Justin's Political Corner

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) likely has the votes on gun control legislation to clear its first procedural hurdle — a victory for the gun control community, though one that hardly guarantees the bill’s passage.

The majority leader announced on Tuesday evening he would submit for a vote the bill to expand background checks, implement a federal trafficking statute and enhance school safety measures. That would set up a Senate vote on Thursday. To help push matters along, President Barack Obama was spending Tuesday calling senators to lobby them on the gun measures, a White House official confirmed. The official did not reveal which senators would be receiving calls.

At least eight Republican senators said that they would support bringing the measures to the Senate floor for amendment and debate. A number of others said they had not ruled out voting to clear that first procedural hurdle.

Should those numbers hold, Reid will have the 60 votes needed to move forward on gun policy reform. Two members of his own caucus said they were noncommittal on the first procedural vote, but their defections (should they happen) would be insufficient to sustain a filibuster.

The procedural victory would give gun control advocates much-needed time to alter the language of the bill. Reid announced that negotiations over the bill were still ongoing between the two parties. But it won’t resolve the bill’s fate: Reid will have to secure 60 votes once more to end the debate and amendment period. And none of the Republican senators who said they’d support the first procedural vote would go as far as to say they’d sign off on the second.

In the high-stakes debate over gun policy, however, procedural victories are nothing to scoff at, especially with 14 Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) threatening a filibuster of all measures.

Among the GOP congressmen set to buck their own leadership on the vote is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who called a filibuster “incomprehensible.” McCain was joined by Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who told CBS’ “This Morning” that the legislation “deserves an vote up or down.”

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who has negotiated background check legislation, has said he would not support an initial filibuster. “Absolutely,” his spokesman John Hart replied, when asked if that position still stood. “Eschewing this debate is a ‘stupid party’ strategy.”

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) announced on Wednesday that he won’t back a filibuster, stating that “the discussion needs to be had” on gun legislation.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said it was her “hope” that the Senate “can have a fully open debate, and if that occurs, I will certainly vote to proceed to the bill.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) offered similar conditions for his support on the first cloture vote.

“As long as we get amendments, no, I want to proceed to the bill,” he said, when asked about a filibuster. “I think we should be allowed to amend it. I’m not afraid of this debate, I welcome this debate.”

Even if Graham were to vote to sustain a filibuster, Reid could still have enough Republican support to overcome it. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) would be a likely “yes” on both the cloture vote and final passage of the bill, having been supportive of background check legislation in the past. His office, however, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Other Republicans left the door open to backing the first cloture vote on gun legislation. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was noncommittal when asked by reporters on Tuesday. Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) both said they would look at the legislation before deciding whether to support a filibuster. But each said they would filibuster a measure that infringes on Second Amendment rights.

H/T: Huffington Post

A little known pro-gun lobby that’s well to the right of the National Rifle Association has complicated efforts to reach a solution on gun control legislation, top Democrats have said in recent days.

The Gun Owners of America has been around for decades, operating mostly in obscurity, dwarfed by the lobbying and fundraising prowess of the NRA. The group’s big gripe is that the NRA is too squishy and willing to compromise, and its recent efforts to scuttle gun control legislation appear to be scaring away Republicans amenable to background checks.

The results have frustrated Democrats trying to strike a bipartisan deal.

“The NRA — their lobbying efforts are being pushed even further to the extreme by virtue of the fact that there’s another organization called Gun Owners of America,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told Nevada Public Radio on Friday. “Whenever the NRA tries to be reasonable, the Gun Owners of America becomes more unreasonable, and it pushes the NRA [to the right].”

GOA is proud of its obstinacy against gun control. In a New York Times profile of the group last week, its executive director Larry Pratt took credit for scaring away Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) from discussions with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about a bipartisan compromise on expanding background checks for gun purchases.

Less clear is the extent to which Gun Owners of America is the true foe of expanded background checks, rather than a scapegoat for Senate Democrats who are facing potentially tough reelection battles in red states and are skittish about supporting any significant new gun restrictions. For now, negotiations over background checks continue, as Democrats are now seeking to win over Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-PA) support for a compromise deal.

