More on secret holds
National Review’s Kate O’Beirne comments on the Porkbusters effort and on the importance of the secret hold for conservatives (my emphasis added):
The blogosphere has crossed the partisan divide by uniting in the effort to unmask the senator who has a “secret hold” on the Coburn/Obama bill that would create a searchable database of pork projects. A deluge of calls to Senate offices has yielded scores of denials while bloggers speculate about who the culprit might be. The cyberspace campaign has meant terrific publicity for the popular measure. The “Parlor Game Publicity” thrills the bill’s Senate supporters. In fact, “secret holds” aren’t all that secret, within 72 hours the Senate leader reveals who the senator is to the bill’s sponsor. People in the know know who has this hold and expect it to be publicly known soon. And conservatives know how valuable these holds can be. Many senators have blocked many bad things by putting a hold on legislation — although this time it might be more personal animus than policy dispute.
Although, not all O’Beirne’s fellow cornerites are buying it.
Thanks for the link Kate!
UPDATE: Amanda Carpenter is not too thrilled about doing away with the holds process either:
When Wyden pushed an amendment to the lobbying reform bill to ban secret holds last March Sessions countered, “The issue is not about holds,” he said. “The rules say nothing about holds. Holds do not exist.”
Sessions is right. These secret holds are nothing more than a gentleman’s agreement between a senator and his party leader to delay legislation for reasons only made known to those two parties. If Frist or Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) were willing to give up the name this minute, they could.
Letting the blogosphere carry on with the fun charade of playing ‘whodunnit’ with the unnamed senator is comparable to adolescent siblings play fighting: sooner or later someone is going to get hurt.
If the game goes on, conservatives will likely be the ones walking out with a black eye. If indeed, it is a Republican senator who enacted the hold as the Redstaters and their allies fear, and Frist is proven to be his accomplice, all Republicans will be forfeiting an easy talking point to the DNC about stalling a bipartisan, commonsense bill to promote transparency in government…
…Second, if the game goes on too long, the calls to completely ban secret holds are sure to echo and multiply, supplying what Sessions called a “new advantage for those who want bigger and more expensive government.”
How? In his defense of holds Sessions explained a routine familiar to Hill staffers, but likely unknown to those outside the beltway, of waiting for, or ignoring the “hotline.”
As the hard-line conservative explained it, the real problem with the Senate is that bills are just passed too easily; often through a process called “hotlining.”