I’m waiting for a response from Dodd’s Senate office about whether or not he could or would filibuster final passage of the SSCI bill, if it were to contain retroactive immunity. Contrary to what has been reported, getting a vote on the Dodd/Feingold amendment has never been a substitute for a filibuster. As a germane amendment to the underlying bill, Dodd/Feingold always deserved a straight majority vote. Going back to December, the expectation had been that Dodd filibuster after his amendment to strip retroactive immunity failed.
Also, I think this piece by Paul Kiel gets what this agreement means wrong. Agreeing to unanimous consent on which amendments get votes does not necessarily constitute agreeing not to filibuster. I don’t know how setting time limits for debate on certain amendments impacts whether a filibuster is possible or when in the process it would be able to take place.
It’s not that the GOP caved (to some extent they did) and the Dems didn’t. Caving just isn’t the right term for the process from an outcome standpoint. This particular round of negotiations is just that – a round of negotiations on process. The process is rigged because the SSCI remains the underlying bill. This has not changed and getting a raft of amendments to improve the bill is no real achievement. All the good amendments would have to pass to make the SSCI bill look like the SJC bill or the House RESTORE bill. And all of the amendments are not going to pass, so we’re still likely going to be stuck with retroactive immunity and expansive government surveillance powers in legislation coming from a Democratic-controlled Senate.
This slate of amendments is going to serve as a fig leaf to cover the Democratic caucus in the event that a still-bad SSCI bill is passed with some Democratic support. Democrats offered amendments, the amendments got votes, the votes failed. But in the end, it has to come back to the underlying bill.
Glenn Greenwald and Christy Hardin Smith have pointed this out already and I’m sure Tim Tagaris is thinking the same thing.
That said, we will have a very clear target on retroactive immunity: the Dodd/Feingold amendment getting 51 votes. The surest way to make a filibuster unnecessary would be to win on this amendment. Take action now through CREDO Action’s email tool!
Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.
Hold Fast 
matt,
i still don’t get why no one objected to this UC. it’s not the time constraints on debate – it’s the agreement to require 60 votes for passage on some of the amendments.
this, i think, was when we lost. and i’d like to know why.
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No one objected because there was no other way to move forward. If Dodd or Feingold objected, what would have happened is the the GOP would have called for cloture vote on the SSCI bill and Rockefeller and a number of the SSCI Dems and conservative Dems would have voted with them, so we’d be stuck voting on the SSCI bill without amendments. Which, incidentally is pretty close to where we are.
The UC agreement was bad – it assured we wouldn’t be able to improve the bad SSCI bill.
But we lost when Harry Reid decided, most likely on grounds that he wanted to give Bush something he would sign, that the SSCI bill would be the underlying bill and not the SJC bill or the House bill.
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weren’t there any germane amendments pending? weren’t there 14 senators to sign a cloture petition on one or more of them?
that’s what i don’t get, if the Rs (and jello jay et al) weren’t going to permit a vote on the germane amendments – why not force THEM to filibuster?
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No, this was before they moved to the bill. They needed to set the rules to debate any amendments before bringing up any of them – otherwise it would have been a complete mess running 30 hours per amendment.
There’s an argument that the germane amendments should have all received a simple majority vote. But for whatever reason, the GOP was filibustering the process and the negotiation took place to remove it. As a result, at least in theory, some amendments have a chance of passing with just 51 votes. Dodd’s RI stripping amendment is one…
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