Senate 'holds': Where just one senator makes a majority

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/254/story/86529.html

By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The shadowy practice of Senate "holds" — the power of one lawmaker to block nominations or legislation indefinitely — is a big reason that the Senate is gridlocked.

In an age when information flies across the Internet instantly, the Senate continues to conduct crucial business with this throwback to a time when gentlemen's agreements were the chief currency of the legislative process. In fact, holds appear to be more popular than ever.

There's no easy way for the public to learn what's being held up or who's responsible.

"There is hardly any public record of who places holds, how it is done (often by letter to the party leader), how many holds are placed on any bill or how long they will be honored by the majority leadership," a 2008 Congressional Research Service study said. Senate Democratic and Republican leaders' offices this week couldn't provide any firm data on holds.

As a result, "one senator can subvert the entire democratic process. We don't have the Senate confirming political appointees promptly, and that means decisions are not made at agencies," said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.

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The tactic has soared into the limelight recently because of some well-publicized holds. In one, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., blocked Martha Johnson's confirmation as the head of the General Services Administration because he was annoyed by how the agency handled complaints about a troubled Kansas City federal center.

Once President Barack Obama complained publicly after a nine-month delay, the Senate approved Johnson unanimously; even Bond ended up backing her.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., recently held up the nominations of dozens of Obama administration appointees as he sought to draw attention to the Air Force's refueling tanker program and an FBI terrorism analysis center he hoped would bring jobs to his state. He dropped most of his holds after he got the White House's attention.

Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent, briefly made a public effort to stall Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's bid for a second term. Bernanke also was confirmed eventually, with 70 votes.

Obama maintained earlier this month that 63 nominees were being held up because of Republican holds, and he threatened to make "recess appointments," which don't need Senate confirmation, if the logjam didn't break. On Feb. 11, the Senate quickly confirmed 27 nominees whose holds had been lifted, though some top picks at the Pentagon and the Treasury Department are still stalled.

"It's not as though they were dissatisfied by the qualifications of the nominees. They say, 'I'll just take hostages,' until they get attention," said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research center.

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The system was supposed to be more transparent. In 2007, the Senate began requiring senators to place notices in the Congressional Record within six days of declaring their intentions to place holds. Sloan's group found in December, however, that the new rules have been "disregarded by senators of both parties."

One end run is the practice of merely threatening a hold, rather than placing it. That has the same effect as placing a hold, but it doesn't trigger the formal process that requires disclosure.

Then there's the "tag team" hold, in which senators block someone for a few days, then hand off the hold to another senator, skirting the rule requiring timely disclosure.

At least three Republican senators reportedly used that tactic last year to delay the nomination of Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein as the White House's regulatory czar.

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