http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=01EC34B4-047A-4861-9544-C57CD532369ASenate GOP’s plan to eat up floor time
By: Burgess Everett
September 10, 2014 03:30 PM EDT
Senate Republicans have a new strategy: Vote to advance bills they oppose.
On Wednesday, more than a dozen Republicans joined with Senate Democrats to overcome a filibuster of legislation aimed at ensuring pay equity for men and women. That vote was 73-25, an overwhelming margin by Senate standards. On Monday, 25 Republicans voted with Democrats to advance a constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform.
The GOP broadly opposes both of these proposals — but they are voting to extend debate on them to chew up the remaining few days on the legislative calendar and prevent Democrats from holding even more campaign-themed votes on raising the minimum wage, reforming the student loan system and striking back at the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.
Even though those measures have already failed this year, Democrats believe holding a second round of failed votes on them will place Republicans on the wrong side of poll-tested issues right before the election. But because everyone in Congress is eying the exits for general election season, the GOP figures if it strings out debate on proposals that it opposes, the damage will be limited.
“If it’s not pay equity, it’s going to be something else,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the chamber’s top GOP messaging man. “We realize the next couple of weeks are going to be a bust around here and we want to get to the important business, which is [government funding], and we’ll get to that faster hopefully.”
A Senate Republican, granted anonymity to describe party strategy, said that the vote was mostly about disrupting Democrats’ carefully plotted returns to previously failed votes.
“We can spend some time talking about it and that might make it less likely for them to bring up other things. If we block it, we end debate. If we continue the discussion, they’ve got to burn up considerable time,” the Republican said. “But in the end, we will not vote for” the legislation.
Because a bill that they support moved forward after previously being blocked, Democrats offered praise for Republicans on one hand — and scorn on the other.
“Do you want my positive attitude or my negative attitude?” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a member of Democratic leadership. “My positive attitude is that they realize that this is an issue that is absolutely resonant in the country and they know that we need to talk about it. Negative is that they are just trying to eat up time so we can’t do anything.”
The floor strategy has senators twisting themselves in pretzels in attempt to hammer the other side for partisanship. Republicans accuse the Democrats of designing the Senate’s calendar around the November elections — and Democrats say Republicans are cynically voting to advance these proposals to put the brakes on Democrats’ Fair Shot Agenda.
It’s probably not what voters had in mind as conflict rages around the world — but it appears the only thing either party can agree on is keeping the government funded. Beyond that, partisanship reigns supreme.
“Republicans can try to game Senate rules to avoid votes, but we’ll still continue to debate the issues that middle class families care about,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, Thune’s Democratic counterpart.
Republicans oppose the pay equity bill because they believe it would be a boon to trial lawyers and is redundant to existing laws preventing pay discrimination. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) is pushing for her alternative proposal that prevents retaliation against women for salary inquiries but sidesteps some of Democrats’ legal language.
“The majority leader wants to put [pay equity] up for political reasons. Let’s take a vote on one that has some broad based solutions,” she said in an interview. “It’s a one-sided vote for political reasons, so they can use it in campaigns.”
Democrats don’t deny that their legislation could be a boon to their electoral prospects — and they posit that Wednesday’s vote to advance the bill was aimed at avoiding another round of headlines that read: “GOP blocks equal pay.”
“The American people want the bill. And certainly this vote in November will be determined in several states by the votes of women,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.). “So [Republicans] want to be on the right side of public policy and try not to torpedo their own election efforts.”
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) shot back that the GOP is “never afraid to debate anything.” But the same proposal was blocked unanimously by Republicans in April. On Tuesday, the vote advanced by a whopping margin. What changed?
“The timing has a lot to do with it,” he said.
