The ‘slow-go Senate’

Through last week the U.S. Senate had only 70 roll call votes, the fewest in more than a decade, according to an accounting by Politico today. 

"And while it’s easy to bog down in a chamber that invented the filibuster, there’s little incentive for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to start making things pop," reporter Manu Raju writes in a piece on the "slow-go Senate."

Reid wants to avoid having Democrats take too many controversial votes, to minimize the chance for any of them to turn up in campaign commercials against his troops.  Reid enjoys only a 53-47 majority, and 23 members of his caucus face the voters in 2012, so the party can not afford to lose many — if any.

Also, negotiations over the federal budget have tied up Senate leaders for long periods.  "The real dealmaking and legislating are happening behind closed doors," Raju writes.

"It all adds up to a more paralyzed Senate than usual — and it’s not likely to get any better before the 2012 election," he writes.

“I think we’ve had plenty of votes,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told Politico.  “But Harry has been selective, and I think we’re in a delicate position. The House sent us a lot of bills we weren’t able to pass in the last Congress. We are kind of testing what might pass in the Republican House this Congress.”

Reid spokesman Jon Summers told the news organization that Republicans have shown little interest in real legislating.  But Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said, “I think it’s a big failure on the part of the leadership to take up some of the fundamental business of this Congress.”

Some senators are growing frustrated, the paper writes, quoting Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., saying "It's very frustrating and unexplainable and undefendable."