Reid says Senate debate ends Friday, reads cynical GOP strategy email

E&E News (subs. req’d) reports:

Senate debate over a major piece of global warming legislation will end tomorrow with a cloture vote and no substantive debate over amendments, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last night.

Reid asserted his authority over the stalled climate bill after Republican opponents repeatedly blocked action on the measure over the opening three days of the floor debate, culminating in yesterday’s nine-hour reading of the bill.

GOP leaders forced four Senate clerks to take turns reading aloud every word of the 492-page bill in what they said was retaliation for Reid not scheduling confirmation votes on three of President Bush’s judicial nominees.

“It seems the Republican minority wants to do anything they can to maintain the status quo,” Reid said on the floor moments after the clerks finished their reading of the bill. “They don’t want legislation and they’ve proven that today time and time again.”

Reid then read into the record what he said was a GOP strategist’s e-mail his staff had obtained urging opponents to run the clock as long as possible to score “political points” against the Democrats. “You couldn’t make anything up more cynical,” Reid said.

Here is the email Reid read:

The thinking right now is still to use as much of the 30 hours post-cloture on the motion to proceed for debate on thematically-group amendments. The goal is for a theme (e.g. climate bill = higher gas prices) each day, and the focus is much more on making political points than in amending the bill, changing the baseline text for any future debate or affecting policy.

After the 30 hours is consumed, GOP expects Reid to either fill the [amendment] tree or set up a procedure that allows him to control the flow of amendments. GOP anticipates a struggle over which amendments are debated and eventually finger-pointing over blame for demise of the bill. In the GOP view, this will take at least the rest of the week, and hopefully run into next week.

At some point, Reid will have to move from the bill, and GOP plans to oppose UC [unanimous consent] and potentially force debate on debatable motions, and vote against cloture on any such motion. While Reid will eventually be able to circumvent by moving to a privileged vehicle (e.g., budget resolution conference report) or using some other parliamentary maneuver, the bottom line is that the GOP very much wants to have this fight, engage in it for a prolonged period, and make it as difficult as possible to move off the bill.

Sad, but it does appear to be an accurate reflection of the minority strategy. Here is the rest of the E&E News article:

“A total waste of time,” added Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “The world will little note, nor long remember, those three judges, as good as they may be individually. But it will remember that we just wasted an entire day and perhaps wasted our best effort this session to take up the single most important issue for the survival of this planet.”

Republicans countered that their complaint over judicial nominees had nothing to do with global warming.

“We actually hate to hold up the climate bill,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters. “We really like it. We do think it ought to be on the floor for a while. Not for any dilatory reasons, but because of the magnitude of the bill. This proposes to be the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) argued that Republicans were focused on having a lengthy climate debate. “This is not an itty bitty issue,” he said.
‘Nuclear war’

Supporters of the climate plan had come into the week hoping to see the Senate conduct its first full-fledged debate on global warming legislation that sets mandatory limits on heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

There was little talk of the bill making it into law this time around. Some said success would be measured by a debate that stimulated discussion on key issues that would be up for consideration in the next administration.

By any measure, this week’s debate did little of that as it quickly devolved into one of process and partisanship.

“The opposition has really been trying to wage nuclear war on this bill rather than have a serious discussion on things they think need to be added,” said David Hawkins, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center.

Reid and other proponents of the climate bill had tried to move onto the bill, questioning the need for a 30-hour preliminary debate over a motion to proceed. And they made repeated attempts to stop the clerks from reading the full text of the bill yesterday. But every time they came to the floor, a GOP member objected.

Yesterday’s food fight ended with Reid turning to a procedural move known as “filling the tree.” It allowed him to limit the remaining floor debate to only amendments he wanted to consider, picking a handful of technical items that will serve as the vehicle for a debate today on the issue. No votes are expected on the amendments.

Republicans had urged Reid not to take that procedural step.

“I’ve been here 35 years and I’ve never seen anything like this, filling the tree on a bill of this magnitude, this complexity,” Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said on the floor. “It is just as certain as we are standing here … that this bill has to have many errors in it, many things we regret passing, if we don’t amend it, talk about it and analyze it.”

Domenici cited the Senate’s five-week floor debate over the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments that included consideration of more than 160 amendments. “This bill is bigger and more complex,” he said.

By day’s end, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a lead co-author on the bill, said the bill will most likely serve as the starting point for next year’s climate debate.

“If we don’t have it now, we’ll have it when we have a president in the White House, and you know where I come down on that one, who’s going to send one over here,” Boxer said.