IRCPPS in the Links: More on US Senate Rule Suspensions

Gregory Kroger has a detailed history of the procedure in the Monkey Cage:

...By itself, last night’s precedent is not a major reform.  The “right” to vote on suspending the rules after cloture is invoked was almost never used until last year.  And since this “right” has only been used to record senators positions on defeated proposals rather than, you know, change public policy for the better, I am reasonably confident** that the republic will survive.  The minority party can still force votes on pet amendments, but now the bar to do so has been raised.  Instead of a single member filing a motion to suspend the rules and subsequently forcing a vote on the motion, now the minority party must band together and vote against cloture until they are guaranteed a vote on their priorities....

IRCPPS in the Links: The "Nuclear Option" in the US Senate

In the Monkey Cage, Sarah Binder discusses the new precedent set by US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last night in relation to the ability of the minority party to add non-germane amendments to a bill post-cloture:

What exactly happened? In brief (well, Senate-style brief), Senate rules prohibit non-germane (unrelated) amendments on the Senate floor after cloture has been invoked on a bill.  In other words, unless all senators consent, senators can only offer germane amendments once debate has been limited on a bill.   McConnell and Reid appear to have been negotiating an agreement that would have allowed Republicans to offer seven non-germane amendments post-cloture.  But then a GOP senator moved to suspend the rules (which requires a two-thirds vote) so that he could offer non-germane amendments, including at least one related to the president’s jobs bill.   Frustrated with the Republicans’ tactics, Reid raised a point of order that the Republican motion was dilatory. Under Senate rules, dilatory motions are not in order once cloture has been invoked.  The parliamentarian advised the presiding officer to rule that the motion was in order, the presiding officer did just that, and a vote ensued on whether or not to sustain or overrule the chair’s ruling.  Appeals of the chair require only a majority vote to pass, and Reid mustered all the Democrats save Ben Nelson to vote to overturn the chair.   In practice, this means that the Senate tonight set a new precedent, by which I mean a new interpretation of the Senate cloture rule:  Under cloture, a motion to suspend the rules to offer a non-germane amendment may now be declared dilatory.  (If I’ve not quite nailed this down precisely, it’s because no one should try to disentangle Senate floor procedure after midnight.  Please do correct my errors!)

IRCPPS in the Links: A Crisis of Leadership or Institutions?

Steven L. Taylor asks if the United States' political problems are a matter of failed leadership or failed institutions:

...Congress has appeared unwilling to assert itself, something I have noted (and criticized) in the past.  Such unwillingness to more seriously confront the executive branch is a failure of leadership, to be sure.  However, I would argue that, on balance, this lack of actions is founded very heavily in a lack of adequate institutional incentives and ability to adequately engage the topics at hand...