Alabama’s senior U.S. senator, Richard Shelby, a four-term Republican, holds himself out as a thoughtful fiscal conservative and an advocate of governmental efficiency. But that’s transparently untrue. His arrogant personal action to hold a Senate vote on 70 key administration appointments hostage to two huge chunks of federal pork barrel spending in Alabama confirm that he is neither conservative nor interested in efficient government. When it comes two big pork issues for his state, he’s willing to use an unprecedented power grab to stall the Senate’s normal administrative functioning to get his way.
Talk about clogging up the gears of government. His tactic is a gross distortion of the long tolerated Senate custom that allows an individual senator to place a “hold” on a particular measure of bill to keep it from reaching the Senate floor for a vote. And he’s abusing the custom simply out of selfishness.
He wants the administration to squash a protest by Boeing and agree to a defense department contract to let Northrop Grumman and its partner, European Aeronautic Defense and Space, build an Air Force tanker in Mobile, Ala. That would Alabama about 1,500 jobs, but give many others to Europe. Boeing wo uld build the tanker at its plants in other states, and keep more jobs in America. Mr. Shelby also wants the FBI to build a new facility for testing explosive devices in Huntsville. That would benefit Alabama, but it’s not clear the facility is a critical need relative to the budget deficit.
To force an administrative decision in his favor on these controversial proposals, he’s put a blanket hold on the Senate’s pending vote to affirm the nominations of 70 high-level government executives in a range of departments, from defense to state to, well, TVA. Appointments of new board members to fill four of the seats on the nine TVA member have been pending for months. Mr. Shelby’s hold is keeping them from being approved, and forcing the board to make policy with a slender quorum.
By custom, the Senate majority leader does not have to respect a hold requested by a senator. But he is on notice that the member who seeks a hold may pose a filibuster if a hold is not honored.
In normal times in the past, the Republicans’ minority leader, presently Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, likely would have counseled Sen. Shelby to limit his hold to a reasonable one or two nominees for a key departmental executive job.
But these times are anything but normal. When it comes to obsessive filibusters, which require a supermajority vote of 60 to defeat, Republicans know no boundaries. Even before they achieved a 41-vote minority capable of sustaining a filibuster without attracting one of the two Senate Independents or a wavering Democrat to their side, the Senate’s Republicans regularly threatened filibusters the last two years to keep the Senate and the Obama administration from doing anything meaningful. Now that the Massachusetts election has given them a 41-vote margin on their own, any abuse of process on holds and filibusters seems to be fair game.
That’s the only reason Alabama’s Sen. Shelby could credibly enforce a hold of such unprecedented magnitude. His minority leader obviously is unwilling to stop him, and so is the rest of his party — including Tennessee Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander. If they (or any other two) let it be known that they would not support his filibuster, his blanket hold would crumble. But they apparently won’t impose that discipline. So they tolerate unbridled, unprincipled partisanship; they are playing the game with him.
Holds have been used by both sides to win concessions. But when a hold covers 70 administration appointees who must be approved by the Senate before they can assume their office, it’s not just ludicrous; it’s breathtakingly outrageous. It shouldn’t happen, and it shouldn’t be allowed. The fact that it is reflects the rank extent to which Republicans have etched their “party of no” status to make Congress a do-nothing trap.