More Griping About Reporters: Congressional Procedure

Elise Foley over at TNR, posting in both the Plank and Treatment blogs, had the good sense to think that many people might be wondering exactly what procedures get us from five committee bills to floor consideration of single bills. And she had the good sense to consult Norm Ornstein, who certainly knows House and Senate procedures. And the story gets off to an excellent start.

...and then goes horribly wrong at the end:

Finally, the combined Senate legislation will be sent to the Rules committee, which will receive strict instructions from the leadership about what terms of debate to set for the bill. It could remain open for debate and amendment, or it could require simple up-or-down vote, depending on what the Senate leaders think will work best.

Oops! That ain't right. Perhaps a little remedial how-a-bill-becomes-a-law, updated version, is in order.

The House bill will go to the House rules committee: substitute House for Senate in that paragraph, and it's a good summary of how a bill gets to the House floor. Over on the Senate side, what will probably happen is a filibuster on a motion to proceed, requiring sixty votes to get the bill taken up at all. Then, either there will be a unanimous consent agreement governing which amendments can be offered (unlikely, although there may be a partial UCA to get through some of the amendments offered); or, anyone can offer any amendment they like (with filibusters available on each amendment); or, Reid will move for cloture on the bill. More or less; the specifics get technical, and I for one have to look it up when it comes to specific questions.

Over on the House side, the only thing seriously limiting the leadership from dictating procedures through the rules committee is that Democrats need to make sure they have a majority in favor of the rule -- for example, liberals could threaten to vote against the rule if they are not given a chance to vote on a single-payer alternative. This could get tricky, since carefully negotiated compromises could be endangered if amendments pass on the floor, but usually the majority party leadership on the House side has enough weapons that they can enforce party discipline when they want to. Individual Members of the House have pretty much zilch power, but blocs big enough to threaten to sink the bill (or the rule) might be able to get something.

On the Senate side, on the other hand, you're basically talking about negotiations with everyone, certainly everyone who might vote for the bill, over everything. Every Senator always has plenty of power to mess things up, but the numbers right now make it clear that every Democratic Senator (and Olympia Snowe) is in a very good bargaining position.

About That NYT Story

As I just posted, I think there is significant news in this Carl Hulse NYT story. The story itself, however, is just a mess.

First of all, the actual news (the Democrats are actively seeking Yes/No votes, and Bayh might sign on) is found in paragraphs 13-15 of a seventeen paragraph story. The first twelve paragraphs tell us Big News, including:

• The Democrats will need 60 votes to beat a filibuster, so they'll all have to like the bill.
• Moderate and liberal Democrats don't really agree on what they want in the bill.
• Olympia Snowe is really, really important.

No, really. That's pretty much the story. But it gets worse. The entire story is based on the assumption that the Massachusetts seat will be vacant when the Senate votes: "With the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Democrats control 59 seats, meaning they need at least one Republican to join them..." Nowhere in the story is there even a hint that the Massachusetts legislature may very well pass a bill allowing for a new Senator to be appointed within the next two weeks, in plenty of time for the Senate floor debate.

Then there's the stuff that liberals would be upset with. Hulse quotes George Voinovich complaining about whether the bill is affordable. But of course the Baucus bill was scored as actually reducing the deficit, and the president has pledged that any bill he would sign must be (at least?) budget neutral. Wouldn't a follow-up question be appropriate?

Oh well. At least there's actual news hidden in the bottom of the story. Reporters: we need more about Yes/No!

Big News? On Dems and Filibuster

NYT:

Given the steep climb toward 60, Senate Democratic leaders have begun to make another argument to lawmakers. They are pressing colleagues to vote with the party on procedural matters related to health care legislation and against any filibuster — a 60-vote issue — even if they intend to oppose the measure in the end when simple majority rules.

Senators are usually reluctant to clear the way for a bill they might vote against since they relinquish their most powerful leverage, but the message is evidently reaching some.

“It is difficult to ask someone to facilitate the enactment of legislation with which they disagree,” Mr. Bayh said. “But to move the process forward, to improve things, to get to the point where you can support it substantively, that of course I would be willing to do.”

That's two pieces of news -- first, that the Democrats are actively soliciting Yes/No votes to get cloture, and second, that they may be having some success. (I'm not aware of either of these things being reported to date). Bayh is a major player here; he's certaily one of the five most conservative Democrats, perhaps even the second most conservative Democrat. So if he's willing to be a Yes/No, voting for cloture but against the bill, it's a very big deal. Unfortunately, his comment isn't very specific, and the reporter (about which more in the next post) doesn't follow up. Is Bayh saying that he would flat-out vote Yes/No? Or is he only open to a cloture vote on the motion to proceed? Would he help get a bill he dislikes into conference?

Reporters should be working this story -- what sorts of lobbying efforts for "Yes/No" are ongoing, and whether marginal Democrats are buying it -- a lot harder than they have been.

Getting to Sixty (MA legislature route)

Via TPM, Good news for the Democrats today on a vastly undercovered story: it looks like the Massachusetts legislature will change the law to allow for a temporary Senator this fall. Apparently, it's not yet a done deal, with a big unknown factor being whether the Democratic Senate President there will push back hard against Republican efforts to delay the bill.

