With the expectation of a series of new cabinet appointments (though not Attorney General, apparently) comes the expectation of a number of bruising nomination fights on the floor of the Senate. In particular, Senate Republicans seem to want to collect a scalp if UN Ambassador Susan Rice gets nominated to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary [...]

Sen. Jeff Merkley had an early warning that Harry Reid’s change of heart on filibuster reform was coming. “I was the presiding officer of the Senate several weeks ago,” Merkley told me in an interview. “Sen. Reid came to close, we were the only ones in the chamber. At that point he made the comment, [...]

Yesterday the Senate wanted to take up and quickly pass a reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. After some maneuvering, the bill passed the House with over 330 votes, a rare sight these days. So you would think that nothing would go wrong over in the Senate. You would be wrong. That’s because the objection of [...]

Rand Paul is using the tools at his disposal to keep the debate going on extending three provisions the Patriot Act, by insisting on all post-cloture time and insisting on votes on his amendments. The provisions lapse on Friday, which means that Paul’s gambit could cause them to temporarily expire for new investigations. Check out [...]

The most consequential action in Washington happened just a bit before the State of the Union last night. On the Senate floor, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall and Tom Harkin talked about their project to reform Senate rules. And talked. And talked a little more. They talked more than they expected, in fact, because they were [...]

By now we have a sense of what Chuck Schumer will present to his caucus on a Senate rules reform deal. There will be three main pieces – banning secret holds, removing a handful of Presidential appointments from advise and consent consideration (the number I’ve seen is about 100 out of roughly 1,400), and ending [...]

Paul Kane has a piece in Sunday’s Washington Post that seems to be the kind of take on the Senate rules reform fight you’d expect someone who hasn’t been following it at all and gets most of his information from lobbyists. He accepts the contributions of senior Senate aides that the effort led by some [...]

Sen. Jeff Merkley acknowledged that one component of the consensus plan on Senate rules reform put together by him, Tom Udall and Tom Harkin would probably get tweaked, and that the biggest concern for skittish Democratic lawmakers was changing the rules at all, lest they be changed on them when Republicans take over. Which is [...]

A week from today, the Senate will reconvene, and the first item of business will be how to deal with the rules for the 112th Congress. Three Senators – Tom Udall, Jeff Merkley and Tom Harkin – will spearhead an effort to change the Senate rules that would attempt to achieve two goals – 1) [...]

Senators Tom Udall, Jeff Merkley and Tom Harkin have announced that their proposal for reforming the Senate rules now has 26 co-sponsors, all Democrats. But they represent a healthy ideological cross-section of the entire caucus. In addition to Udall, Harkin and Merkley, the resolution is currently co-sponsored by the following senators: Dick Durbin (IL), Amy [...]

The Senate recessed last night, and won’t come back into session until January 25. It’s good to be a Senator. But before they pick back up on what amounts to the same “legislative day,” they will build support for Tom Udall’s Constitutional option to reform the Senate rules. Outside of Ben Nelson, there really isn’t [...]