Harry Reid’s Senate Dictatorship The Real Reason For Congressional Gridlock

by Ben Bullard 
Even though President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats have spent the better part of two years hammering obstructionist Republicans for refusing to compromise on legislative measures, it’s interesting to take a step back and look at Senator Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) conduct as Majority Leader during that time.
Reid’s domineering control over Senate Democrats, as well as his ironfisted grip on Senate procedure, reveals a dictatorial leadership style that has stifled activity in the Senate to a degree that Republicans — as well as his predecessors in the Majority Leader’s role — surely must envy.
The Hill — an ostensibly impartial observer of political goings-on in Washington, D.C. — released a report on Reid’s leadership style Thursday that carried a remarkable headline for a publication that attempts to play things down the middle: “An imperial majority leader?”

The story stated flatly that no Senate Majority Leader has ever enjoyed the power that Reid now wields, thanks largely to his historically unprecedented use of “strong-arm tactics” and his eagerness to freely promote an acrimonious partisan atmosphere that, combined with his orchestrated rule changes in Senate deliberative procedure, make it virtually impossible for Republicans — and even collegial Democrats — to get a damn thing accomplished.
“Reid’s tight leadership reins have protected vulnerable Democrats from having to take tough votes and helped them amass a 55-seat majority,” the story states. “He routinely puts legislation on the floor as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, denying the minority and even members of his own caucus the chance to amend it.”
Here’s an interesting bit of insight into the way in which Senate leaders can, if they choose, fuse the chamber’s inscrutable rules of procedure with non-binding Senate custom to exercise monopolistic control over the manner in which proposed legislation travels through the markup process:

"Experts say the Senate rules do not formally empower Reid to block colleagues from offering amendments to bills and steering the course of the political debate.
Instead, Reid has made extensive use of the precedent set by Vice President John Nance Garner, a Democrat, who as president of the Senate, granted the majority leader the right of first recognition on the floor. The five-term senator [Reid] has used that right of recognition to repeatedly fill the available slots for amendments to various bills, a process known as filling the tree, leaving colleagues no opportunities to offer their own ideas.
Senate historian Donald Ritchie agrees that Reid has controlled the floor debate more than any previous leader.
“Sen. Reid is certainly doing it more than his predecessors,” he said."

As the story notes, Republicans haven managed on only nine occasions to vote on amendments they’ve proposed since last July. They have Reid’s gavel style to thank for that.
Yet Reid joins the Obama narrative that shifts blame for repeated stalemates in the Senate to the GOP, beholden as its establishment is (so the narrative goes) to its wacko, intractable Tea Party base.
“If that makes me powerful, that’s too bad,” he told The Hill, “because the only reason that we’re doing this is because for five and a half years, everything this president has tried to do, they’ve stepped in the way. They’ve done it with… unrealistic demands.”