"Why Harry Reid decided to move foward with DADT vote"

[Clio the Leo]

Why Harry Reid decided to move foward with DADT vote
By Greg Sargent
Earlier this afternoon, just before Harry Reid went onto the Senate floor and gave a speech calling for a vote on repeal of don't ask don't tell -- which has now failed -- he turned to a Senate aide and shrugged his shoulders.

"I have to go to the floor, but I'm not going to like giving this speech," he said, according to the aide.

Reid then went to the floor and called for an immediate vote on the defense authorization bill containing repeal, in the full knowledge that it was likely to go down. As Reid knew, he had not agreed to Susan Collins's demand for four days of debate time, giving several Republicans who support repeal an excuse to vote No, dooming the bill to fall short of 60 votes needed for passage, 57-40.

I have now spoken to a senior Senate aide and put together what happened and why Reid did this.

Reid concluded that even if Collins was sincere in her promise to vote for repeal if given the four days of debate, there was no way to prevent the proceedings from taking longer, the aide says. Reid decided that the cloture vote, the 30 hours of required post-cloture debate, and procedural tricks mounted by conservative Senators who adamantly oppose repeal would have dragged the process on far longer.

"It would have been much more than four days," the aide says. "Her suggestions were flat out unworkable given how the Senate really operates. You can talk about four days until the cows come home. That has very little meaning for Coburn and DeMint and others who have become very skilled at grinding this place to a halt."

After spending several hours thinking it over today and consulting with other members of the Dem caucus, Reid decided to push forward with the vote today, the aide says.

The aide rejected the claim that Reid should have extended the session another week in order to accomodate GOP procedural demands, as Joe Lieberman and others had asked, arguing that extended debate would actually have dragged the session into January, what with other things on the Senate to-do list.

"Why do we need to extend the session?" the aide asked. "Republicans have blocked this bill since February. We've made offer after offer to try to reach agreement on this. Going through those procedural motions along with the START treaty and tax cuts would have taken us until January 5th."

more...
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/12/why_harry_reid_decided_to_move.html

[Major Hogwash]

1. There ya go -- in black and white.

Now they'll just take it to the courts.

[readmoreoften]

2. It's already been repealed by the courts and Obama blocked it.

Now its a total failure.

[polichick]

3. I so wish the admin. hadn't done that. nt

[Major Hogwash]

6. It will be repealed again.

There is an endless number of ways to appeal a decision.

[frazzled]

8. A single court doesn't "repeal" a law of the US Congress

Imagine if that were the case: tomorrow some conservative judge in some federal district would deem the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, and all the right-wingers would cheer and call the bill repealed: game over. The next day some wingnut job could "repeal" any other law he chooses. That ain't how it works.

Courts don't repeal laws, first of all: they deem them unconstitutional--something that has to go all the way to the Supreme Court to decide.

[jeff47]

11. Um....no

If a federal judge rules a law is unconstitutional, then it can not be enforced within the jurisdiction of that judge. Typically, such decisions are appealed repeatedly until they reach the SCOTUS who's ruling is binding on the entire country.

But the litigants do not have to appeal. That could lead to an odd situation where a law is only unconstitutional in certain parts of the country. For example, the 9th circuit (AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID, MT, NV, OR, WA, Guam and the Marianas) could rule it's unconstitutional, but the law would be constitutional in NY...it's that odd situation that usually results in an appeal to the SCOTUS to settle the matter. As a concrete example, there were several sodomy laws struck down as unconstitutional before Lawrence v. Texas, but those rulings did not apply to Texas because they were made in courts that did not have jurisdiction over Texas.

The reason a conservative judge can't just deem the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional is he'd have to cite a reason why it is, why previous rulings on the Civil Rights Act's constitutionality no longer apply, why volumes of case law do not apply, and that reason would have to survive many layers of appeal.

Whether we call it "repeal" or "unconstitutional" has no difference. In both cases, the relevant law is struck from the US Code (or state equivalent). We just commonly use the term "repeal" to refer to legislative action instead of judicial.

