In attempting to move the blame for outrageous gas prices away from where it should be, one of the leading Democrat senators (I can’t remember which one) said recently that the Republicans were in charge of Congress since Bush took office, so why didn’t they fix things?  He was allowed to get away with that, since what he said seemed true. But I’m not going to let him get away with it, because it is really true only in the Clintonian sense. While it’s based on the truth—that’s as far as it goes.

It’s true that the Republicans had a majority in both the House and Senate from 2001 to 2006. Majority rules, right—that’s the American way? Well, not exactly. A numerical majority is not the same thing as being in control of the Senate. When Bush took office in 2001, there was a 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats. The Vice-president, as president of the Senate, provided the Republicans with a single vote majority. While that slim margin gave Republicans the right to control committee chairmanships, select the majority leader and that sort of thing, it certainly did not give them control over what legislation actually passed. Subtract five or six RINOs (Republicans in name only) who consistently vote with the Democrats and it’s clear that the Democrats were still calling the tune.

Then there is cloture. This is a curious rule that was adopted by the Senate in 1917. Here’s the definition: “Cloture is the formal procedure used to end a filibuster. It can take up to three days and requires 60 votes. Cloture can also be used even if there is no filibuster underway, to ban non-germane amendments. If cloture wins, 30 additional hours of debate are allowed prior to voting, but they are rarely used. If cloture fails, debate would continue without limits. Instead, the bill is usually set aside.”  With an almost even split in the Senate, neither side can muster 60 votes unless several senators cross the aisle and vote with the other side. With an opposition determined to prevent the president getting any legislation passed, there is no way he can get any of his bills to the senate floor for an up or down vote.

The Senate was deliberately designed to move slowly as a way to prevent emotional voting on a bill without due consideration. They wanted to prevent knee-jerk laws passed in the heat of the moment and they succeeded. As George Washington described it to Thomas Jefferson, “…the saucer into which we pour legislation to cool.”  Norman Ornstein wrote in a piece entitled “Our Broken Senate”, “It is a body set up to make it difficult to enact laws, with a tradition of unlimited debate and a deference to the intense feelings of the minority over the more casual will of the majority.”

Another procedural maneuver is the “hold.”  It is an informal procedure—nowhere mentioned in Senate rules—where an individual senator notifies the senate’s leaders that he will hold up a bill or nomination by denying unanimous consent to allow it to move forward. While it was originally a courtesy to put off action for a short time in cases of scheduling conflicts or to gather more information, it has expanded into a device that allows any senator to block or delay a measure indefinitely.

Whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats using these tactics, it amounts to zero progress. In the case of the ban on drilling, unless there is a sixty vote majority, there is no way the Republicans can force a bill through the senate. It will take compromise on behalf of both sides—something I doubt will happen before a new president takes office next January.