Campaign Diaries

With Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter’s defections on the Employee Free Choice Act, all the momentum seems to be going against labor’s top legislative priority. But two previously uncommitted Senators gave proponents of the bill some reason to cheer: Mark Udall and Mark Warner have announced that they will vote in favor of cloture.

Interestingly, both insisted that they had not decided how they will vote on the bill itself. As I have explained before, Senators often have it both ways by voting in favor of cloture (which requires 60 votes) and against its passage (which only requires 50). When it comes to EFCA, what is important is how Senators will vote on cloture and whether they will allow the bill to move to the floor for debate.

As far as EFCA’s proponents are concerned, Udall and Warner are now on their side since they will support cloture. They can now express their reluctance to support card-checks, they can reveal that they are leaning towards a “no” vote on the final legislation: All of that is posturing since they have said they will not support a filibuster.

The way in which these Senators announced their position confirms that their goal is to make their support for cloture seem as unimportant as possible. Udall’s announcement came last week, in a meeting with the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry. “On Wednesday, Udall told the group that he will vote to bring the bill to debate but, depending on what amendments are introduced, may or may not vote to pass it,” wrote the Denver Business Journal.

The article describes Udall as still not having “taken a stance,” which goes to prove that people rarely interpret someone’s position on cloture as the true “stance.” As for Warner, he wrote a letter to constituents (via The Plum Line):

I believe there is a need for reform in this area, and that EFCA should be debated and voted upon by the Senate. I intend to evaluate any prevailing proposal to ensure that it allows workers and employers to be adequately informed and that it ultimately provides a fair and level playing field for both management and labor.

Needless to say, a distracted reader would never notice that such a vaguely worded letter is announcing Warner’s intention. But Warner is in essence saying that he will vote against a filibuster by writing that he believes “EFCA should be debated and voted upon by the Senate.”

(Note, only one other Senator, Ben Nelson, had explicitly separated cloture and passage until now. But his position is a bit different: He is opposed to the bill, but unsure on whether he will support cloture.)

On the other hand, EFCA’s opponents also got some good news this week. Colorado’s other Democratic Senator Michael Bennet, who was recently appointed to the chamber and is uncommitted on the bill, had some harsh words for the bill:

We’re going to have to see whether or not there’s a consensus that can be reached that makes it something that can be passed because right now there isn’t something that can be passed… Temperatures are running high on both sides of this. We need to make sure that no matter how this turns out … that we’ve got all hands on deck working on health-care reform because this is the year to get that done.

The first part of Bennet’s statement (”right now there isn’t something that can be passed”) might make headlines, but it is not particularly newsworthy: With Lincoln and Specter opposed to the bill, we know that the current version can get at most 58 votes on the cloture motion. But the second part certainly does not suggest that Bennet is leaning towards supporting the bill, as he describes EFCA as a divisive measure that could imperil the Democratic coalition and threaten the passage of health care reform.

—

Now that Specter, Lincoln, Warner and Udall have clarified their intentions, I have updated the head count I wrote nearly a month ago. That post also contained a table detailing each uncommitted Senator’s position, so I refer you there for a more detailed take on Bingaman, Conrad or Kohl’s stance.

While some Senators who are co-sponsoring EFCA have expressed some concern about its provisions - Tim Johnson, for instance, recently said that he would be more comfortable with a watered-down bill - none has pulled back their co-sponsorship. That certainly implies that the leadership can at the very least count on all of their support during the cloture vote. That gets us to the following breakdown:

• 46 supporters
  • 40 co-sponsors
  • 4 non co-sponsors who have indicated their support for the bill: Dorgan, Franken, Hagan, McCaskill (see here for more detail)
  • 2 non co-sponsors who have indicated that their support for cloture: Mark Udall, Warner

• 12 undecided/uncommitted: Bayh, Baucus, Bennet, Bingaman, Conrad, Feinstein, Kohl, Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Pryor, Tester, Webb

• 5 oppose the current version but have not closed the door to compromise:
  • 2 have explicitly opened door: Lincoln, Murkowski
  • 3 have not explicitly said they might support compromise but observers believe they could support cloture on watered-down version: Collins, Snowe, Voinovich [Important update on Voinovich, see below]

• 36 opponents, which include Arlen Specter

As you can, the first two categories only add up to 58. That means that, as soon as Arlen Specter announced his opposition to EFCA, the bill’s current version was all but dead. Blanche Lincoln’s defection lowered the potential support for the current bill from 59 to 58. Now, Democrats need to water down the bill enough to get the support on cloture of 2 of the following 5 Senators who currently oppose the bill: Murkowski, Lincoln, Collins, Snowe and Voinovich.

Update: I had apparently missed an op-ed Voinovich wrote in Politico last week in which he announces his opposition to both the card check and binding arbitration provisions of EFCA. Voinovich concludes, “As a result of my fundamental concerns with this legislation, I will not support it when it comes to the Senate floor.” The wording does not fully close the door to cloture vote (Specter explicitly addressed cloture and said he would vote against it), it does make it very unlikely that Voinovich will allow for debate on compromise version - unless the bill is so watered-down that it removes card checks and binding arbitration, in which case Specter would be likely to vote “yea” as well.