Clarification: Reid cannot strip Lieberman's chairmanship without 60 votes

It seems that there is a lot clamoring to strip Joe Lieberman of his chair on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and other assignments.

Reid's unwillingness to "strip" Lieberman of his post has nothing to do with weakness on his part, his hands are tied by Senate procedure. The chair is a Senate position, not a caucus one.

Senate committee memberships and chairmanships are assigned in the organizing resolution. Any attempt to change this resolution would face a cloture vote, which would surely fail.

The most recent organizing resolution was adopted in September so that Paul Kirk could receive his committee assignments. These are normally non-controversial procedural bills, and as was the case last month, pass by unanimous consent. However I severely doubt Mr. Lieberman would be a party to his own punishment, and would obviously oppose cloture on such a resolution, along with Republicans.

So essentially, whether you like it or not, Joe is safe in chair until at least the start of the 112th Congress, when it would be much easier to make the desired change.

If you still like to yell about it, feel free, but it won't get you anywhere.

his ACTUAL chair.

So he'd have to stand up all of the time. :)

Or ........ he could sit on John McCain's lap.

.... so I wasn't QUITE ready to relugate him to furniture.

Although, I guess the more accurate metaphor would be for Lyndsey to be the chair, Lieberman to be the footstool for JOHN MCCAIN to sit on.

ewww ..... I'm getting a real yucky latex infested freaky deaky mental image with that one.

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

My thought was to move it just as he was sitting down so he would land on his butt on the floor...

nobody pays any attention to him! I've seen this happen to managers at work. If they are real AH's everyone completely ignores them. Joe love the power. Even if he retains the chairmanship, if he looses the power he'll either change his stripe or leave the party.

Just curious.

What you have to do to get thrown out of the Dem caucus, I have no idea. But Obama would throw his liberal backers under the bus long before Olympia Snowe or Traitor Joe.

Your entire argument is faulty.

The organizing resolution doesn't say what you think it does. It states the positions are there "until their successors are chosen". Chairs can be stripped and successors can be chosen anytime during the session.

This references the fact that the organization may change by new resolution before the end of the Congress, and that this organization would persist even into the 112th Congress if a new resolution was not adopted.

It takes no resolution to name a new chair.

It makes no sense that the minority party can have a say in who can be a chairman (or woman).

Bottom line, majority party caucuses appoint chairs and can remove and replace them as they see fit.

As another poster has cited, chairs have been replaced in the past in the middle of a session without a new resolution.

As a Senate majority, at least to my knowledge, has not yet lost a cloture vote on an organizing resolution. They are usually passed by unanimous consent, and each party is allowed to submit their own resolution without input from the other side. However in this contentious situation cloture would likely not be invoked on this resolution.

The cite from the other poster does not appear to describe such a situation.

and Republicans weren't even able to convene committees at the start of the session, as the previous resolution still named the Democrats as chairs. The majority leader was powerless to name his own chairmen until a new resolution naming them was passed.

Until the dispute is resolved and the Senate passes a new "organizing resolution" for its committees, new senators will not get committee assignments and Democrats will stay on as chairmen even though Republicans won control of the Senate in last November's elections.

As a result, hearings, including one scheduled for yesterday on the nomination of Tom Ridge to head the new Department of Homeland Security, were put off, apparently because the Bush administration did not want to testify before Democratic chairmen. Ridge was rescheduled for Friday. Delays are also threatened for action on spending bills left over from last year.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) attempted to speed the GOP takeover by filing a resolution dealing with committee chairmanships and Republican members but not funding. Democrats objected, and Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said they would filibuster the proposal if necessary. Meanwhile, talks between Frist and Daschle were continuing, and Frist said last night they were "very, very close" to an agreement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56802-2003Jan14?language=printer

by the Party. The assignments are made by the Parties, and neither party can determine the role members should play in the other party's caucus.

And that is wholly incorrect.

Chairs can be replaced at any time by the majority party.

assignments, and redistribute those of Kennedy's?

There was no partisan shift, it seems that in your theory it could have been done administratively, without a new organizing resolution.

I'm not saying his chair can't be yanked, just not without 60 votes.

However the new resolution was necessary for him to receive his committee assignments.

Are you contending that the entire text of the organizing resolution is entirely superfluous, and it might as well say 10 D 7 R, play the rest however you want?

They can strip him at any time.

I truly would bet everything I own that if the Democrats decided to strip Lieberman of his chairmanship or committee assignments, they would be allowed to do so by the repubs. Notwithstanding what folks may assume here, the Senate operates on a cooperative basis more often than not, particualarly when it comes to organizing matters. Otherwise the place would come to a screeching halt.

A description of the process for naming and changing committee assignments can be found here:

http://www.llsdc.org/sourcebook/docs/CRS-RL30743.pdf

talking about?

"Harkin: Lieberman Has Something to Lose"

By Matthew DeLong

The Iowa Independent caught this quote from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), talking about Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) recent threat to join a GOP filibuster of a health care bill that includes a public health insurance plan.

“(Lieberman) still wants to be a part of the Democratic Party although he is a registered independent. He wants to caucus with us and, of course, he enjoys his chairmanship of the (Homeland Security) committee because of the indulgence of the Democratic Caucus. So, I’m sure all of those things will cross his mind before the final vote.”


