world’s going to know I’m stopping this bill, I’m not going to be subtle about it and tell you beforehand. I’ll wait until it’s on the floor, and waste your time.

Why is that so? One has to understand the practice of the Senate, Ritchie explained.

In the House, bills are considered only after strict limits are set on the legislation, including the length of debating time and the number of amendments which can be added. “The Senate doesn’t have anything like that,” Ritchie said.

Votes can be put off indefinitely; debates could go on forever. That’s a good flexibility for a deliberative body to have — but it makes it hard to get stuff done.

When Lyndon Johnson, a former Representative, became Senate majority leader in the 1950s, he wanted to change the slow pace of progress in the upper chamber, Ritchie said. So, with the majority leader’s authority to set the legislative agenda, he started using something called “unanimous consent” to set parameters on bills up for consideration: if everyone could agree on the length of time for debate on a particular bill, then he would put it on the agenda. If not, he’d put it on a back burner and allow other bills to progress.

“Johnson raised this to a fine art in terms of controlling what was going on,” Ritchie told me. “And the Senate went along with it because it made things more efficient and more predicatable (sic).”

The reliance on unanimous consent also put more power in the hands of individual senators. “Even the greenest senator from the minority party could hold up a bill.” With anonymity, senators were more comfortable signaling their dissent in advance. The legislation gets held, the Senate progresses on other business, and the majority leader doesn’t get surprised by a single dissenter while shepherding bills on the floor. Everybody wins.

Except, as we know, they don’t. In some cases, an anonymous hold appears to serve no other purpose than to allow a senator to hold up a piece of popular legislation without being named.

The main event:
The real question, of course, is: Who is the secret holder? A grass-roots effort to out him/her is under way.

Since he/she is unlikely to fess up, bloggers from the left and right have united in the effort of eliminating suspects one by one. The only way to do this is to call your Senator’s offices up and get an answer. Over at Porkbuster.org, they’re keeping a tally; 27 Senators have responded to readers and bloggers and said they weren’t responsible for the hold. GOP Progress (via Wonkette) got that total up to 33.

The scorecard:
Many updates have occurred since then. The current tally can be found here. The bottom line as of 5 pm Tuesday is that 95 senators seem to be ruled out. Here are the 5 that are left:

Senators Unknown or Who Refuse Answer:
(Senators who have refused to answer are in bold and italicized.)
Byrd, Robert C.- (D – WV)
Crapo, Mike- (R – ID)
Gregg, Judd- (R – NH)
Hatch, Orrin G.- (R – UT)
Stevens, Ted- (R – AK)
Bennett, Robert F.- (R – UT) - a staffer denied, but not unequivocally

*** Update 1, 6:30 am August 30 ***
TPM Muckraker has uncovered an Aug. 18 article in the Fort Smith (Ark.) Times Record which had somehow slipped under the radar before. The article reports that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) accused Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) of placing the secret hold. TPM Muckraker’s comments:

Coburn’s office was not available for comment this evening.

The article has gone largely unnoticed in recent days, as hundreds of bloggers and blog-readers (at TPMm and elsewhere) have called Senate offices in an effort to determine who placed the “secret” hold on Coburn’s bill. The piece does not turn up in a Nexis search, although it is in Google.

Stevens has been the odds-on favorite since the hunt for the Holder Who Dare Not Speak His Name began.

But did he really do it? Well, he had a motive: As the paper and others have noted, Stevens and Coburn have clashed before — in particular over Stevens’ now-legendary “bridge to nowhere.” Coburn attempted (and failed) to block the $233 million boondoggle. And revenge certainly fits the senior Alaskan’s m.o. “Stevens can play rough,” the Seattle Times noted in June. “Despite denials from his staff, he retaliates – and doesn’t mind waiting years to do so.”

Stevens’ office has so far refused to comment on the hold.

*** Update 2, 1:20 am August 30 ***

TPM Muckraker:

A spokesman for Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) just confirmed his boss was the man behind the secret hold on the Coburn/Obama spending database bill, which has captivated a segment of the political blogging community in recent days.

“Sen. Stevens does have a hold on the bill,” said the spokesman, who would only speak on the condition he not be named. He added that Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) office was notified of the hold after it was placed. So Coburn’s comments two weeks ago may have been duly informed.

So why does Stevens say he placed the hold? Why did it take this long for him to say so? And will he lift it?

We’ll have more soon…