Bob Menendez Holds Climate Policy Hostage to Cuba Embargo
Someone was telling me about this yesterday and I didn’t quite get what I was being told, but Senator Robert Menendez is holding up two of Barack Obama’s key climate/science appointees, John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, over an unrelated Cuba policy dispute:
The delay — which could end quickly if Menendez dropped his objection or Senate leaders pushed for a floor vote that would require 60 votes to pass — has alarmed environmentalists and scientific experts who strongly back Holdren and Lubchenco.
“Climate change damages our oceans more every day we fail to act,” said Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist for the advocacy group Oceana. “We need these two supremely qualified individuals on the job yesterday.”
Kate Sheppard notes that just last year Menendez thought climate change was “incredibly important.” But apparently not as important as defending America’s insane Cuba policy status quo.
Meanwhile, I would note that even more than the filibuster, the “hold” process in the Senate is an absurd procedural bottleneck that could and should be done away with. People sometimes wonder what the hold rule is, and nobody even really knows. When I was an intern in Chuck Schumer’s office the idea of putting a hold on someone came up, and the office had to scramble to figure out what it means. Turns out that it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just an insane convention that Senate leaders agree to uphold and that Senators as a whole conspire to put in place. But it’s ridiculous. Irrespective of the details of one’s views on Holdren or Cuba it clearly does not serve the general interest to let random appointees be held up by random Senators for no real reason. All it does, ultimately, is feed the egomania and power-lust that seems to afflict every single senator. But it’s time for some members of the body to put their substantive policy commitments ahead of their wacky perks of office and start pushing for the kind of substantial procedural reforms that will make it possible for the Senate to tackle major issues in a serious way.
Relatedly, it’s annoying to read things about how it “would require 60 votes to pass” a resolution confirming these nominees. If you look through United States history, plenty of bills and plenty of nominees have been passed with more than 49 but fewer than 60 votes. Similarly, in the pre-seventies era of the 67-person cloture vote plenty of bills passed with fewer than 67 votes. Throughout the nineteenth century it required unanimity to break a filibuster, but that didn’t mean that bills all passes unanimously. It also “requires” 60 votes to pass things if we accept the premise that the filibuster should be used routinely. That has not, however, been the historical understanding of the filibuster. The speed with which Washington has accepted the idea of a routine supermajority requirement is a little bit frightening as it was just a few years ago that this started to be put into place.
18 Responses to “Bob Menendez Holds Climate Policy Hostage to Cuba Embargo”
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March 4th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Surely Harry Reid demonstrated that the “hold” no longer exists when he decided he would ignore any hold put on the telecom amnesty bill.
I’m sure ol’ give’m hell … er … heck? … purgatory? … limbo! Harry will do what he thinks is right … er … necessary … convenient … craven!
Go on, “Give’m Limbo Harry”, show ‘em all how craven you can be.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:23 am
I thought the hold was just a particular senator noting that he or she would not agree to unanimous consent in moving any particular piece of business forward, which would force procedural votes that would slow everything else down. A hold could be defeated, but at the cost of time and energy.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:39 am
The hold is a “play nice” rule.
As in, a senator (Coburn usually) puts a hold on something. This doesn’t actually mean anything in parliamentary terms except that unless his hold is honored, he’s going to object to every unanimous consent request (which is how virtually every possible action is done) and basically grind the Senate to a halt.
Now, this can be overcome with cloture. But overcoming one hold on one bill, or appointment, or whatever takes a full week of Senate time, minimum. So for 90% of stuff Reid just says fine, whatever, be obstructionist, we’ll come back to it later. And they did, passing pretty much everything Coburn had a hold on at the very beginning of this session in the public lands bill. But for “important” bills: EFCA, DC Voting Rights Act, stimulus, FISA, etc, it’s worth the week to overcome a hold, so holds don’t mean anything. That’s why #1 is so offbase: there’s nothing Reid can do to honor a hold if more than 60 Senators want to pass something and are willing to spend a week to do so.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:43 am
“If you look through United States history, plenty of bills and plenty of nominees have been passed with more than 49 but fewer than 60 votes. ”
Adjusting for years before there were 100 senators, presumably.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:55 am
There is a difference between 60 senators willing to spend a week to pass a bill, and 60 senators willing to cross the majority leader to spend a week to pass a bill.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:59 am
“There is a difference between 60 senators willing to spend a week to pass a bill, and 60 senators willing to cross the majority leader to spend a week to pass a bill.”
