{"id":1918,"date":"2010-06-18T02:07:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T09:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=1918"},"modified":"2010-06-18T02:07:17","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T09:07:17","slug":"end-senate-secret-holds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/18\/end-senate-secret-holds\/","title":{"rendered":"End Senate ‘Secret Holds’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claire McCaskill is on the verge of introducing legislation to end this anti-democratic process.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

In the Senate, every man or woman can be king. <\/p>\n

Each can hold up a billion-dollar spending bill on a whim<\/strong>, or block one of the president’s nominees from ever getting a hearing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Whether they’re in the majority or minority doesn’t matter. They also don’t even have to explain why<\/strong>. But the best part of all? <\/p>\n

They never have to admit that they did it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"18clairemccaskill\"<\/a> So blame Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri if pretty soon it’s just not as much fun as it used to be.<\/p>\n

McCaskill, a first term Democrat, apparently has persuaded enough of her colleagues to back her effort to take the "secret" out of the Senate’s practice of secret holds.<\/p>\n

If her bill gets to the floor, which is appearing more likely since every Democrat supports it, plus enough Republicans to grease passage, no senator would be able to block on a nomination or a piece of legislation without leaving fingerprints.<\/p>\n

McCaskill cautioned that it was too early to start tossing confetti.<\/p>\n

"We have 67 people who said they want to abolish the rule<\/strong>," she said. "Now we have to translate 67 people into 67 votes. I haven’t been here very long, but long enough to know this is going to be the hard part<\/strong>."<\/p>\n

Indeed, she intends to continue her hunt for more supporters so she has "some wiggle room in case some senators get cold feet."<\/p>\n

Senate watchers and open government advocates said that eliminating the secret holds would be a significant step toward reform\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <McClatchy DC<\/a>><\/p>\n

I fully support McClatchy\u2019s effort and urge you to do the same.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Claire McCaskill is on the verge of introducing legislation to end this anti-democratic process. In the Senate, every man or woman can be king. Each can hold up a billion-dollar spending bill on a whim, or block one of the president’s nominees from ever getting a hearing. Whether they’re in the majority or minority doesn’t […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}