[msanthrope]

13. Well, appeal is necessary because you do have Cook v. Gates--

An interesting little fact--you have a single district decision in the 9th that conflicts with an appellate court decision in the first (denied cert last year).

So now you have a circuit split. Hence, the necessity of appeal.

[jeff47]

15. Situations like that make it easier to appeal

Conflicts like that make it much more likely that the SCOTUS will accept the case. But you still have to have a litigant who wants to appeal to the SCOTUS. And for various reasons (cost, belief that they'd lose) there are litigants who'd rather not do that.

[msanthrope]

14. No--single district court judges don't 'repeal' Acts of Congress. n/t

[ProSense]

4. There is an update:

UPDATE, 5:08 p.m.: Harry Reid will co-sponsor a free-standing DADT repeal bill to be introduced during the lame duck session by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, an aide confirms.

A second aide says the hope is that Scott Brown, Richard Lugar and Lisa Murkowski will then support it, as it would in theory be voted on after the tax issue is resolved.

A tweet from Lieberman


An explanation from TPM:

<...>

"I informed Senator Reid during the vote... that we're going to do that, and he said, 'Same language as in Defense Authorization bill?' I said, 'yes.' He said, 'put me down as a co-sponsor.' I said, "Harry, we're going to ask you to bring this to a vote before the end of the lame duck session.' He said, 'I will bring it to the active calendar under Rule 14.'"

Rule 14 would allow the bill to skip the committee process and come straight to the floor. Stay tuned...

Rule 14 is a Senate procedure that gives the majority leader the right to expedite legislation.

"As far as the efforts to repeal don't ask don't tell, it ain't over," Lieberman said.

Lieberman, joined by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) agreed that, because stand-alone repeal is much narrower than the bulky defense authorization bill, the legislation would face fewer obstacles, and require less time for debate.

Of course, ardent foes of repeal could try to sink it with serial filibusters -- they could filibuster amendments, the bill, even debate itself, and run out the clock on this Congress. But if Reid is willing to wait to do this after the tax and federal funding issues are resolved, and perhaps to extend the Senate calendar beyond December 17, it could still happen.

<...>

This seems like an uncertain strategy, especially since the authorization bill only needs two votes to clear.

[jeff47]

5. Never gonna happen.

If they didn't have the time to "debate" within the defense authorization bill, when will they have time to "debate" a stand-alone bill?

[Unvanguard]

9. The defense authorization bill is a very large bill.

The amendments, and the debate about them, would have mostly had nothing to do with DADT.

A straight-up standalone repeal avoids the procedural issues that derailed this one, because there's no room to complain about lack of amendments: there's not much to amend.

[jeff47]

10. Amendments don't have to be germane

An amendment doesn't have to have anything to do with the rest of the bill.

I am absolutely sure the knuckle-dragging wing of the Republican party will offer amendments to slaughter puppies and kittens to a stand-alone DADT bill. And that's assuming there's any time to actually act on a stand-alone bill. Senators were already complaining they couldn't get the tax cut surrender, START and several other big things done before the end of the lame duck session.

[frazzled]

7. Reid should have kept them there night and day ...

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (hey, Lieberman's Jewish, he doesn't care). Obama gets bashed every day, but the real problem behind everything that has gone wrong is the Senate. Not just the Republicans' obstructionism, but Reid's inability to figure a way to beat them at their obstructionist game.

This has become intolerable. The Senate is 100% dysfunctional, and truly held hostage by the Republican minority. And a weak leader. I thought Harry used to be a boxer. His muscles sure have atrophied.

[tavalon]

12. The Party of Terror

Strikes again.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

16. Methinks Reid might have jumped the gun this time

After all, wasn't Lieberman still working with Collins when this went down (in flames)? I'm not saying that I know for sure that Collins and Brown would've kept their word and voted for cloture but Reid's actions seemed a little rash and guaranteed for defeat. Symbolically, what he did was good, of course, but holding a vote that you're not at least fairly certain is going to be successful in the end doesn't accomplish anything and the Republicans certainly have proven time and time again to have no shame whatsoever about their tactics.