Meanwhile, the Gun Owners of America is flexing its muscle in first major gun control effort in nearly two decades. Prominently featured on the front page of GOA’s website is a quote from Ron Paul calling the group “the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington.”

H/T: TPMDC

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has announced that he will begin to move gun safety legislation Thursday night that includes a variety of items including mandatory background checks, which said will be included in “any bill that passes the Senate.”

“Later tonight, I will start the process of bringing a bill to reduce gun violence to the Senate floor,” he said in a statement. “This bill will include the provisions on background checks, school safety and gun trafficking reported by the Judiciary Committee.”

The move serves to begin the process of debating the legislation, which isn’t expected to come up for a vote until after Easter. Earlier this week, Reid decided to eliminate from the bill a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, saying they lacked the votes to pass. But he promises they will also receive votes separately.

As for the assault weapons ban, limits to high-capacity clips and mental health provisions, Reid said, “In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for all of these provisions to receive votes, and I will ensure that they do.”

h/t: TPM

Senate Republicans today chose to uphold a filibuster against Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, despite many of them previously pledging that they would be willing to allow him to be confirmed.

Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and John Cornyn (R-TX) all voted against cloture, despite their pleas during the Bush administration that a president’s Cabinet nominees should receive an up-or-down vote.

Four Republicans, Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), voted to break the filibuster. The final vote was 58-40, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) voting present, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) not voting at all, and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voting “no” as a procedural move so that he can bring another vote to the floor at a later date.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had originally scheduled the cloture vote for tomorrow morning, but surprised many by pushing it up to this afternoon. Earlier today, Reid took to the Senate floor to lambaste his Republican colleagues for delaying an up-or-down vote on Hagel, the first filibuster of a Secretary of Defense nominee.

Prior to the roll call’s beginning, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attempted to explain that the vote that was set to take place was the vote “to confirm Chuck Hagel,” rather than merely being a procedural vote. Inhofe also claimed that a 60-vote margin was common practice, rendering the actions of the Republicans not a filibuster. However, the motion was still filed by Reid as cloture — the ending of debate — rather than the actual confirmation of Hagel, as laid out be Levin before voting. This leaves the door open for Hagel’s nomination to remain on the Senate floor and renders the GOP’s actions a filibuster under the Senate’s rules.

While Senate Republicans are opposed to voting on Hagel today, they seem to believe that they’ll change their minds after the Senate returns from its President’s Day recess in 10 days. This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that he expected to be willing to move Hagel forward at that time, “unless there’s some bombshell that he likes blood sucking vampires.” Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John McCain (R-AZ) said roughly the same thing today, leaving their votes against Hagel today confusing.

h/t: Hayes Brown at Think Progress Security

The Huffington Post reports that Senate Leaders Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reached a deal today to support minor — and in some cases, temporary — changes to the Senate Rules,rather than push through the more robust reforms championed by many Democratic senators. The language of the deal, which is divided into two separate resolutions, is available here and here.

Filibuster reform is in trouble, proponents warn, at the hands of a scaled-back proposal they say would enhance rather than diminish the Senate minority’s power to obstruct.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) says his proposal to force filibustering senators to occupy the floor and speak ceaselessly could be in jeopardy, thanks to a newbipartisan filibuster package that he and his ally Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) argue would do more harm than good to the cause.

“Normally the majority party has a right to determine the agenda of the Senate. They don’t have the right to pass bills. That’s up to the majority of the Senate,” Udall said on the floor Wednesday. “But then the majority leader should have the right to bring a bill to the floor of the Senate. And that has been denied over and over again by the minority party. That’s wrong.”

The dueling proposal, spearheaded by longtime Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI), would make it somewhat tougher for the minority to block debate on legislation but also guarantee them two amendments on bills — regardless of relevancy — which proponents of a weaker filibuster say defeats the purpose.

“It’s a step backward rather than a step forward,” a Merkley aide said. “It doesn’t attack the core of the matter. It doesn’t include a talking filibuster. And it allows the minority to kill legislation with poison pill amendments. It keeps all the tools minority has to obstruct and then gives them another tool.”

