Double Standard For Bernanke: Only 50 Votes Needed In Senate

Outrageous...

Ryan Grimm, Huffinton Post, January 26, 2010

When it comes to progressive priorities in the Senate, there's one standard: 60 votes are needed. But for Ben Bernanke, there's a second standard: 50 will be just fine, thank you.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are asking colleagues who are reluctant to support Bernanke's nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman to nevertheless vote with them to end a filibuster and allow a vote on the actual nomination. The reluctant members would then be free to vote no to express their displeasure. Several Democrats have committed to just that and others are considering it.

The public health insurance option was stripped from health care reform because it didn't have 60 votes. An expansion of Medicare took its place but it, too, was dropped for having fewer than 60. Both proposals had at least 50 votes. Dawn Johnsen, a nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, has the backing of progressive organizations, but a 60-vote threshold has held her up for a year.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters on Monday afternoon after a meeting with Bernanke that some opponents of the chairman had pledged to support him on the first vote, but not on the second.

"I know that there are some Democrats who have stated publicly that they are not going to vote ultimately for his nomination as chairman of the Fed. Many, not all, but many of these Senate Democrats have said that they won't stop us on procedural votes. So we may have their support on cloture but not on final passage," he said.

HuffPost asked Durbin why they'd make that commitment for Bernanke but not for health care.

"I don't know. That's a good question. They come up with different standards in terms of how they do things," Durbin replied. "By and large, I will say, and I think Harry Reid and the leadership would agree, that with very few exceptions, the Democratic senators have stood behind us on procedural votes. And we expect them to. We ask them to."

Except on health care, the president's signature domestic legislation and a major plank in the Democratic platform for more than half a century.

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"On health care, there were some exceptions," Durbin said, in something of an understatement. "There's no question about it. That's what made the job so difficult."

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who announced her opposition to Bernanke on Friday, has committed to vote for cloture -- in other words, to vote to end a filibuster, her spokeswoman told HuffPost. She will then vote against him on final passage.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) has been consistently opposed to Bernanke and told HuffPost that he'll vote against cloture, as well, meaning that he'll be opposing Bernanke in both of his votes rather than having it both ways. Asked why some of his colleagues considered the cloture vote critical on health care but not on Bernanke, he paused and smiled. "I don't know," he said.

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said that he spent a lot of time recently talking with his home state colleague, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Bernanke opponent, but hadn't decided whether to oppose the chairman's reconfirmation.

But, he added, "I don't believe in filibusters on nominees."

Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, has a consistent record opposing filibusters on nominees, but some of his other colleagues have more situational ethics when it comes to so-called "procedural" votes.

Casting a vote for cloture -- which ends a filibuster -- but against final passage lets a senator have it both ways. Voters back home can be told the senator stood in opposition, even when they didn't actually stand in the way.

In case of a 50-50 vote, Vice President Joe Biden can break the tie.

It gets complicated enough that even Leahy, who's been in the Senate since 1975, can get confused.

"I'd be disinclined to vote against cloture," he said, then paused, wondering if he had all the negatives straight. "I'd be inclined to vote for cloture," he clarified. Sort of.

Guns, Geysers and Mr. Reid

By GAIL COLLINS, NY Times

Whenever life feels dark and difficult, it’s always helpful to think about people who have it worse. Be thankful, for instance, that you’re not one of those co-pilots for regional airlines who make $16,000 a year and have to commute from Seattle to Newark. Or a person currently riding in a plane with a $16,000 co-pilot in the cockpit. Be thankful you aren’t a Chrysler dealer. Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Nothing is simple if you’re Harry Reid. This week the Senate was working on a consumer rights bill for credit card holders when Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, suddenly proposed an amendment to allow people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

This would seem relevant only if consumers are worried that they will not be able to use their American Express at a souvenir stand in Yellowstone, and will need to hold up the cashier in order to bring home a much-anticipated geyser refrigerator magnet.

Coburn said it was not a “gotcha” aimed at forcing the opposition into a corner on a hot-button issue, although when you say you’re offering an amendment “to protect innocent Americans from violent crime in national parks and refuges” I think you are kind of stacking the deck.

But one way or another, the Democrats clearly did feel trapped into placating the gun lobby. Twenty-seven of them wound up voting yes on an amendment that would arm the tourists and make final passage of the credit card bill more complicated. Including Reid.

Then Reid tried to get the Senate to confirm David Hayes, Obama’s nominee to be deputy secretary of the interior. This proved to be impossible even though Hayes was both uncontroversial and a man whose qualifications for the job include having already been deputy secretary of the interior. But no, the Republicans threatened a filibuster because Senator Robert Bennett of Utah was ticked off at the Department of the Interior for canceling the sale of oil and gas leases on public lands in his state.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told Bennett that he’d review the leases and could probably reinstate some of the sales, but that it would be a lot easier to do all that if he had, um, a deputy. No deal.

This is exactly the sort of procedural roadblock that you need 60 votes to overcome, and people are beginning to ask why the majority leader can’t handle these things since Arlen Specter’s defection gave the Democrats 60 votes. Do not say this to Harry Reid! For one thing, Al Franken is still in court in Minnesota, and when you ask the Republicans how long they’re going to litigate the results of an election that took place last November, they murmur vaguely about how Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Anyhow, Ted Kennedy is sick and Robert Byrd is 91 and it’s a miracle some of the other ones can find their way to the Capitol. Even if you eventually get all 60 Democratic votes in the same room, how do you get them to do the same thing? You will remember that when Specter came over, Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska instantly said: “They might have a 60-member majority. That doesn’t mean they have 60 votes.” Reid must have found the point Nelson was making less chilling than the fact that the senator kept referring to his own party as “they.”

Next week, some supporters of Dawn Johnsen are hoping that Reid will take up Johnsen’s nomination to run the Office of Legal Counsel, the place where the president goes for advice on whether whatever he wants to do is legal. This causes the majority leader’s office to hold its collective head and moan.

Johnsen actually is controversial. She was once a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League. Twenty years ago, she put a footnote in a legal brief saying that forcing a woman to give birth to a child against her will was “disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude.” This has been creatively translated into the charge that Johnsen, the mother of two, believes pregnancy is akin to slavery.

Also, she has spoken out so forcefully against the Bush administration’s politicizing the Office of Legal Counsel that Republicans are claiming she’d ... politicize the office.

The inevitable filibuster threats have been made. Since the Office of Legal Counsel doesn’t actually have anything to do with abortion, it might be reasonable for Reid to expect that anti-choice Democratic senators could throw him a vote on the procedural issues and then oppose the actual nomination, when Johnsen would only need 51 votes and Reid would not require their help.

That, however, would presume a degree of consistency that is hard to get in a place that holds one important aspect of credit card reform is giving people the ability to pack a handgun at the Grand Canyon.