by Mike Hall, Jun 29, 2007

Stubborn, obstructionist and downright mulish is the best way to describe the legislative strategy of Senate Republicans since voters stripped them of majority status in November.

Yesterday, we told you about the verbal spanking given by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) to the ”We’ll Hold Our Breath Until We Turn Blue” tactics used by Republicans on the ethics and lobbying reform bill—a bill for which almost every Republican voted in January but now find objectionable.

That same Republican, mule-stubborn minority leadership is now digging its hooves in to block a conference on an anti-terrorism bill that also won a Senate bipartisan majority on a 60–38 vote in March. Apparently, they agree with President Bush that busting unions is more important then implementing the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.

The bill contains a provision that grants bargaining rights to 43,000 airport screeners in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The House bill, also passed with a bipartisan majority in January, contains the same provision. Bush says he will veto the bill if those front-line Homeland Security workers are granted the freedom to form a union. Ideology over national security? 

In 2003, as TSA workers at several airports were readying to vote on joining AFGE, the Bush administration, citing so-called “national security” concerns, terminated the screeners’ bargaining rights. Bush claims allowing airport screeners to carry a union card would create a so-called lack of workforce flexibility.  Says AFGE President John Gage:

The notion that granting bargaining rights to [transportation security officers] would result in a less flexible workforce is just plain nonsense, and it is also an insult to the thousands of dedicated federal workers within Homeland Security, including the Border Patrol, FEMA, Federal Protective Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers. One only need look at 9/11. Unionized workers from both the public and private sector were first on the scene and worked tirelessly to restore what had been. Having union rights did not hamper response time or the ability to do their jobs, but instead it helped prepare them to be ready in case of emergency.

Siding with Bush, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is using congresssional rules to block a conference between the House and Senate to produce a final bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says:

Democrats have been working hard to pass critical legislation, despite efforts by some Republican senators to slow down or stop our progress. Whether the issue is implementing the 9-11 Commission recommendations or instituting new ethics reforms to clean up Washington, the American people are counting on Republican senators to help us lead the way, not stand in the way.

On the House side, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says:

Once again, Senate Republican leaders have chosen partisanship over progress by blocking consideration of the 9/11 and lobbying reform bills, both of which passed the House and Senate by large bipartisan majorities.

After failing to take action for years when they controlled Congress, Republican leaders are now preventing the New Direction Congress from implementing the independent 9/11 Commission recommendations that would protect Americans from terrorism.

Republican senators don’t seem to care that their obstructionist tactics are strangling any chance for real lawmaking. In fact, they are reveling in it, as Robert Borosage, co- director of the Campaign for America’s Future, points out on TomPaine.Com:

Conservatives boast about the “success” of their strategy in discrediting the new majority. As Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) put it, “The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far, it’s working for us.”How is it working? It’s dragging the reputation of the Congress down to the level of the failed president. Conservatives lie in the road of progress and then complain that nothing is moving.

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