FISA Vote Monday

by Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium: Thu., Jan 24, 2008
Filed under: Congressional Oversight

Predictably, Republicans, unable to block Democratic amendments with a 60-vote requirement, objected to the introduction of Democratic amendments to the Intel Committees FISA bill left and right. What followed was procedural chaos, so hang on tight: At some point a frustrated Harry Reid took the floor, decrying the obstruction and trying in vain to get a 30 day extension on the existing law, but Minority Leader Mitch McConnell objected and pushed instead for reconsideration of the Intel bill. Reid objected to that and attempted to bring the House legislation–the RESTORE Act–up for consideration. Unsurprisingly, McConnell blocked unanimous consent to move forward with that bill, but then went ahead and filed for cloture on the Intel bill–a symbolic gesture indicating that he’d rather tempt a filibuster (or a series of filibusters) than allow simple majority votes on the Democratic amendments.

That vote is now scheduled for Monday at 4:30 pm. To the best of my understanding, this means the Democrats need to amass 41 votes sometime in the next four days in order to block it. They only had 36 votes in favor of the Judiciary bill, so presumably this will require some political pressure (though anger at McConnell may well help them). If they get there, Republicans will have to decide whether they want to allow simple majorities to rule on the amendments or to genuinely filibuster them. But if the Democrats fail to make it to 41, then the Intel bill will go to the floor for a vote, where it will likely pass.

Note that many of the Democratic amendments–including Dodd/Feingold–don’t have anywhere near 51 votes anyhow. In a way, this is just a hubris-borne attempt by McConnell to railroad every last thing he and the administration want through the process. If he’d allowed unanimous consent to consider all amendments, then the bill might have been modestly improved and he’d potentially only have Chris Dodd and friends to deal with. Now he’s opened the door for what will potentially be a very long and bloody political fight–with Republicans accusing Democrats of, well, everything they usually accuse Democrats of, and Democrat accusing Republicans of allowing the telecommunications companies to trump national security.

Update: Just to be clear–the cloture vote next week will require the Republicans to have 60 votes. The line above (about the Democrats needing to secure 41 votes) presumes that every senator will be on hand on Monday (which between the vote and the State of the Union address, they very well may be). But there’s no difference in principle between a 59-41 vote and a 59-38 vote. Either way, cloture fails.

See more FISA related articles here.