And Now the Test Will Come

About a month ago I wrote about the current “lame duck” session of Congress, and how it presents a fantastic opportunity for President Obama and the Democrats to move forward with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Remarkably enough, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic leadership have seemed at least to be acting on that opportunity over the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has released its study on the potential impact of allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military. That study concluded that the overwhelming majority of soldiers and spouses who answered believe there will be either no impact or a positive impact. The Senate has scheduled hearings, beginning as I write this column, with several military officials to discuss the study and the means by which the repeal can be implemented.

That’s the good news. And then comes the reality. On Nov. 29 all 42 GOP members of the United States Senate delivered a letter to Reid indicating that until the Senate considers the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy Americans, they would block all votes on the floor.

How can this be, you ask? How can 42 senators prevent the other 58 from enacting legislation? The answer is a quirky little piece of parliamentary procedure called cloture. According to Senate rules, any senator may continue to debate a motion as long as he or she wishes. This tactic is referred to as a filibuster; basically a senator, or a small group of senators, continue to talk — about anything — to prevent a motion from going to vote. The Senate can invoke cloture, essentially voting to end the debate and vote on the piece of business at hand. A cloture vote, however, requires a 60-vote super-majority, instead of the regular 51 votes required to enact legislation. So, if all 42 GOP senators stand together, they can effectively block any Senate action for the next two months.

The question to be answered now is this: how committed are the president and the Democrats to ending institutional bigotry in our uniformed services?

This will be the defining moment, the moment when they choose to either stand up to the GOP in their terroristic attempt to hijack the Senate, or cave in and wait for the new session. Fortunately for us, the new session poses even greater challenges for the president in terms of advancing his own policy agenda, as the House goes back to the Republicans and his party’s majority in the Senate will be much smaller than it is now.

Personally, I think that should President Obama choose to push his agenda and put the full weight of the White House behind the repeal of DADT, it can happen before the end of this session. With the pressure of public opinion and a demand for action, I don’t see 42 Republican senators deliberately preventing Senate action for two months. There is undoubtedly a large block that will attempt to maintain a filibuster and prevent votes, but if the president and the Democrats force the issue and keep up the pressure, both in the halls of Congress and in the media, the GOP will have no choice but to concede defeat and vote on the issues before them.

Is this president willing to push the fight to end DADT against a resurgent Republican Party that will essentially control Congress for the next two years? The pragmatists argue that the president has no choice but to work with the GOP in the hope of getting some parts of his remaining agenda enacted during the latter half of his term.

On this, I disagree. The GOP has, for the past two years, demonstrated that they will stop at nothing to prevent President Obama’s policies. How could anyone realistically believe that a GOP-controlled House will choose to work with the president? The next two years will be a political logjam, with only the most essential pieces of legislation being enacted. What the president does between now and the new session will have no bearing on his relationship with Congress for the next two years. This relationship will be adversarial, regardless.

So here I am, once again daring to hope that this president and his party will have the courage to at least engage in the fight to do the right thing. With less than two months remaining, the window of opportunity is closing quickly.