CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Oct. 15, 2008 – 12:04 a.m.
Who Needs a 60-Vote Majority? Maybe Not Obama
By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff
Democratic politicians and activists are giddy over visions of a 60-seat majority in the Senate next year, but experts say they don’t need quite that many to rewrite a wide range of national policies to reflect the priorities of their presidential nominee, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , if he is elected.
Primarily, that’s because Senate rules provide for expedited consideration of the budget bills, known as “reconciliation” measures, that have become the favored legislative vehicles for the most ambitious spending and tax plans of recent presidents.
Reconciliation bills, spawned by annual budget resolutions and protected from filibuster, need only a bare majority to pass the Senate. However, a larger operating cushion for the party in power is sometimes necessary to pass reconciliation measures, as was the case in 1993, when Vice President Al Gore’s tie-breaking vote was needed to pass a budget reconciliation measure despite Democrats holding 56 seats in the Senate.
Eric M. Ueland, who served as chief of staff to former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, said a good portion of Obama’s agenda could be handled under reconciliation if he wins.
“A lot of the ideas are framed within a 10-year window, are run through the tax code, and therefore are obvious candidates for fast-track under reconciliation in the Senate,” Ueland said. “For example, on health and tax policy, there is an aggressive amount of tax-law change within Obama policy proposals that lend themselves to fitting easily under a reconciliation framework.”
The reconciliation rules are intended to facilitate politically difficult deficit-reduction efforts that require tax hikes or spending cuts.
Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said that Obama’s plans to extend expiring tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 per year — and Republican presidential nominee John McCain ’s more expensive plan to keep in place all of President Bush’s tax cuts — would be hard to enact through reconciliation because they would increase the deficit compared to the current baseline.
“Those would actually count as deficit increases not deficit reduction under existing House and Senate rules,” Kogan said.
But even outside the reconciliation process, Democrats are likely to be able to attract crossover Republican votes on various domestic and foreign policy measures to help them get the 60 votes needed to stop filibusters on contentious issues such as expanding the state children’s health insurance program to regulating tobacco to winding down the Iraq War.
And there is a strong possibility that a President Obama would be operating with more senators from his own party than any president since Jimmy Carter, even if Democrats do not make it to 60 seats.
There were 61 Senate Democrats in Carter’s first two years, 1977 and 1978, and 58 Senate Democrats in his final two years. Since, then the high-water mark for any president was the 57 seats Democrats controlled during the first four-plus months of the Clinton administration before Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison was elected to fulfill the remainder of the term Lloyd Bentsen won before being appointed to head the Treasury Department.
CQ Politics currently projects Democrats emerging from this year’s election with at least 56 Senate seats and Republicans holding at least 40, with four races rated “no clear favorite.”
Those figures include independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who caucus with Democrats — though Lieberman’s future association with the Democratic Party remains unclear now that he has campaigned for Republican presidential nominee John McCain .
Who Needs a 60-Vote Majority? Maybe Not Obama
Experts in both political parties say that a majority in the high 50s would clear the path for a lot of legislation.
“I think that a 58- or 57-vote Democratic majority in the Senate would be able to get cloture in a very large number of instances where the current Senate was not able to, and that’s simply because of the 42 or 43 Republican senators that will come back,” said Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and a former House Appropriations Committee staff director. “Those are the guys who are going to be under real pressure to show they can cooperate to move an agenda.”
Electoral Pressure
Some moderate Republicans who were once viewed as good bets for re-election this year, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, have found themselves in competitive races with less than a month left before Election Day.
Even if Collins and Smith hold on against challengers Tom Allen and Jeff Merkley, they could be expected to help build bipartisan coalitions for Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., and against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky. — assuming McConnell wins re-election in what is a surprisingly close race with Democrat Bruce Lunsford.
“Any Democrat[ic] pick-ups beyond 55 essentially get you to 60 on almost any issue without exception, barring card-check and right to work,” a Republican strategist said, referring to two hot-button workplace issues that pit labor against business. “Whether you have replaced a Smith with a Merkley, a Collins with an Allen, or a Smith and a Collins remain, the ability of Reid to add them to his total to be able to invoke cloture, and the challenge for McConnell to keep them with him at 41 to beat cloture, is easy for Reid and increasingly hard for McConnell.”
Sens. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and George V. Voinovich of Ohio could be expected to vote frequently with the Democratic majority in 2009 — “the latter two because they are in cycle,” or up for re-election — the strategist said. “When you start to look at the issues over the past couple of years as well as the priorities that Obama and congressional Democrats will lay out, you can kind of chart early on a fairly repeated pattern of potentially successful cloture votes on issue after issue.”
Republicans will be defending 19 Senate seats, compared with 15 for Democrats in 2010.
Nancy Beck Young, a political historian at the University of Houston, said that Obama’s vast network of newly engaged grass-roots activists also could apply pressure to individual lawmakers in their home states to help move an agenda.
“I don’t think these people are going to go away. I think the folks who have given their time and money to break this most historic of barriers are going to be on the job, watching their members of Congress and expressing their most intense desire that you vote with President Obama” on individual bills, she said.
