Secret Holds Need To Go

This has got me - and about every veteran and soldiers' widows - a tad upset:

In what appears to be an election-year stunt that quickly backfired, an unidentified Republican senator on Thursday briefly blocked disabled veterans and their survivors from getting a cost-of-living adjustment to their benefits, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

The Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) increase for Department of Veterans Affairs benefits, which typically passes the House and Senate without opposition, was cleared by Senate Democrats but placed on a “secret hold” Thursday by an unidentified Republican senator, Murray says.

Under Senate rules, a single senator is allowed to anonymously keep a bill from advancing toward a vote with what is called a “secret hold.” The senator in this case has not been identified.

The measure, HR 4114, which passed the House on July 9, provides a 1.9 percent increase in disability benefits for veterans and surviving spouses, matching the planned increase in Social Security benefits...

The Republicans in the Senate suddenly realized after the fact that they've just committed a massive screw-up and walked back the "secret hold."  But the damage has been done: the delay put on the bill keeps it from getting a vote done until after the general election on just that one day, meaning that the Senate has a very short window to get the bill before the President for signature and to get the checks going out to veterans and widows in time for the COLAs to kick in Jan 1, 2013.

I've raged before about Secret Holds and how destructive they are to the natural workings of democratic representation.  This is just one more piece of evidence: a much-needed bill getting out aid to those Americans who most need it and who have sacrificed most for it is now screwed up thanks to one Jerk-Ass Senator.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says a Senator or a group of Senators have this kind of power: even the filibuster system - itself a broken mess screwing up our ability to get things done - is codified and is governed by rules and checks.  The Secret Hold is a non-binding "gentleman's agreement" where the Senate Majority Leader agrees to a demand for a Hold on a bill or appointment for the sake of bipartisan comity.  Problem is, the holds are so clearly PARTISAN anymore that the whole idea of it being a bipartisan agreement is a joke, a parody of bipartisanship, and one that's not at all funny.

I hope to God someday someone files a lawsuit against Secret Holds.  They are clearly unconstitutional, they clearly invade the constitutional requirement of bicameral legislation (that means the two-house method of passing laws), and they are clearly wrong.

More About Secret Holds and the Failure of the U.S. Senate

It's like, OMG OMG I had a commentator post on my blog!  I had someone comment on my Calcification entry about the abusive Senatorial tool known as Secret Holds.

Just like to say a Big Hi and Thanks to ye for commenting.  And you mentioned that you were doing research on these Holds for your government class?  Well, here's a link to Balloon Juice just recently that will highlight a bit more about how Secret Holds are getting abused nowadays (which is also a link to Talking Points Memo, who do a decent job of keeping track of these sort of political con games):

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.
“While holds are frequent,” CongressDaily’s Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report (sub. req.), “Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal.”
The Mobile Press-Register picked up the story early this afternoon. The paper confirmed Reid’s account of the hold, and reported that a Shelby spokesperson “did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation of the senator’s action or his reason for doing so.”

The TPM entry notes that Shelby is attempting to extort (there is no other word for it) the Obama administration into sending millions of earmark money to his state that they're trying to cut back.  While this is happening, our government is denied key people at key positions, meaning more backlog of work and more chances of screw-ups and mismanagement.  Worst of all, Shelby's not even blocking these nominations for ideological reasons.  If he was blocking them because he feared any of those 70 nominations were pro-choice or pro-union... well, that'd still suck but at least there'd be some excuse.  He's just doing it for the damn money!

As I mentioned in my Calcification thread, this is yet another example of how the legislative system is broken: its' responsibility to provide a check/balance to the executive branch twisted into an abuse of power and yet another grab at government pork (sing with me!  They want the moooooooonnneeeeeyyyy ah, It's what they want).

Get rid of Secret Holds, limit Filibustering, and maybe, just you know maybe, we might get a working Congress again.

UPDATE (2/11/2010): As of now, Shelby has given up the blanket hold, releasing all but three nominations (all of the three are military appointments) after the massive negative publicity (Republicans couldn't claim that "Democrats do it too": a blanket hold like that was unprecedented, period.).  This still doesn't change the underlying problem: HOLDS ARE UNDEMOCRATIC.  Get rid of the Damn Holds.

Calcification

The major blogs are starting to recognize the real problem with our current political landscape: the fact that our legislative system has frozen in place.

...Meyerson notes the Democrats' three great governing opportunities/challenges of the last century. The first was in 1933, when FDR and a Democratic Congress delivered on a New Deal. The second was in 1965, when LBJ and a Democratic Congress advanced the Great Society. The third is right now. And while the first two saw a flurry of legislative successes that came to define a generation, 2009 isn't working out the same way -- partly because Republicans have embraced obstructionism on an unprecedented scale, partly because some Democrats are conservatives who are comfortable with failure, and partly because of legislative procedural hurdles that FDR and LBJ didn't have to worry about.

