Yesterday Senate Budget Committee Ranking Republican Judd Gregg sent Senate Republicans a reminder of all the procedural tools available to Senators “to insist on a full, complete, and fully informed debate on all measures and issues coming before the Senate.” When you’re in the majority, you often refer to these as stalling tactics and obstructionism. When you’re in the minority trying to prevent a bad bill from becoming law, you often refer to these as rights that can be protected.

I’ll cut and paste the description of the rights. I won’t describe them here – please consider this a reference document.

Since the Senate is now considering the bill and the Reid substitute amendment, we’re past section I. Tools still available and useful to the minority begin with “Senate Points of Order,” the third bullet in section II.

FOUNDATION FOR THE MINORITY PARTY’S RIGHTS IN THE SENATE (Fall 2009)

The Senate rules are designed to give a minority of Senators the right to insist on a full, complete, and fully informed debate on all measures and issues coming before the Senate. This cornerstone of protection can only be abrogated if 60 or more Senators vote to take these rights away from the minority.

I. RIGHTS AVAILABLE TO MINORITY BEFORE MEASURES ARE CONSIDERED ON FLOOR

(These rights are normally waived by Unanimous Consent (UC) when time is short, but any Senator can object to the waiver.)

• New Legislative Day – An adjournment of the Senate, as opposed to a recess, is required to trigger a new legislative day. A new legislative day starts with the morning hour, a 2-hour period with a number of required procedures. During part of the ?morning hour? any Senator may make non-debatable motions to proceed to items on the Senate calendar.
• One Day and Two Day Rules – The 1-day rule requires that measures must lie over one ?legislative day? before they can be considered. All bills have to lie over one day, whether they were introduced by an individual Senator (Rule XIV) or reported by a committee (Rule XVII). The 2-day rule requires that IF a committee chooses to file a written report, that committee report MUST contain a CBO cost estimate, a regulatory impact statement, and detail what changes the measure makes to current law (or provide a statement why any of these cannot be done), and that report must be available at least 2 calendar days before a bill […]