Comments
This piece reminds me of a long-ago saying by Speaker Sam Rayburn in the wake of the 1958 Congressional elections, who observed to the effect that TOO many Democrats (counter-intuitively) hindered party cohesion. With that in mind, even a 59- or 58-D majority may prompt factional tussles within the vastly expanded caucus - even in the possible absence of Lieberman and/or Landrieu.
What McCain needs to say to the American People at his closing debate speech. Title: Imagine My fellow Americans, in these difficult times I ask for YOUR vote Nov 4th. Senator Obama WILL bring change- you can be sure of that. Unfortunately it's the change America doesn't need or can't afford. Imagine an Obama-Biden Democrat administration, unchecked and encouraged by a guaranteed Democratic House of Representatives led by Nancy Pelosi, and a filibuster proof Democratic controlled Senate led by Harry Reid. If Senator Obama wins he and the Democrats will have at least 2 years, if not 4 years to implement sweeping and irreversible changes in Healthcare, Taxes, Economy, Judicial Nominees, Gun Control, Medicare, and Defense Spending. Imagine. Imagine electing a Senator more liberal than Jimmy Carter, than Ted Kennedy, than Michael Dukakis. This Country needs to look forward not backward. Do we want a health care system which resembles that of Castro's Cuba? Do we want Banks, Oil and Gas Companies taxed out of existence or wholly nationalized like Chavez's Venezuela? The change I propose is more modest. I will lower taxes on all Americans. I will not create class welfare – pitting neighbor against neighbor – friend against friend. I will lower the capital gains tax to 7.5% to spur growth and create jobs. I will solve this nations dependence on foreign oil with 4 years and stop sending half a Trillion dollars overseas to dictators and monarchs who care less about our well being. The best and quickest way to reduce that dependence is expanding existing Nuclear power plants and building new ones. Creating millions of new jobs in the process. Encouraging new solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro energy producing facilities. Giving immediate tax breaks to companies building or researching these technologies and I will offer any American who builds a new home or retrofits an existing one using these new technologies to fully deduct the cost on their taxes. Imagine. Imagine a government that is responsive to the people. Imagine a government that you can trust again. Imagine a government that shrinks in size every year. Imagine a government that does more with less. Under a McCain-Palin administration it will happen. My fellow Americans I ask for your trust and your Vote. God bless you and these United States of America.
What are you smoking? Idiots!!!!!!!!!! Look at what the Congress did to Carter!!! Look at what Congress did to Clinton!!!! We need the 60!!!!!!! Else we'll face a filabuster each day the Senate is in session and then will have to run against a highly successfully managed campaign of a "Do-nothing-Congress". We need 4 years of a veto-proof & Filabuster proof Senate to undo Bush & Reagan. Get real or get a real job.
Jonathan Allen is right to conclude the article with Nancy Beck Young's quote about newly-engaged grass-roots activists who have "given their time and money to break this most historic of barriers are going to be on the job, watching their members of Congress." When soon-to-be president-elect Obama uses his community organizer skills to activate the network of activists entrenched power-brokers may be surprised by the new partnership of people and president. To change infrastructure Obama needs both surprise and instant public support - both online blogging and to Congress. Congressional offices will have to expand to deal with the level of input we gave about the bailout.
I'm old enough to remember that it wasn't Senate filibusters that did Carter in; it was the Democratic majority in Congress that turned on him. This shouldn't happen to Obama. Still, if it will take 60 votes to secure card-check, then we need 60 votes (59 Democrats plus Bernie). Lieberman, by the way, has not just campaigned for McCain; he's campaigned for at least one Republican Senate candidate, Coleman in Minnesota.
Bill Clinton had democratic majorities, too, and it didn't help him get his plans through. it wasn't until he had republicans to "triangulate" against that he accomplished anything. Sarah Says What???
In the last Congress, Republicans threatened the nuclear option of removing the 60 vote requirement for cloture and having the Senate operate on a majority-vote basis. After this session, I wonder how many Democrats wish that they had let the Republicans carry out this threat. Republicans have filibustered more than 90 times, breaking the previous record of 57 filibusters. It is my opinion that the Senate should revise its rules to restrict the number of filibusters to at most one per Senator during a session of congress. This would have permitted the current Senate a quite generous 50 filibusters, but would have prevented the absurd abuse of this procedure that happened in the current session. The filibuster is a generous privilege granted tot the minority as a means to block legislation that they find particularly objectionable, but this privilege should be used responsibly, only in exceptional situations. This special privilege should not be allowed to be used habitually, to obstruct the business of congress the way it has in this current session.
The senate filibuster should be changed to REAL. The good ole boys should be required to stand up there, and actually filibuster. that would take some of the steam out of the issue. can you imagine some of those primadonnas attempting to stay on their feet in the wee hours of a Friday morning? Hah!
Lieberman's campaigning for Norm Coleman is particularly interesting to me since he campaigned for Paul Wellstone--against Coleman--in 2002. Additionally, Coleman strongly backed Wellstone in 1996 before his 1997 party switch. Probably Lieberman is just being a good team player now, and was in 02; only now his team is officially the Republicans.
Well I think we now see the importance of 60 Dem. senators after watching the impact on the stimulus package. This will be a selling item for the 2010 elections (for both sides).
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