Real Rules Reform Dies in Senate

The Senate this week failed to pass meaningful rules reform aimed at making the upper chamber a democratic institution and preventing the minority from engaging in obstructionist activity.

Instead, the Senate, with bipartisan support, adopted minor tweaks to existing rules, ending “anonymous holds” on nominees and ending the right of individual senators to force the reading of an amendment that has already been submitted for 72 hours and is publicly available.

President Cohen was a key leader in the broad coalition supporting real reform. Passage of the scaled-down version of rules reform is a disappointment for CWA. Without meaningful changes to Senate rules, the ability to make progress on substantive labor law reforms, environmental legislation, and other critical progressive issues is set back for years. We were especially deeply disappointed that a progressive reform package championed by Sens. Harkin of Iowa, Merkley of Oregon and Udall of New Mexico did not pass.

The almost year-long effort to reform the rules did result in some important developments. CWA is proud to have assembled a strong coalition of labor, environmentalists, good government groups, civil libertarians and grassroots activists to push for the change. Our “Fix the Senate” campaign put the issue of Senate reform front and center, and resulted in 70,000 calls into Congress and 18,000 people becoming “fans” of the campaign on Facebook.

In a statement, CWA noted the “shocking manipulation and abuse” of the rules in the Senate. “Reforms that would help working men and women were never allowed to come up for debate on the Senate floor,” CWA said. “The Employee Free Choice Act, the Fair Pay Act, the Dream Act and comprehensive climate legislation, among other measures, would have made real improvements in the lives of American families, but were never even discussed by the Senate.”