Senators who can find themselves on the wrong side of a campaign ad for voting party line on a Bill (from the opposing party) and for voting against party line on a Bill (from a primary challenger in their own party) will skip out on voting altogether. It covers their political tuckus nicely. They are recorded as "not voting", and it deprives their political enemies of election-year ammunition. Still, it's a rare event (McCain notwithstanding), with a typical bill up for a Passage vote seeing 2-3 Senators recorded as "not voting", on average.

Twelve senators are recorded as "not voting" for S. 1927 -- six Democrats, and six Republicans: Sen Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Bunning (R-KY), Dorgan (D-ND), Sen. Judd A. Gregg (R-NH), Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD; who has been absent since his stroke this past year), Sen John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).

First, when did those Senators become unavailable? Of the twelve Senators who did not vote (at 9:16pm), only 2 were not present 12 hours earlier (9:38am) to vote on the confirmation of Timothy D. DeGuisti of Oklahoma to be US District Judge (they are: Johnson, who has been out all term with a stroke, and Murray). That confirmation was unanimous among all 96 voting Senators. So, the other 10 Senators become unavailable some time within the 12 hours before S. 1927 was voted on.

Senators are elected to vote on bills: can such a mass-vacation be common practice in the Senate? Some simple questions:

When was the last time 6 Democratic Senators failed to vote on a bill?

When was the last time 6 Republican Senators failed to vote on a bill?

When was the last time 12 Senators, in total, failed to vote on a bill?

July? May? I started looking, and had to go back to 2003. Here's the list of votes on Passage for bills, and the number of "not voting" Senators. Sorry the white space below, I'm trying to fix it. .



Bill # "Not Voting" Date/Time of Vote S. 1927 12 8/3 9:16pm H.R. 976 1 8/2 10:18pm H.R. 2638 7 7/26 10:49pm S. 1642 5 7/24 12:46pm H.R. 2669 4 7/20 12:36am H.R. 6 7 6/21 11:25pm H.R. 1495 5 5/16 5:15pm S. 1082 6 5/9 12:54pm S. 761 4 4/25 6:24pm S. 30 2 4/11 6:20pm S. 5 3 4/11 5:53pm H.R. 1591 2 3/29 10:36am S. 214 4 4/20 12:16pm S. 4 2 3/13 5:11pm H.R. 2 3 2/1 5:00pm S. 1 2 1/18 9:04pm HR. 5682 3 11/16/06 8:00pm H.R. 6061 1 9/29 9:30pm S. 3930 1 9/28 6:37pm H.R. 5684 6 9/19 12:01pm H.R. 4954 2 9/14 4:37pm H.R. 5631 2 9/7 6:08pm H.R. 4 2 8/3 10:34pm S. 3711 4 8/1 5:09pm S. 403 1 7/25 6:56pm H.R. 9 2 7/20 4:28pm H.R. 810 0 7/18 4:41pm S. 2754 0 7/18 4:26pm S. 3504 0 7/18 3:48pm

H.R. 5441 0 7/13 7:09pm S. 3569 6 6/29 3:29pm S. 2766 4 6/22 5:11pm S. 2611 2 5/25 5:39pm H.R. 4939 2 5/4 12:04pm S. 2349 2 4/29 4:19pm S. 2271 1 4/1 12:02pm H.R. 4658 4 2/2 10:02pm H.R. 4297 3 2/2 9:42pm S. 2025 3 11/18/05 12:05am S. 1783 1 11/16 3:01pm S. 1042 2 11/15 12:50pm S. 1932 1 11/3 5:51pm

H.R. 3010 3 10/27 5:54pm H.R. 3058 6 10/20 7:37pm H.R. 2863 3 10/7 9:17pm H.R. 2528 2 9/22 3:47pm H.R. 2744 1 9/22 10:08am H.R. 2862 5 9/15 4:03am H.R. 3673 3 9/8 7:04pm S. 397 4 7/29 5:11pm H.R. 3045 0 7/28 7:52pm H.R. 3057 1 7/20 3:36pm H.R. 2360 3 7/14 7:29pm H.R. 2419 5 7/1 12:27am S. 1307 1 6/30 9:34pm H.R. 2361 6 6/29 7:33pm H.R. 6 3 6/28 10:00am H.R. 3 0 5/17 3:02pm H.R. 1268 1 4/21 4:55pm S. 256 1 3/10 6:12pm S. 250 1 4/10 4:31pm S. 306 2 2/17 3:00pm S. 5 2 2/10 3:03pm



At this point, I stopped noting the date/times, and just note the bill

number, and the number of "not voting" Senators (in parenthesis).

