The current partisan clash over cloture votes has largely come down to GOP objections to bringing many measures up for debate. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has repeatedly said Republicans have been trying to ensure their right to offer amendments on the floor.
On Dec. 18, McConnell took to the floor to highlight what he called majority Democrat’s “dubious record” of “denying the minority its right to amendment a total of 43 times.”
McConnell noted that Frist, over a similar four-year period, used the procedure known as filling the amendment tree, only 15 times to prevent then-minority Democrats from offering amendments.
“The current Majority has blocked the minority from offering amendments more often than the last six Majority Leaders combined,” McConnell asserted.
Besides reacting to McConnell’s push for “minority rights,” Reid also has attempted to use the cloture motion as a bludgeon in recent years. For example, Reid held three separate cloture votes on this spring’s financial regulatory reform measure in an attempt to put public pressure on wavering Republicans, Democratic aides acknowledged. The gambit worked, with the GOP allowing the bill to come to the floor by unanimous consent shortly after the third cloture vote.
On other votes, such as two separate roll calls on a campaign finance measure designed to mitigate the effects of a recent Supreme Court decision, Reid knew he didn’t have the votes, but he hoped to put Republicans on record as supporting corporate money in elections, Democratic aides have said.