Ending Secret Holds

ENDING SECRET HOLDS

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, my good friend from Montana and I have worked together on so many issues. He has objected to this bipartisan resolution which would give the Senate a chance to end one of the most pernicious practices in Washington, DC, and that is the practice of secret holds.

Walk down Main Street anywhere in the United States, and I bet you would not find one out of a million Americans who know what a secret hold is. The hold does not appear anywhere in the dictionary. It is not even in the Senate rules. Yet it is one of the most powerful weapons that any U.S. Senator has. It is, of course, a senatorial courtesy whereby one Senator can block action on a bill or nomination by telling the respective Democrat or Republican leader that he or she would object. The objection does not have to be written down, and it does not have to be made public.

It is a little bit like the seventh inning stretch in baseball. There is no official rule or regulation that talks about it, but it has been observed for so long that it has become a tradition.

Now, the capacity to use this hold, which is in secret-there is no transparency, no accountability-the prospect of using these secret holds is notorious and has given birth to several intriguing offspring: The hostage hold, the rolling hold, and the May West hold. Suffice it to say, at this time of the year secret holds are more common than acorns around an oak tree.

Senator Grassley and I have been working on this for almost 7 years. I am extremely proud that the chairman of the Rules Committee, Senator Lott, has joined us on this matter. Senator Byrd is a cosponsor. There is no one in this body who has a better understanding of the rules than Senator Byrd, and Senator Byrd has made it clear this practice is out of hand. It is out of hand because the rules are designed to expedite the business of the Senate and not hold it up.

What we heard earlier in the objection to the effort to end secret holds is emblematic of what has happened. The objection was based on the idea that now was not a good time for the Senate to address this. It is never a good time to address it if you are in favor of doing business behind closed doors. If you are in favor of doing the public's business without accountability, it is never a good time. If you are in favor of doing business in secret, of course, we are never going to bring it up in the Senate.

The minority leader, Senator Daschle, has been supportive of this effort from the very beginning. From the very first day I went to him to discuss this, he said: You are right. The hold is an important power for a member of the Senate, but it ought to be exercised with some accountability.

So there was no objection from this side of the aisle. Unfortunately, we had an objection from the other side. I think it is unfortunate because I have sought throughout-throughout-to make this a bipartisan effort.

Chairman Grassley and Chairman Lott deserve an extraordinary amount of credit for the effort to work with me and with others on this issue. The fact is, during this time of the session, one Member of the Senate can spend days asking all 99 other Senators whether they have a secret hold, only to find that Senator does not even know about the secret hold because it was generated by staff.

The Senator who can successfully track down and lift the last secret hold almost feels around here as if they have won the national title.

Every Senator has a favorite example of torturous search for the sponsor of a secret hold. My favorite was during the Rules Committee hearing on holds, Senator Dodd-by the way, who, is very supportive, like Chairman Lott, of this proposal-we heard about the chairman trying to call Senators in airports around the country, trying to find out who had a hold on a bill. Senator Dodd was concerned about this when he was faced with his election reform bill.

I went through the very same exercise on the spam bill where I had to literally go from desk to desk in the Senate to find out who was holding up a measure that everybody was for. Everybody said they were against spam but there were holds, and we had to try to figure out where they were.

The same thing happened on the Internet tax bill. At one time there were seven holds on the Internet tax bill. When I tried to find out which Senators had the holds, I was told that this information would not be shared with me.

Think about the consequences of not dealing with that issue. I say to my colleagues, we may have a virtual "Grinch" visiting the consumers of this country because the Senate has not dealt with the Internet tax issue. Come the holiday season, if some States and localities choose to do it, they can go out and tax e-mail, they can go out and tax Internet services that are delivered through wireless devices or DSL because the Senate has not updated the law. I believe it has not updated the law because there was not the opportunity to have a real debate, and we were held up because there were secret holds.

I am very pleased that the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee has come to the Chamber to join me in this effort. Perhaps more than any other Member of this body, he understands the implications of this because of his service as chairman of the Rules Committee as well as having served as the distinguished majority leader of this body. He has held hearings on this issue. He reached out to Senator Byrd and Senator Grassley.

We have been working on this issue for years and years. At this time of the session, the secret hold is all powerful. It is one of the most powerful weapons that a Member of Congress has. We do not seek to have it stripped from the Senate. We do not come together on a bipartisan basis to say, let us outlaw the holds. We come together-Chairman Lott, Senator Grassley, Senator Byrd, and myself-to say: There ought to be some sunshine.

Our proposal is for sunshine holds, for saying that the powers exercised by a Member of the Senate should be accompanied by some accountability. You ought to be straight with your constituents.