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8722587

Not too far away.

Dems want to! That guy is a Republican, why are the Dems tolerating him?

If allowing Lieberman to keep his chair without securing a promise of standing with the party on procedural votes was Reid's call ... And since Reid has been unable or unwilling to enforce party discipline ... What would it take to replace Reid?

be sacked at any time.

Ironic. Interesting.

http://www.senate.gov/general/common/generic/about_committees.htm

The Democratic caucus can toss Joementum any time they want, and Reid can strip his committee seats anytime, for any reason. The notion that it would take 60 votes to do so is absurd.

It is the organizing resolution that I cited in the OP.

Why couldn't Majority Leader Frist choose his own chairmen until the new resolution was adopted?

If the Senate required sixty votes to seat (or unseat) each committee member, no one would ever get seated. That's obvious, right? If the majority leader has no power to hand out or take away committee assignments, he essentially has no power at all. That should be obvious, too. Go back and look at the senate website: the parties seat their own committee members. That means they can unseat them, too. Obviously.

Changing the membership, including the chair, of a committee requires the Senate to pass a resolution. Don't believe me? A recent example is the rearranging of Committees that took place after Paul Kirk filled Teddy's seat. S.Res. 230 was passed by unanimous consent on Sept. 29 to assign Kirk to certain committees and make other changes, including the naming of a new chairman to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that Teddy had chaired.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2009_record&page=S9910&position=all

BUT, the OP is wrong that if the Democrats decided to strip Lieberman of this Chairmanship that the Repubs would block it with a filibuster. In theory could it happen? Sure. But the chances of it happening are absolutely nil. The Senate doesn't work that way. It can't function at all without a fair degree of comity and the use of unanimous consent. While it may seem like every thing is completely partisan and contentious, that's not actually how it is (I'm up on the Hill dealing with folks on a nearly daily basis and have been for a lot of years, so I speak from experience).

If the Democrats want to toss Lieberman, the repubs won't try to stop it. Period.

Maybe there is still such a degree of comity and cooperation in the chamber that Lieberman would take his medicine.

But in this toxic environment we live in, I don't think it's a stretch to assume that Lieberman and Republicans might come to sort agreement to block the organizing resolution if Lieberman were to oppose cloture on HCR. I suppose I don't know if the chair is even worth that much trouble to him just for the next 12 months.

Daschle threatened to filibuster the organizing resolution in 2003 and new committee assignments and chairs were not given out for a few weeks into the Congress when an agreement was finally reached, and Republicans pondered filibustering the resolution at the start of the 111th Congress to game better committee ratios. I don't have a link, but there was some similar discussion in Republican circles of stripping Arlen Specter of his Judiciary chair in 2005, but I remember then too it was suggested Democrats might block the organizing resolution.

I'm up on the Hill regularly. I meet with staff from members on both sides of the aisle, frequently in joint meetings. Their bosses meet and join up together on legislation all the time. And when it comes to honoring the decisions of a party with respect to their own caucus members, there is no doubt -- none whatsoever -- that each party will let the other do what it wants.

In fact, if by tossing Lieberman the Democrats are giving up any leverage over him, why would the repubs try to stop it? What would they gain?

I guess I just don't see what incentive Lieberman has to take the beating laying down, if this chair is as important to him as he made it seem back in January. After they strip him, he's done and has nothing important to show the folks back home, so he may as well go for broke.

This just seems like the sort of trouble making game that Mitch McConnell likes to play.

to block the resolution.

Has there been an analogous situation in the last few decades, where the implications of a committee change would be so nakedly partisan? I think this situation may be special due to the sympathies Joe enjoys among minority members, and the risk he would be taking in opposing cloture on HCR.

But I guess there is no reason to keep arguing hypotheticals, when we are basically in agreement on the nuts and bolts here.

It could happen, but is unlikely. I suppose it is also unlikely that Reid would attempt to make this move regardless, the threat is worth more than the action.

That was cited here long ago when this came up on another matter. (We would lose this as not a single Republican would side with us and of course Lieberman wouldn't.

Would this hold true even if he were kicked out of the caucus?

I searched and couldn't find any evidence of a filibuster involving a situation in which the majority party tries to change the line up of a committee by removing or reassigning a member that caucuses with that party. It certainly hasn't happened in modern times. And it wouldn't happen now. The repubs wouldn't block the Democrats from rearranging the majority committee assignments (including chairmanship) simply because the result would be pay back when they wanted to make a change. The Democrats wouldn't even have to filibuster a change since they have a majority.

There was a threatened filibuster when the repubs threatened to ram through the initial organizing resolution a number of years ago without first getting agreement on power sharing in an equally divided senate. The fight had to do with ratios, not who actually sat on or chaired which committee. And it was resolved, as these things always are, by an agreement and a unanimous consent resolution.

A lot of handwringing and speculation by people who haven't a clue about how the Senate actually functions.

I couldn't construct a good enough google or DU search to find it - likely because I can't remember the Senator or the cause. I understand your request - as I would have asked the same.

reside in the Democratic caucus.

folks like the Nelsons, etc. will go along. Its the way it works up here. They may not like it. They may oppose it within the caucus. But they won't fight it (and neither will the repubs) if it happens.

No doubt about it.