1115.org

(1) The Secret Remedy For Secret Holds

I suspect that most Americans — even those who follow politics closely — do not really understand the host of obstructionist tactics available to U.S. senators, tactics that together make the Senate one of the more dysfunctional institutions of American democracy. (I hang my head in shame, and admit to being in that group.)

Any senator can bring any bill to a shuddering stop by placing a secret hold on it. One crazy senator can put a hundred bills into suspended animation, if he’s crazy enough to choose to do so. The other 99 senators will still greet him in the hallways, and be perfectly civil to him in every way (because they are all such perfect gentlemen, even the ladies, who should know better).

Most of the time, when you read about secret holds, the implication is that there’s really nothing anyone in the Senate can actually do about a secret hold. The only remedy, as per conventional wisdom, is to figure out who the secret blocker is, and then out them and subject them to public ridicule, and hope to shame them into withdrawing the hold.

Like most things we seem to know about the Senate’s more arcane procedures, that’s totally incorrect, it turns out:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning a “Coburn Omnibus” for July that would wrap most if not all of the bills held by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) into one large measure to be voted on by the Senate, according to a Coburn aide and two Democratic leadership staffers.

Coburn is blocking roughly a hundred bills that are generally non-controversial or have broad support. By placing a hold, Coburn prevents the bills from passing quickly through the Senate under a unanimous consent request. With floor time at such a premium, Reid would have trouble bringing up each bill for an individual debate and vote.

But in a stroke of legislative creativity that may have no precedent, Reid could lump all of the bills into one package and bring up the Coburn Omnibus for a single vote. Coburn can still object, but the broad popularity of the bills means that there would likely be more than enough support for veto-proof passage.

So the truth of the matter is that a bill with a secret hold can be brought up any time the Senate Majority Leader chooses. All that happens is that without a secret hold, it would be brought up under unanimous consent, which greases the bill’s passage through the Senate. With a secret hold, the bill moves more slowly: “Votes can be put off indefinitely; debates could go on forever.”

Unless I’m missing something, though, the indefinitely and forever come into play only if there is enough support for obstructing the bill (the convoluted phrase is deliberate, to match the convoluted workings of the Senate) that a filibuster can be maintained. So given that Coburn’s hundred bills “are generally non-controversial or have broad support”, the bills could surely have been moved through the Senate almost as quickly as if there was unanimous consent?

Maybe there was no reason to let the hundred holds pile up? They piled up only because that’s the way the Senate traditionally does business, like gentlemen, honoring every crazy whim of every crazy gentleman who chooses to have a crazy whim?

(2) Secret Holds Are A Secret Remedy

In all fairness to Dr. Coburn, all these holds are not random acts of petty pique. He has a formal Hold Program, that he proudly articulates on his Senate website. He’s not a Senate crazy; he’s a self-appointed one-man Senate Reform Commission.

Still, these are some of the bills Dr. Coburn has been moved to block:

He blocked a ban on genetic discrimination by health insurers. He thwarted a bill to set up a program to track patients with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Also nixed: an effort to promote safe Internet use by children and a resolution to honor the late environmentalist Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

Coburn doesn’t see himself as obstructing legislation. He sees himself as improving legislation, by forcing debate, or forcing the sponsors of a bill to negotiate with him and amend the bill to address his concerns.

The obvious question is: would happen to the Senate if every Senator started doing what Coburn does? That, apparently, is no concern of Coburn.