And the drain that swallows it

"The Senate is the saucer that cools the coffee in the cup of the House"- thus spake George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, to answer the latter's questioning of the usefulness of our often frustratingly deliberative legislative body. The Senate is indeed a strange organ, not nearly as populist as the House; it is where the vast majority of failed legislation goes to die. To an outside observer, ignorant of America's idiosyncratic legislative process, one would (rightly) assume that wrangling 435 Congressmen, each of whom has to run for re-election basically every 18 months, would be a burdensome task. Surely far more onerous, one would think, than trying to get a mere 100 Senators, who sit for the longest terms of any federal elected official, to stand up and vote 'yea' or 'nay' on any issue. Sadly, this is not the case.

Nate Silver (Yglesias to my Noah) has a good analysis up of the truly staggering amount of obstructionism seen in the Senate during the 110th Congress under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Without going into too much detail (read his post), this graph will suffice to show that the Senate spends more of its time than ever, not on voting yea or nay, but on voting whether to vote at all.

Cloture votes have become the preferred method of Senate obstructionism. Lacking a 60-vote supermajority to guarantee a cloture vote, Reid can (and does) throw up his hands, essentially saying "Well, we would vote if we could, but the Republicans will just filibuster" and the bill dies. The very spectre of a Republican filibuster has apparently become so profoundly terrifying that the Senate Democrats give in without ever actually forcing the GOP to do it. Now, as Nate points out, there are plenty of conservative Dems who fear for their purple-state seats (like, ahem, Harry Reid) and meekly go along with this sort of thing, making the Republicans a far more effective Minority party, at least when it comes to stymying the Majority, than the Democrats ever were.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose