The big news Feb. 25, as The Washington Post put it, was that the Senate easily passed a $15 billion jobs bill. Some outlets were even calling it a “bipartisan” bill, given that 13 Repubs joined 57 Dems to pass the measure 70-28.

Just shows to go ya–how some pols will vote differently, once the threat of a filibuster is removed (as we discussed here and in Part I of  a two-part piece on the “stealth filibuster”). In fact, the jobs bill might have been scuttled–or “shelved”–had not newly-seated Scott Brown (R-MA) and four other Republican Senators voted against a filibuster on Feb. 23: even with those five votes, the filibuster was avoided by only two votes, clearing that hurdle 62-30 (60 votes are required).

Filibuster affects voting strategy

Yet, when the jobs measure itself came to a vote, eight more Republicans crossed the aisle, which sent it back to the House, where a much larger jobs measure had passed in December.  Also from The Washington Post: “The House voted 217 to 201 to approve a $15 billion measure that would give tax breaks to companies for hiring new employees. Six Republicans joined the vast majority of Democrats in supporting the bill, which also includes a one-year reauthorization of the law governing federal highway funding, as well as an expansion of the Build America Bonds program and a provision allowing companies to write off equipment purchases.”

Unfortunately, the measure (which still must clear the Senate again, due to House revisions) is not expected to have a major impact on unemployment and almost certainly will not help consumers who right-now-today are staring at foreclosure or bankruptcy.

‘Stop calling this a jobs bill’

Among the pols who voiced disappointment by the 10-fold reduction, a shared sentiment immediately following the Senate vote seemed to be to drop the euphemism “jobs bill” –that is, to simply concede that it’s a tax-credit bill that might indirectly spur businesses to hire people who have been out of work more than 60 days.

For example, quoted in the “Political Blotter” at ContraCostaTimes.com, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) said, ““When presented with a powerful opportunity to create jobs and address the growing unemployment rates among the chronically unemployed, the Senate responded with a whimper. A ‘go slow’, piecemeal approach will do little to address our nation’s need for employment.

“It is critical that policy solutions include not only small business relief but worker training, the use of existing federal programs and targeted job creation to those communities with the highest rates and longest history of unemployment. Until the needs of the chronically unemployed are met, we implore leadership to stop calling this ‘the jobs bill.’ ”

Despite her confusing syntax, we get Ms. Lee’s point: seems like a “jobs bill” should, in fact, create jobs.

Although some tiny gains are trickling, the national jobs picture remains grim.

Job losses, job gains

One Wall Street Journal blog is reporting “a sign the job market is inching toward recovery [because] 31 states added jobs in the first month of the year.”

Using Labor Department data regarding  the official unemployment rate, the piece continues: “In January, the overall U.S. unemployment rate fell to 9.7% from 10% a month earlier, while the nation’s economy shed 26,000 jobs. The job losses continued in February amid strong weather effects, but the jobless rate remained at 9.7%.” (By the way, that blog also has jobless rates for each state.)

But remember, the “official rate” is not the real rate, which includes those who have given up looking for work as well as those who can’t find full time work. That rate, the “total unemployment” rate, peaked at 17.4 per cent in October 2009. Sometimes referred to as the “U-6″ category, this rate is important for two reasons. First, of course, it shows the number of U.S. unemployed is actually closer to 20 per cent than it is to 10 per cent. Why the media continues to buy in to the Labor Department’s lower number–the “U-3 category, now at 9.7 per cent and holding–is simply confounding.

Second, the U-6 category is telling in that gains in the  U-3 category should parallel gains in the U-6–but that isn’t happening. As pointed out in another WSJ blog: “The U.S. jobless rate was unchanged at 9.7% in February, following a decline the previous month, but the government’s broader measure of unemployment ticked up 0.3 percentage point to 16.8%.”

So what’s that mean? Well, here’s the conclusion from that piece: “A U-6 figure that converges toward the official rate could indicate improving confidence in the labor market and the overall economy. This month pushes convergence even further away.”