Early in December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said filibuster reform will happen with or without Republican support, and Merkley-Udall was the plan on the table. But the unveiling of the McCain-Levin late December — and the optics of a partisan versus bipartisan solution — scrambled the game for reformers.

If Reid decides to pursue McCain-Levin instead of the talking filibuster plan, “Senator Merkley will encourage others to vote against the bill,” his aide said. It’s not yet clear that proposal has the super-majority of votes required to pass, but multiple Democratic senators have said there are at least 51 votes for reform.

h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM

Obama announced that the fate of a potential deal lies with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who will work together to present a prospective package to their respective conferences over the weekend.

Should that effort fail, however, Obama indicated that he would call upon Reid to bring the original White House proposal — extending Bush-era tax rates on income below $250,000, among other measures — for an up-or-down vote in the Senate.

h/t: Igor Bobic at TPM LiveWire

The Senate’s top Democrat said Thursday that he was pessimistic that Washington could avoid the impending fiscal cliff, accusing House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, of running the lower chamber as a “dictatorship.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was unsure there was enough time between now and the end of the year to reach a deal to avoid the combination of spending cuts and tax hikes set to take effect on Jan. 1. Reid said “the only viable escape route” was for the GOP-controlled House to give its approval to a Senate bill that would preserve existing tax rates on income under $250,000.

“Everyone knows that if they had brought up the Senate-passed bill, it would pass overwhelmingly. But the speaker says, no we can’t do that,” Reid said on the Senate floor this morning. “It’s [the House] being operated by a dictatorship of the speaker.”

In response, a spokesman for Boehner said in a statement,  “Senator Reid should talk less and legislate more. The House has already passed legislation to avoid the entire fiscal cliff.  Senate Democrats have not.”

Reid’s remarks suggest there has been no thaw in the stalemate that has plagued Washington for weeks, as consensus continues to elude Republicans and Democrats on averting the fiscal cliff. Amid the standoff, President Barack Obama called Reid and  Boehner (along with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell) late Wednesday from Hawaii. The president is traveling back to the White House on Thursday following his brief family vacation.

Reid’s remarks suggest there has been no thaw in the stalemate that has plagued Washington for weeks, as consensus continues to elude Republicans and Democrats on averting the fiscal cliff. Amid the standoff, President Barack Obama called Reid and  Boehner (along with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell) late Wednesday from Hawaii. The president is traveling back to the White House on Thursday following his brief family vacation.

h/t: NBCnews.com

On Tuesday afternoon, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) read a letter from former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) imploring Senate Republicans to ratify a United Nations treaty affirming equal rights for disabled individuals. Dole, who was hospitalized on Tuesday, was a World War II veteran who suffered lasting disabilities after his service.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced Monday that he plans to bring the treaty up for a vote in the Senate — but, despite widespread support for the measure, Republicans seem bent on killing it again this time around after blocking Democrats’ last attempt to ratify the treaty in August.

Former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is leading the charge against the treaty. Santorum, whose daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder, takes issue with protectionsthat allow the state to separate a child from a parent if “such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child,” such as in cases of emotional or physical abuse. At a press conference with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Santorum called this “a direct assault on us and our family.” 

The treaty, which bans discrimination against people with disabilities, was originally signed in 2006 under George W. Bush’s administration and re-signed in 2009 by President Obama. More than 150 nations have signed it and 126 have already ratified it, and it is backed by a range of disabilities and veterans groups as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

In fact, as Dana Milbank points out, the treaty requires other nations to model their laws on the Americans With Disabilities Act, which already forbids discrimination based on disability.

The ADA ensures that Santorum’s daughter, Bella, cannot be blocked from going to school or from receiving the medical treatment and accommodations she needs. In opposing the treaty, Santorum is actually opposing those same protections for other disabled people all around the world.

H/T: Aviva Shen at Think Progress

On the Senate floor Monday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell railed against his counterpart, Harry Reid, and a “cohort of short-sighted Senate sophomores,” for proposing to modify the Senate’s filibuster rules on the first day of the 113th Congress to limit the extent to which the minority can gum up legislative business.

