'….For the inconvenience of 99'

Nevada's junior U.S. senator John Ensign (R-Las Vegas) has been making headlines lately for gumming up passage of the foreclosure aid bill by exercising the U.S. Senate's most cherished prerogative: individual autonomy.  Unlike the U.S. House where the legislative process strongly tilts in favor of the majority party via its control of the Rules Committee, debate in the Senate is designed to empower the individual Senator.  This philosophical difference between the two houses of Congress has been institutionalized in the Senate via the filibuster, the hold, and the ability of Senators to add non-germane amendments to legislation under debate.  The end result, as Senator J. Bennett Johnson of Louisiana once quipped, is "the Senate is run for the convenience of one Senator to the inconvenience of 99."

The political drama that Ensign is now starring in could have been avoided if Senate leaders had hammered out something called a unanimous consent agreement before debating the foreclosure legislation.  These agreements seek to forge consensus by laying out the terms of debate, but as the name suggests, necessitate the support of all 100 Senators.  Failure to obtain a unanimous consent agreement before a bill is brought to the Senate floor invites individual Senators to use filibusters and holds if they do not get their way or try to attach any amendment they like -- including entirely separate pieces of legislation that may be bottled up in committee.

Of course, Ensign's attempt to add legislation favorable to the renewable energy industry to the foreclosure relief bill is in reality a convoluted scheme cooked up to put the Democrats on the defensive come November.  Showing that Machiavelli and Sun Tzu have nothing on Nevada's favorite veterinarian, the plan is to force the Democrats to sacrifice either their pay-as-you-go requirement or vote against tax incentives for the alternative energy industry.  In Ensign's world view, voters would somehow figure all this out and punish the Democrats by voting for the sad-sack candidates that he and his House counterpart Tom Cole have recruited for the fall.  For the GOP's sake, I hope that Ensign's machinations do not represent the sum of the Republicans' battle plan for retaking Congress.

Putting aside the issue that the junior senator from Nevada represents a state that continues to lead the known universe in foreclosures and some of whose residents might benefit from the timely passage of the relief legislation -- which incidentally is supported by huge bipartisan majorities in both chambers -- a little digging finds that the Senator's actions surrounding the issue are at best disingenuous and at worse, outright hypocrisy.  

As has been well-documented in the press, Ensign has on multiple occasions voted against the same green tax credits when they would be offset by taxing hedge funds, cutting subsidies given to big oil as part of the great 2005 GOP giveaway to the extraction industries, or tightening off-shore tax collections.  One can only assume from Ensign's actions that he just now figured out that the economically-strapped state that he allegedly represents might benefit from increased federal support for renewable energy.  Oh, and the topper of the whole sad episode is that the senator, who -- despite evidence to the contrary -- fancies himself a fiscal conservative, initially offered no way to pay for his new found love for big green.  As a consequence, his amendment would necessitate more borrowing from the Chinese.  Ensign has flip-flopped on this last point by now proposing to offset the costs of the alternative energy tax credits by cutting as yet unidentified eight billion dollars in federal spending.  

Upon closer inspection, the only consistency in Ensign's actions are his willingness to sell out whoever and whatever, be they the interests of his constituents or his party's claims of fiscal discipline, to try to score an infinitesimally small electoral advantage.

Not to be outdone, Nevada's senior senator continues to use his leverage over the legislation process in the Senate to put any attempts to reform the General Mining Law of 1872 on the slow train to Searchlight.  The legislation -- written at a time when the federal government was trying to encourage Western expansion -- gives preference to hardrock mining over other land uses such as conservation, provides minimal protections for the environment, and requires mining companies to pay no royalties to the federal government for mining on federal land.  

Last fall the House overwhelmingly passed the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007, which would collect royalties for mining operations on public lands that would then be used to clean up prior mining operations and help affected communities.  More recently, some Western governors (obviously, not Nevada's) have increased their calls for mining reform.  While I am no expert on mining policy, I am pretty sure that the best alternative is not to continue to be governed by a policy that predates the internal combustion engine which has such tremendous ramifications for the environment and land use in the West and allows private interests to benefit at the public trough.

Certainly these are not the first and will not be the last time that the insular, conservative, and lets face it, antiquated nature of the U.S. Senate stymies government responsiveness and reform.  However, it is unfortunate when it is our own senators who are working so hard to preserve a status quo that works to the advantage of the few at the expense of the many.  Is it any wonder that Congress continually draws such low approval ratings from the public?

David Damore is a political scientist at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.