Unemployment extension passes ‘no debate” hurdle in Senate

the Senate. A larger measure, described today in The  Washington Post, moved forward when eight Repubs joined 58 Dems to limit debate: “The bill includes one-year extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA health benefits, as well as money to help states pay for Medicaid and private pension funds that have taken a big hit during the recession.”
According to the Post, how the House is expected to act on the larger measure is not known.

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If you are overwhelmed by debt, filing for bankruptcy protection may be your most pragmatic alternative. If you are facing foreclosure of your home (sometimes referred to as your “primary residence,” as opposed to a second home, or “vacation home”),  bankruptcy protection may be your best route to saving the home. If you are struggling with medical bills, you may be in a special category for setting debt aside, and if you have problems with credit-card debt, please know the laws have changed recently. For bankruptcy basics, please see:

Principles of bankruptcy

Basics of bankruptcy

Introduction to Chapter 7

Introduction to Chapter 13

Who knew a relatively unknown state senator could have such far-ranging implications for jammed-up consumers scurrying to deal with over-the-levee unemployment rates, health-care costs and home-foreclosure levels–as well as credit-card company shenanigans?

Scott Brown (R-MA)  hasn’t been seated in Teddy’s 50-year-old chair, yet–but already he has an action figure. And some reports–notably, this one in the Christian Science Monitor– say his Republican victory in the Massachusetts race for Kennedy’s vacancy has “sent tremors” not only within the Team Obama reform effort but also “throughout the United States.” Beyond the five states the Monitor cites as candidates to follow the Massachusetts’ example, the spillover has also reached the Illinois primary–yes, a primary–in which Reuters points out “Five things to watch in Illinois” and at least one GOP-leaning blogger quotes the Reuters report then goes on to say: “The White House is paying close attention today. It’s a primary close to Obama’s heart, as it’s his former Senate seat that’s up for grabs.”

One thing for certain–any leader who can even partially help us to hack our way out of this mess deserves an action figure.

The serious, sobering certainty is that one election cost the Democrats their Senate “supermajority” of 60 votes, the implications of which are detailed in this CBSnews.com piece.

Here’s the highlights: “Basically, without 60 votes, under Senate rules, debate could go on forever and ever. This is called the filibuster. So basically, [because Brown won] . . . , the Republicans, with 41 votes, . . . have enough votes as the minority to prevent the Democrats, the majority with 59 votes, from ever bringing a final vote on health care reform or any other legislative priority to the floor. The minority [does] . . . basically control the Senate.”

Senate tactic not mentioned in Constitution

Ok, well, maybe that’s not quite true, but the point about the filibuster is accurate; and if all this self-focused in-fighting is not enough, turns out that cloture, the “procedure” that kills a filibuster, is not even a Constitutional device–in other words, even though its effects are very important to legislation that affects us all, it’s merely a procedural tactic–and limited to the Senate, at that. (For comparison, read about the Electoral College, which is in the Constitution.) This won’t be “the first time that the filibuster has been used to stop major pieces of legislation,” Fisk and Chemerinsky write, “and it’s definitely not a partisan idea–both parties, when in the minority, have used the filibuster to prevent the majority from passing everything they wanted to.

“According to law professors [Fisk and Chemerinsky] in their Stanford Law Review article from 1997, ‘The Filibuster,’ the technique was used not only to prevent civil rights legislation from passing for years in the last century, but more recently during the Clinton administration. Senate Republicans, then as now in the minority, used the filibuster to stop economic stimulus, campaign finance reform, lobbying reform and the [previous] attempt at health care reform. When the Democrats were the minority party in the Senate, they used the filibuster to stop much of the GOP’s Contract with America.

” ‘Filibusters are so ubiquitous in the contemporary Senate that it is now commonly said that sixty votes in the Senate, rather than a simple majority, are necessary to pass legislation and confirm nominations,’ wrote Fisk and Chemerinsky. “In fact, during the presidency of George W. Bush, Democrats, with Biden in their ranks, frequently filibustered some of the president’s judicial nominees for the federal courts.”

It gets worse.

Evolution of the ‘painless’ filibuster

When you think of a real-life filibuster, aren’t you getting an image at least somewhat informed by movie life? Namely, Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Smith” in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Anyone who’s ever seen the movie remembers the agonizing filibuster reel, watching the hero struggle to learn the tricks of the rulebook, while the other senators take turns dozing, coming and going in shifts.