“Does [Reid] believe that on the day he finds himself in the minority once again that he should no longer be heard?” McConnell asked, “Or does he think that Democrats will remain in the majority from now until the end of time?”

In a Monday interview, one of the supposedly short-sighted sophomores said, contra McConnell, the reforms Democrats are proposing could in theory go much farther, but are being designed with future power shifts in mind.

“The point I would make is that I’ve said from the outset is that a test of a good proposal is whether or not you could live with serving under it in the minority,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). “That’s why the talking filibuster is the right way to go. McConnell has broken the social contract. His team, under his leadership, uses it constantly and silently, out of public sight. Really the proposal I put forward restores the basic elements that existed in the past, and I’m quite happy to live under that structure as a minority. … [That] has been part of every conversation I’ve had with colleagues. … If we’re in the minority and we’re blocking something, we should be accountable to the public.”

Changes to the Senate rules are rare, typically minor, and usually require 67 votes be implemented. But Democrats can avail themselves of a complicated, arcane procedure in January and amend the rules as they choose with an easier 50-plus-one majority.

“If a bare majority can now proceed to any bill it chooses, and once on that bill, the majority leader, all by himself, can shut out all amendments that aren’t to his liking, then those who elected us to advocate for their views will have lost their voice in the legislative process,” McConnell said.

McConnell warned that Reid and fellow Democrats might come to regret the power move in future Congresses.

But two ideas have wide support in the Democratic caucus. The first, more cursory change, would make what’s known as the “motion to proceed” non-debatable. That means the minority could no longer block debate on legislation, while holding out for guarantees on amendment votes or legislative changes to the underlying bill.

The other would recreate a status quo ante, where filibustering senators would be required to hold the floor and draw public attention to their obstruction efforts. “If they want a filibuster, stand and talk about it,” Reid said.

That would still leave the GOP minority plenty of opportunities to obstruct — and Republicans are threatening to take them. But Reid, who opposed Merkley’s efforts in 2010, has come around, and conceded that his junior caucus members had it right all along. The only question now is whether Reid can round up 51 votes for establishing a precedent that could be used against his own party in future Congresses.

“The Republican leader thinks things are going well here. He’s in a distinct minority because things aren’t going well around here,” Reid said. “Lyndon Johnson: one cloture. Reid: 386. That says it all.”

h/t: Brian Beutler at TPM

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has rejected Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) request to establish a Select Committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11. In a strongly worded letter delivered to the former GOP presidential hopeful on Friday, Reid rebuked Republicans for politicizing the killings and baselessly claiming that the Obama administration is engaged in a cover-up of the incident. “I refuse to allow the Senate to be used as a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” Reid wrote, noting that several committees in the House and Senate are already investigating the tragedy.

Earlier this week, McCain, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), held around the clock press conferences and media appearances insisting that U.N. Ambassador misled the public when she described, five days after the attacks, the incident as a “spontaneous attack” inspired by an anti-Islam video. McCain and Graham promised to block Rice should she be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; Ayotte said she would consider the nomination.

In his letter, Reid reminded McCain that “elections are over; it is time to put an end to the partisan politicization of national security and begin working together to strengthen our efforts to dismantle and destroy the terrorist networks that threaten us.” He also rebuked the Arizona senator for skipping a closed-doors committee hearing on Benghazi in order to hold a press conference demanding more information about the attacks.

Indeed, the GOP’s accusations of an administration cover-up seemed to fall apart after testimony from former CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus on Friday revealed that the CIA approvedthe declassified talking points used by Rice during her television appearances. The hearings also confirmed that the agency had received conflicting intelligence reports in real time during the attacks.

While one stream of intelligence “from multiple sources, including video at the scene, indicated the group was behind the attack,” other reports “emerged at the same time indicating the violence at the consulate was inspired by protests in Egypt over an ostensibly anti-Islam film that was privately produced in the United States.” Twenty intelligence reports “indicated that anger about the film may be to blame.”

h/t: Igor Volsky at Think Progress Security