108th Congress -- 2004

S. 2986 (3); S. 2845 (2); H.R. 4755 (4); H.R. 4837 (9);

H.R. 4567 (7); S. 2677 (2); H.R. 4759 (4); H.R. 4613 (2); S. 2400 (3);

S. 15 (1); H.R. 3104 (2); H.R. 1350 (2); S. 1637 (3); S. 150 (4); S. 2329

(3); H.R. 1997 (1); S. 1805 (2); S. 1072 (3); H.R. 3108 (5);

108th Congress -- 2003

H.R. 1821 (7); H.R. 2673 (6); HR. 2622 (3); H.R. 1904 (6);

H.R. 2989 (6); S. 877 (3); S. 1689 (1); S. 1053 (5); H.R. 3161 (5);

H.R. 2658 (5); H.R. 2754 (6 Dems + 2 Rep.);

Finally, H.R. 2754 had 6 Dems who were "not voting". But, that bill was a water and energy infrastructure bill, and it passed unanimously. And, I had to go back 90 Bills, to mid-2003, to find that one. But that is nothing like the situation S. 1927, which should have been the most hotly contested bill before Congress in years, requiring all Senators to be on the floor in case the uncertainty in the number of votes for or against brought it down to a single Senator.

This suffices to say: having six Senators from either party miss a Passage vote is rare, and back 4 years, the only other time it occurred was when the bill's outcome was absolutely positively assured.

For S. 1927, not only did 6 Dems miss the vote; 6 Republicans missed it too. 6 Republicans missed it too. That means, not only did the Democratic caucus know the outcome, the Republicans new the outcome as well: the bill was absolutely, positively assured to pass.

The GOP Senate leadership must have known the Democratic votes for S. 1927 were assured, in order to release such a huge number of GOP Senators, permitting them to cover their political tuckus in states where their re-election was in doubt.

So Six GOP Senators -- more than for any other bill in the last 4 years -- took the opportunity to cover their political tuckus and be "not voting".

I don't see how that is at all possible, unless they were told -- assured -- precisely how many Dems would vote for the bill --- that it wasn't even close, that 4 Dems wouldn't suddenly change their mind and turn an Passage of S.1927 into a sudden and important defeated bill.

And I don't know what other situation would permit the GOP leadership to be so confident in the number of Democratic votes for the bill, except that the Democratic leadership saw they would lose, and decided to strike a deal, assuring the GOP of passage before they took to the floor that night.

I started off in this direction, because 2 days ago, in a diary by The Big E it was pointed out that newly elected Sen. Amy Klobuchar explained her vote for S. 1927 this way:

The bill approved by the House and Senate this week provides a temporary six month extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. While I supported the extension as a temporary measure, I remain concerned about whether there are adequate safeguards in the bill, and will work with my colleagues to address these concerns in the next six months while we enact a permanent extension of FISA.

What set off Alarm Bells was that Sen. Klobuchar described this bill as an extension of FISA, which it is not. FISA is not set to expire. It's in place, it wasn't going to change, if the Senate hadn't voted, all would be as it was for the past 19 years. I don't believe that Sen. Klobuchar is ill-informed; that nobody bothered to tell her that FISA wasn't going to expire. It was also suggested she was on "auto-pilot", due to the disaster in her home state (the bridge collapse in MN); except if true, a Senator on "autopilot" might be expected to vote with the caucus, not vote against it. So this lead me to wonder, were the Democratic votes for S. 1927 actually rounded up? Did she do what the leadership asked her to do, with political cover in her conservative state, but without conviction? Certainly the reason she gave for voting for S. 1927 is non-operative.

I apologize this diary is a bummer. I want to reiterate and conclude, as I stated elsewhere all week, that I very strongly believe that the way to overcome the problem we had with S. 1927 is to send your campaign contributions exclusively to the DSCC, DCCC and DNC. Why? Because the more that candidates are dependent upon the Senate and House leadership for re-election, the more they will react to party discipline, and vote with the caucus and with our needs, instead of against them.

UPDATE: 9:04a EDT As Smallbottle mentions below, there's much discussion about whether or not the best response to the situation described in this diary is stronger support for the DSCC and DCCC. I welcome full-throated discussion on this issue in the comments section. My conclusion remains that we should strengthen Democratic party institutions, to help enforcement of party discipline on those who would weaken the Caucus hand.