By Judith Gayle | Political Waves (the Planet Waves politics blog)
During the Massachusetts special election, and punctuated during Obama’s State of the Union, the American public learned something it didn’t know — that it takes 60 votes to pass a bill through the Senate. A Pew Poll found that only 26 percent of those questioned knew it took such a majority to break a filibuster threat, now used as a de facto tactic by the minority party.
That includes the use of something called the “blanket hold.” This is obstruction taken to an art form. According to the White House blog, “The Senate cast more votes to break filibusters last year than in the entire 1950s and ’60s combined, making it nearly impossible to come to agreement on key legislation.”
We now have an example of the blanket hold in the demands of Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, who is standing in the way of Obama’s appointments until he gets billions in pork-barrel spending to fund his pet projects. According to Michael Keegan, president of People for the American Way, Shelby’s hold “… effectively blocks votes on more than 70 executive branch nominees, including officials in the Army, Air Force, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and Department of State.” Some 2000 appointments of ambassadors, federal judges, and regulatory and law enforcement officials must be signed off in the Senate.