You see it all the time: You need 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate.

Not exactly.  Under Senate rules--which can be changed by a majority vote--you need the consent of 3/5ths of the Senate to close debate on an issue; that's 60 votes. To pass a bill, you need a majority of those present. Since Ted Kennedy is sick and Al Franken has not yet been seated, that's 49 votes.

Is that an academic distinction?  No, not really.  Politically, voting against an emergency stimulus bill is very different from voting to block a vote on an emergency stimulus bill.  Particularly if Majority Leader Harry Reid required filibusterers to actually hold the floor, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style, Republicans might find it a great deal harder to keep a 41-vote bloc together.

In any case, Americans are generally under-informed about the way their complex system works. Spelling out what's going on, even if it takes an extra sentence, is preferable to a misleading and sometimes inaccurate shorthand.

Update: jhm in comments is correct in saying that it is not the debate cloture rule, but rather a Senate rule against deficit spending, that required a 3/5ths majority vote to pass the stimulus bill.  Both are self-imposed requirements, adopted through majority vote, but the politics of standing up against deficit spending are different from standing up against the Senate voting.

Tags: Filibuster, Harry Reid, Stimulus Bill, U.S. Senate

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.