For a moment, at least, Senate gets things done the old school way

Nostalgia is a religion in the United States Senate, where the good old days are often misremembered or misinterpreted to suit one’s own ends.

What is not debatable is that far more laws were passed in the age of Russell or Dole, as the current Congress has set records for futility. Or for halting tyranny, depending on your point of view.

Diagnoses for the present inertia are varied and partisan-tinged, but last week provided a rare moment when the Senate did things old-school. A bipartisan bill on child care was brought to the floor for an open amendment process controlled by the bill’s authors – not party leadership.

As Schoolhouse Rock-ish as this sounds, it’s a rarity. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., usually blocks Republican amendments in part to protect his members from tough votes, and Republicans have been filibustering at record levels to force 60-vote hurdles on most bills.

Enough senators were dissatisfied that they started talking about a way out.

Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was one of them. A flood insurance bill he co-sponsored with Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was a test case in January, with an equal number of free-flowing Republican and Democratic amendments.

Last week, the process was repeated on a bill to update a 1996 law helping low-income families pay for child care.

An amendment by Isakson and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., to allow states to ask for more flexibility with the federal block grants was approved unanimously. It was one of nearly 20 amendments to pass on the floor.

One of the chief sponsors, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., called the bill "a great victory for the Senate to show we can govern ourselves." The final tally: 96-2.

That’s not to say the chamber was devoid of partisanship.

Reid opened proceedings Thursday with another jeremiad against the Koch brothers, the business tycoons who are spending millions of dollars to attack Democrats over the new health care law.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., followed a few minutes later taunting President Barack Obama for trying “to convince people throughout the country that his health care law hasn’t been a complete disaster.”

Playing to the C-SPAN cameras has been the norm for some time. The difference was the actual business being conducted on the floor afterward.

In addition to the child care bill — and in a neat bit of symmetry — the Senate approved a flood insurance bill that had been bounced back over by the House. The bill got 72 votes, even though it was less generous than the Senate's initial version, and even though it was complicated by 2014 politics as one of the chamber's most vulnerable Democrats, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, was one of its most vocal advocates.

Bipartisan negotiators even announced a deal to extend expired long-term unemployment benefits, with enough GOP support to clear the 60-vote hurdle later this month.

“I hope it becomes infectious rather than just being a brief ray of sunshine,” Isakson said. “I hope everybody gets the bug and says this ought to be the way we are doing business.”

There are still hard feelings and mistrust between the parties. Democrats' detonation of the "nuclear option" last year to allow them to break filibusters on Obama nominees with 51 votes remains a sore subject with Republicans. Isakson pointed out that the Senate squandered four hours of floor time last week on needless votes to pass consensus nominees, as part of a GOP retaliation against Reid.