Well, I’m quite sure the 49 Republicans were willing. If you really don’t think 11 Democrats would have crossed Reid on FISA, you think a lot higher of Democratic Senators than most people. His job at the time was the equivalent of herding cats.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Pavel Chekov is representing FL in the US Senate?
March 4th, 2009 at 11:11 am
NBarnes: Worse, it’s New Jersey. At least a Florida senator could make a legitimate claim to be overly concerned with Cuba.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:14 am
NJ is a safe Democratic state. Any senator who is a problem for the Democratic caucus should be politically exterminated and replaced with someone reliable. Likewise for representatives, at the district level. There should be no tolerance for troublemakers unless there’s a credible case that their seat would otherwise go Republican.
We need to put some “Democratic” into the Leninist notion of democratic centralism.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Thanks for this Matt. Since I’m a Jerseyan I sent Menendez a letter which no doubt will immediately lead him to change his mind.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Here’s an alternative suggestion/assignment desk: I’ve seen discussion that the Dems might decide to push health care reform through the “budget reconciliation” process, which can’t be filibustered. Why can’t the Dems just say “Republicans have decided to abuse the filibuster process, using it as a routine measure, which it was never intended to be. Well, fine, we’re just going to move everything through the budget reconciliation process from now on.” Is there a technical requirement for designating something as “budget reconciliation”? And even if so, can’t they just attach some insignificant budget thing to every bill that comes up? Obviously, this would all require a different majority leader, but apart from that, is there some reason it wouldn’t work?
March 4th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
This is really simple and, unfortunately, typical. Sen. Menendez can only think in terms of minutes, hours and days, not years. Lifting the Cuban embargo will ultimately have little effect on anything except maybe Sen. Menendez’s psyche, but dealing with climate change could potentially save the planet for Sen. Menendez’s great grandchildren. A simple choice for people that can think beyond the next minute. Unfortunately, not many of our politicians can do such a thing.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I think there is not much need for this hold rule (as such) to be written down. It seems to amount to a Senate accommodation of stereotypical bitter old man behavior- give him a couple of days or weeks to rave, get over himself, and conclude that he has to give reality its due despite his misgivings.
Making it precious and an entitlement and a formal policy/rule/right is the wrong thing to do.
Like the increasing sentiment and conformity for a supermajority requirement, it is all part and parcel of a larger motif since roughly 1990 of bending over backwards and giving all benefit of the doubt to the agents of a fading, decaying, incrementally selfdiscrediting, tacit Old Establishment.
Baasically, to assuage their rage and paranoia and sense of their dying away we (as a country) are bending the rules to allow them all the small privileges and fringe benefits and letting them abuse them somewhat. Time and reality are relentless, though, and changes in the world and every election are eroding more of the membership and the political basis for it away.
The Senate and Supreme Court being almost always the political bodies with the oldest median membership, those institutions tend to be where the final stands for dated worldviews and the last politically powerful cliques of adherents of old orders of the world will be in the U.S. political system.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I’m with #2 Drew Miller–you can’t get routine legislation passed in the Senate without either unanimous consent or precious floor time, so the hold is just a way of checking to see if there is unanimous consent. Moreover, because there is no “Rule” when items are brought up in the Senate, there is always the risk of amendments and other shenanigans if there is no unanimous consent agreement.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I for one support the hold. It is a good method of ensuring sober second thought, free from the swings and vagaries of populism and popular mood swings.
We need the Senate to be more independent of fickle popular opinion, not less. This is a representative democracy, not a direct one. The job of Senators is not to just let the (more populist) House pass whatever it wants, but rather slow down, and refine and deliberate upon its actions so it’s less influenced by populism and vote-bribing.
And it is good that Senate can weaken majoritarianism; look what happened in post-war U.K. with absolute majoritarianism: Labour rode roughshod.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
The job of Senators is not to reflect the popular will; it is to reflect their State, and their own consciences.
March 16th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
sry i just know how to write my name in arabic
) i dnot think that i understand .. i hate english itis very difcult . thanks
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