Talking About Sh*t Hitting The Fan -- Oh Never Mind, But Read More On BLAGO's Burris Below.

The Superfluous Senator
Democrats didn't even need Burris to pass the "stimulus."
By JAMES TARANTO

Rod Blagojevich, Illinois's former governor, got the boot three weeks ago, but lawmakers in Springfield and Washington are still dealing with his aftermath, in the form of Sen. Roland Burris, whom Blagojevich appointed to fill the vacancy Barack Obama left when he won the presidency. Amid revelations that Burris was untruthful in his testimony before the state Legislature's impeachment committee, Democrats all week have been distancing themselves from him, even urging his resignation.

The latest to do so, the Chicago Tribune reports, is Dick Durbin, Illinois's senior senator:
Durbin, who was traveling on official Senate business in Turkey, told the Tribune the daily revelations about what Burris did and who he talked to among Blagojevich insiders are a serious problem.
"I am troubled by this and I hope he will call in some advisers he trusts and gets some advice about what to do next," Durbin said of Burris. "At this point, his future in the Senate seat is in question." . . .
"I'm troubled by the fact that his testimony was not complete and it was unsatisfactory," Durbin said. "It wasn't the full disclosure under oath that we were asking for."

Durbin said he is following Burris' evolving explanation during his trip.
"Every day, there are more and more contacts with the Blagojevich administration," Durbin said. "Then there was the issue about fundraising and more information about what he did about fundraising.

He also said Illinoisans deserve a break from the Blagojevich scandal.
"I am so sick of this Blagojevich legacy, between his TV appearances and everything he's done since he left office. I'm as anxious as everybody to close this saga. And now, it's the Burris saga," Durbin said.

The timing of all this has reader Richard Rein suspicious:
I think everybody is missing the boat on Burris. When he first appeared in D.C., even the Dems didn't want anything to do with him. I suspect Obama, Reid and Pelosi quickly realized they needed him to be the 60th vote in the Senate for the Porkulus bill. All of a sudden he was accepted. He voted as required, and presto, Porkulus is law. Perhaps all the hustle and bustle to enact the conference bill with less than 12 hours' deliberation occurred because the real slime on Burris was about to leak out. So the real catastrophe that was avoided with such haste was the loss of the oh-so-important 60th Senate vote.

Sounding similar suspicions is John Kass, a Tribune columnist and longtime critic of Chicago corruption:
Then Burris decided he may not have told the truth. He filed an affidavit about who he talked to and sent it to a Madigan flunky [an employee of Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House], who kept it in her desk drawer by "mistake" until late last week, after the Real Roland voted for Obama's near trillion-dollar spending bill. Jeepers. Isn't Illinois politics just full of coincidences?
Would the Democrats really conceal evidence of corruption in order to keep the lawmaker in question in his seat until an important vote could be completed? We don't know, but would you put it past them?

The funny thing, though, is that if they did this, it was unnecessary. It's true that Burris provided the 60th vote and that, under Senate rules, this was decisive. But if he had resigned before the vote, the outcome would have been the same.
The vote on "cloture"--that is, to end "debate" and bring the bill to the floor for a vote on passage--was 60-38, the same as the vote on the final bill. It is usually said that cloture requires 60 votes, but the actual rule is that it requires the votes of three-fifths of all seated senators.

This is different from an ordinary vote on legislation, which requires a majority of all senators present and voting. If some senators are absent or vote "present," a bill can still pass on, say, a 48-47 vote. But in a cloture vote, an absence is the equivalent of a "no." Sen. Ted Kennedy, who is ailing, missed the cloture vote on the final stimulus bill; the effect was the same as if he had voted against it.
A vacancy, however, is different from an absence or abstention. The denominator in a cloture vote threshold is the number of seated senators, not the number of seats. Currently there are 99 seated senators, with one seat from Minnesota vacant pending litigation over last year's election. Three-fifths of 99 is 59.4, so that it still takes 60 votes to achieve cloture.
But if Burris were to resign, the number of seated senators would drop to 98. Three-fifths of 98 is 58.8, so that in a Senate with two vacancies, legislation could be brought to the floor with 59 votes instead of 60. Thus, while Burris's vote was decisive for the purpose of passing the stimulus, his presence in the Senate was superfluous.