Well, it turns out things have changed quite a bit since Capra made that 1939 movie.

The filibuster tactic nowadays is known as the “stealth filibuster.”

From the abstract of the Fisk and Chemerinsky paper: “Filibusters are ubiquitous but virtually invisible, for the contemporary Senate practice does not require a senator to hold the floor to filibuster; senators filibuster simply by indication to the Senate leadership that they intend to do so.”

In other words, a senator merely indicates that “I would filibuster, if I had to” and that takes the place of the real thing: no parched lips, no pleading bladder. *Poof* Instant roadblock, and the bill is tabled–Next!

From a May 5 piece at Huffington Post, “The Electoral College is provided for in the United States Constitution. The filibuster is not. In fact, the word doesn’t appear in any of our founding documents. Its derivation is from the Spanish filibustero, meaning ‘pirate’ or ‘freebooter.’ “

History of the tactic’s development traces to 1789, according to the Huffington piece, but for this discussion, the first important change came in 1917, when “the Senate developed a way of shutting down dilatory tactics of an obstreperous minority. It is called the cloture rule. During the closing days of the session that year, a group of isolationist senators who opposed the entry of the United States into World War I filibustered a bill which would have allowed President Wilson to arm U.S. merchant ships. The President denounced them as a ‘little group of willful men’ and called on the Senate to change its rules.”

Which it did, resulting in “a cloture rule which was embodied in Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate” . . . providing for “a 2/3 vote of all senators” that “could cut off debate.”

Whether Jimmy Stewart’s character had a problem taking a bathroom break is a question for fans of movie trivia, but the longest. actual-factual real-life filibuster on record–Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour, 18-minute ramble-thon against the Civil Rights Act of 1957–“would have gone on longer had Thurmond’s doctors not forced him to quit out of concern for kidney damage.”

More important was a deal brokered by LBJ (big surprise, right?) that resulted in a couple of new wrinkles, which in turn paved the way for a post-Watergate rule change that, among other things changed the majority requirement to a 3/5 vote and resulted in the the 60-vote supermajority requirement of today.

Inadvertent creation

Sadly, there’s more…which brings us back to Fisk and Chemerinsky, as described in the Huffington piece: “The story took a turn for the worse when, in the early 1970s, Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield — intending to dilute the power of the minority –inadvertently made filibustering easier.

“The extended speechifying made famous by Strom Thurmond and Huey Long before him has been replaced by what legal scholars Erwin Chemerinsky and Catherine Fisk have dubbed the ’stealth’ filibuster. Its genesis was the early 1970s, when it became apparent to then majority leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) that delaying tactics such as objections to unanimous consent motions; forcing the previous day’s journal to be read aloud in its entirety; suggesting the absence of a quorum; and — of course — extended periods of time holding the floor were causing the Senate to fall behind in doing the people’s business.”

An idea emerged to let filibusters occupy morning sessions, but to reserve afternoons for “pressing business.”

Perversely, what actually developed from Mansfield’s dual-track system “has proved to be disastrous.”

——————-Next, in Part 2—————

What we have now is a system in which “the Senate has come to a point in time where it seldom takes up legislation unless the majority leadership has counted sixty votes. In other words, a credible threat that 41 senators won’t vote for cloture is enough to keep a bill off the floor on most occasions. Boston College historian Julian Zeliger puts it this way: ‘Mansfield’s measure, which was intended to promote efficiency, inadvertently encouraged filibusters by making them politically costless and painless.’ ”

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If you are overwhelmed by debt, filing for bankruptcy protection may be your most pragmatic alternative. If you are facing foreclosure of your home (sometimes referred to as your “primary residence,” as opposed to a second home, or “vacation home”),  bankruptcy protection may be your best route to saving the home. If you are struggling with medical bills, you may be in a special category for setting debt aside, and if you have problems with credit-card debt, please know the laws have changed recently. For bankruptcy basics, please see:

Principles of bankruptcy

Basics of bankruptcy

Introduction to Chapter 7

Introduction to Chapter 13