As Benen notes, the partisan obstructionism of the Republicans is part of the reason we're not seeing more legislative action this year, or indeed out of the past 10 years (most legislation under the GOP tenure of the Aughts were self-serving deficit-increasing disasters like the handouts to Big Pharma in their Plan D package, every tax cut they could get away with, and funding two out-of-control wars). But the other aspects are just as bad: there are indeed Democrats not so much comfortable with failure as they are with the Status Quo - failure they can live with, they don't want to rock the boat and risk their incumbent re-election campaigns.

The other problem is the procedural hurdles currently in play. Worst of all is the filibuster rule. What was once an obscure rule is now an impediment on getting anything passed in the Senate (the House has no filibuster and so can pass laws by majority vote more quickly) because the filibuster can't be stopped (Cloture) unless two-thirds of the Senate votes to, which means you need 60 votes nowadays to ensure Cloture. Problem is where the Republicans are organized to a fault to where their own party is consuming themselves, the Democrats are disorganized to where each Senator can (and does) act like their own party and vote however they want... so even though they've GOT 60 Senators in their caucus (58 D plus 2 Ind), the Dems can't count on that 60 to really enforce anything because 20 of those asses will act up like petulant children and kick the furniture until they get their very own pony for Christmas... not that I'm expressing any frustration at the moment (DAMN YOU LIEBERMAN!). As a result, all the Republicans have to do (or Lieberman, YOU EFFING TRAITOR, just go R and BE DONE WITH IT) is threaten to filibuster and the Democrat-led Senate will freeze up and choke.

But the filibuster is only part of the problem.

What's worse is that a Senator can place a Secret (!) Hold on any motion from reaching the floor for a vote. This means anything (ANYTHING) that's gone through committee review and votes, from laws to nominees for key executive and judicial positions, can be held up for months (!) while NOTHING gets done. There's a boatload of vacancies in the White House and on our federal courts because Senators are abusing the Hold system out of partisan issues with particular agencies (or because they don't like the ideology of incoming administrations affecting who gets to fill lifetime judicial jobs). This is also what happened when Sens. Kyl and Hatch held up the unemployment benefits extension this month so they could essentially commit extortion. Both parties, let's be fair, have abused this rule, but right now it's gotten so much worse.

And WHAT MAKES IT WORSE is THE HOLD(S) IS/ARE SECRET. The Senator responsible for placing the hold doesn't have to be named in the official record, meaning they could hide their action from their voters back home and avoid accountability. It wasn't until an egregious hold placed on a government transparency bill of all things that a handful of aggrieved bloggers called around forcing nearly every Senator to flat-out deny they placed the hold (a direct public denial turning out to be a lie apparently never looks good on re-election efforts) until they narrowed the suspects down to four (by then the two culprits - Stevens and Byrd - fessed up). Subsequent Hold attempts are getting so brazen Senators are starting openly (but indirectly) to 'hint' who the bad guys are.

Attempts to fix the Filibuster and the Hold rules have come and gone, some brazenly partisan, others less so. For a while there, Holds were disallowed in the late 90s but then brought back. Either way, each procedural rule is turning out cause two problems: 1) they're undemocratic, preventing ANYTHING from getting done and 2) they create lack of accountability, not just for the Senators who abuse the procedures but also the Senators WHO LET THEM ABUSE IT.

The whole Upper House has gotten lazy and soft, beholden to themselves as Barons of power. And because of the short attention spans of the media (if not their state-bound voters), these Senators keep getting away with it. This leads to the Status Quo: unchanging, inflexible, stuck in ideas and beliefs 20 years out of date, and calcified.

We need reform. We need to fix the Senate truly before we can get any other reforms to save our nation in place. We need to set it in stone - not in the standing Senate Rules which no Senator will ever fix - but in amendments to the Constitution:

• The Filibuster can only be used by a Senator with regards to debating the approval of a judicial nominee that is filled by lifetime appointment. During the first 5 business days of filibustering it will require 2/3 vote for Cloture, and after the 5 business days it will require a simple majority for Cloture, and no nomination can be filibustered more than once;
• A Hold placed by a Senator on a legislative matter brought to the floor for a vote can only be in effect for up to 5 business days during which any questions the Senator has on the matter is resolved. The Senator must be named publicly and provide a written explanation for the Hold. The Senator cannot extend a Hold on that legislation (if the questions he/she has on the matter aren't resolved, he/she can still vote No), and only two Holds can be placed on the matter brought to the floor.

To finish out, a quote from Benen:

Facing extraordinary crises and challenges, the United States has a legislative branch that is barely able to legislate at all. The system can see the problems, but is struggling badly to address them. The first step in changing the way Congress operates is creating the demand -- most of the public has no idea that the Senate no longer operates by majority rule. Public frustration can lead to proposals, which can lead to debate, which can lead to solutions.

WAKE UP PEOPLE.

Support any and all efforts to get amendments, rules, whatever it takes to get reform methods - getting rid of Secret Holds, limiting the Filibuster to just votes on lifetime judicial appointments - in place AND FIX THE SENATE.