I'll note that this is really very important. Generally, there's a major bias in favor of interpreting Congressional action as a result of strategies and tactics, whether it's the actions of the president, or committee chairs, or swing voters. Those things can matter -- but the bottom-line numbers matter more, and in the Senate single votes are a big deal. So the most important stories of the year are not the Gang of Six, or the timing of Obama's speech to the joint session, or the town halls; the most important stories of the year...well, I'll rank them:

1. Franken beats Coleman (shift from mainstream conservative to liberal Dem.)
2. Specter switches parties (shift from moderate Republican to mainstream Dem.)
3. Kennedy dies, is or is not replaced (shift would be from vacancy to liberal Dem.)
4. Gregg stays put (non-shift from mainstream conservative to moderate Republican)
5. Martinez resigns (shift from moderate Republican to conservative Republican)

Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't obsess about Obama's strategy and Baucus's tactics, but several of these stories have received very little attention, despite several of them (the Franken/Coleman race especially) being quite interesting in addition to being important.

Anyway, it looks like Olympia Snowe will probably shift back to being the 61st most liberal Senator, leaving Ben Nelson again as #60 (and with a similar shift in the 50th most liberal Senator). Pretty big news to follow over the next couple of weeks.

Grading Baucus So Far 2

On the bad side: well, we don't know yet. The delay was only OK if it ultimately allowed Baucus to produce a bill he could get out of committee. As I read the reactions yesterday and today, I'm not at all certain that's the case. It's pretty clear that liberals are going to want to push the bill in their direction. There are nine "no" votes going in, so of the thirteen Dems plus Snowe, Baucus can only lose three votes.

The thing is that if we're talking about needing sixty votes, then the Democrats only have a margin of one in the entire Senate (figuring sixty Democrats once Kennedy's seat is filled, plus Snowe). It's possible that the final bill could get two or three additional Republicans, but unlikely that Lugar, for example, would sign on as the 60th vote. So if Baucus can't get all fourteen votes out of his committee, then it's not as if the Democrats have other votes in reserve once the bill gets to the floor.

In other words, we don't know yet. I think that the initial reaction is not very promising, but as I always say, you can't trust what poker players say in the middle of a hand. We're going to have some votes in committee on various amendments to push the bill in a liberal direction; we don't know how the votes will fall on those amendments; and we don't know whether the result will wind up with something that Conrad, Nelson and Lincoln -- and Schumer, Rockefeller, and Kerry -- can all vote for. I will say one thing: if Baucus can get something through his committee with fourteen votes by the end of September, then he'll deserve a lot of praise. But it could still blow up, and I'm not convinced that anyone, including Baucus, has a good whip count on committee votes.

For those of us who have an odd attraction to watching sausage get made...well, there sure are going to be a lot of unidentified animal parts flying around for the next couple of weeks.

Grading Baucus So Far 1

I've been mostly defending the Gang of Six process to this point. How does the release of the bill this week change things? Remember, I'm interested here in process more than substance.

On the good side: Baucus meant it when he said that he'd have a bill by mid-September, contrary to a lot of liberals' predictions. I strongly disagree with this analysis of the political situation from Publius:

Baucus dragged out this process for months. In doing so, he exposed reform to all types of attacks. Yes, the attacks were inevitable, but the lack of a single bill limited supporters' ability to push back effectively. As of today, he has literally nothing to show for it.

Imagine an alternative world in which Baucus in which the Gang of Six was Baucus, Bingaman, Conrad, Snowe...and Schumer and Cantwell, replacing Grassley and Enzi. Suppose that a compromise was available, more or less along the lines that Baucus detailed today, and that Baucus had set a deadline not for September 15, but in plenty of time for a bill to reach the Senate floor before August recess. And, suppose that sixty votes could be found for that bill, so it did pass the Senate floor.

Now, we hit August...and we still have two bills, because there's no way that a conference committee could have completed its work before the recess. "Death panels" would no longer be something that was (supposedly) in a committee bill; it would be something that House and Senate Democrats had voted for. Sure, it would still be fictional, but at that point the political solution (dropping the misread portions of the bill for now) would be a lot less workable, since everyone would have their votes on record. Same for the supposed provisions about immigrants. Now, it's true that there will still be a period of time after Democrats have cast their initial votes for the bill but without a final, signed-into-law product to defend, but pushing back floor consideration until after the break minimized that exposure.

Meanwhile, Publius says that Baucus has nothing to show for the extended negotiations, since he didn't get a bipartisan bill, but I've argued throughout that what Baucus was buying was cover for Democrats who couldn't get Republican votes. That, I think, has been a success. CNN has Republicans polling 61/35 for obstructionist/constructive. ABC/WaPo has Republicans 62-31 "are not" making a good faith effort to cooperate, compared to a slim majority (50/44) who say that Obama and the Dems "are" making a good faith effort. That's what Baucus has to show for his negotiations. A Dems-plus-Snowe Gang of Six would have had the GOP squawking that they were left out of the process despite their desperate (and fictional) desire to cut a deal. That's been fully exposed now, not only to Democratic partisans who always expected it, but to anyone even remotely neutral.

So all in all, I think the delay has had several benefits with little down side. But that's only part of the story, which I'll continue in the next post.

Footwear Update

Everyone is already picking out the juiciest bits of Matt Latimer's tell-some in GQ, but so far I haven't seen anyone citing the most devastating detail:

George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, apparently walked around the White House wearing Crocs.

Crocs.

That is all.