My good friend, the chairman of the committee, is here. I would like, without losing the remainder of our time, to yield to the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, who has been so supportive of the effort to end secret holds, so he could make his remarks, knowing he has a very busy schedule.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee for his eloquent statement. He has been so supportive of this effort. Essentially what he and I and Senator Grassley have been talking about is the quaint notion that the public's business ought to be done in public. This is not a complicated idea.

As I have mentioned earlier, I am sure the vast majority of Americans have no idea what a secret hold is. It is not written down anywhere. This is something you wouldn't find 1 of 1,000 people having any idea about. But this is, in fact, one of the most powerful weapons, one of the most significant tools a Member of this body could possibly have. It is utilized without any accountability whatsoever.

The distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee pointed out in hearings, and we heard it echoed by Senator Dodd, the bizarre kind of process of trying to track down Senators who are thousands of miles away from Capitol Hill and still claiming to have an objection when, in a lot of instances, they may not even know about it; their staff will have objected to it.

So what we have sought to do in this effort is to not limit the powers of any Member of the Senate but simply to say that power ought to be accompanied by responsibility. Yes, there should be rights. There ought to be rights of every Member of the Senate to stand up and be heard on matters important to their constituents and to this country. But there also ought to be responsibilities.

Chairman Lott has addressed this issue very eloquently by saying one of our most important responsibilities is to let the public see what we are up to. Yes, sunlight is the best disinfectant, but it is especially important, as Chairman Lott has noted, at the end of a session.

If someone exercises a hold in the beginning of a session, there is an opportunity, as the distinguished chairman of the committee has noted, for the leaders to come together with the chairs and work out an effort to resolve a matter in a process that is fair to all sides.

When you are down to the last few days of a session and you are talking about a measure that may involve billions of dollars, the well-being of millions of our citizens, someone can exercise the power to hold up the public's business without any accountability whatsoever. What happens is then the leaders and the chairs traipse all over here, practically going almost the equivalent of door to door, desk to desk on the Senate floor. It got to a point, when I was trying to deal with one particularly exasperating hold, where a Senator came up to me and apologized because he was told there was a hold about which I was concerned. He said: I knew nothing about it. It was put on by a staff person. I asked for its removal.

There are a variety of technical issues on which Chairman Lott and Chairman Grassley and Senator Byrd and I have worked. There is a difference between a consult and a hold. A consult, in effect, is just a request to be informed when a measure is going to be brought up. A hold is something different. A hold is when you want to shut down the effort to go forward and examine an important issue altogether. It is all powerful in the last few days of a session, as the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, Senator Lott, has noted.

There is something very wrong with the process when, in effect, you have to traipse all over the Senate trying to figure out whether or not your measure is going to see the light of day.

We have had an objection to our bipartisan effort today, but I think I speak for all of the sponsors when I say we are going to be back at it. Chairman Lott has initiated a very important process in the Rules Committee to examine some of the antiquated practices of the Senate. The holds is one that we see working great injury in the last days of a session. But under the leadership of Chairman Lott, we are going to be looking at other practices in the Rules Committee. I think that is long overdue. I have great confidence that the chairs, Chairman Lott, Chairman Grassley, Senator Byrd, who knows more about the rules of the Senate than I could ever dream of knowing, are going to be able to work with us on a bipartisan basis to address this responsibly.

We have done that. We have asked only that this be done for the rest of this session. I personally do not believe Western civilization is going to come to an end because a Member of the Senate has to be clear about whether or not they are holding up the public's business. But to make it absolutely clear what would transpire, we have in effect a test period, as Chairman Lott has described it, to examine the effect of our sunshine holds, a process that would end some of the stealth and secrecy that surround this issue.

I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Dayton as a cosponsor of S. Res. 216.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. WYDEN. I see Senator Lott and other colleagues have other business to attend to. I will wrap up only by quoting the foremost authority on Senate rules who served as majority leader of the 95th, 96th and 100th Congresses; that is, our friend and colleague, Senator ROBERT C. BYRD. In chapter 28, "Reflections of a Party Leader," volume 2 of his publication in the Senate, Senator Byrd wrote:

To me, the Senate's rules were to be used when necessary to advance and to expedite the Senate's business.

Giving the sunshine hold a place in the Senate's rules, creating sunshine holds so as to ensure that there is new openness and new accountability in the way the Senate does its business, seems to me to be an ideal way for the Senate to honor those eloquent words of Senator Byrd.

We have not been successful today, despite the best effort of Chairman Lott, Senator Grassley, and others. But we will be back. This practice is continuing to increase. Even when I came to the Senate, I found it used frequently but not to the extent it is being used today. It is time to do the public's business in public. We will stay at this effort to accomplish just that.

I yield the floor.