Under the agreement, which also involved 14 states and one tribal government, the company agreed to set aside $773 million to clean up the sites. According to the White House, the agreement will “give local communities the opportunity to participate in designing the strategy for repurposing these properties in accordance with their specific development objectives, using these funds to both properly clean them up and quickly return them to productive use creating jobs and restoring communities.”

What I do think makes sense is for the majority to actually require the minority to filibuster — as in talk and talk and talk. We’ve arrived at a point in which it’s become standard, even in the most contentious of cases, for the minority to be allowed merely to signal the intention to filibuster rather than doing the actual thing itself. Filibustering is a tool of obstruction. It’s a critical right of the minority in the senate. But it is, by definition, obstruction. So it makes sense to put the obstructionists to their task, make them do it publicly. I don’t know why the Democrats are not doing that in this case.

Senate Cloture Votes (97th - 110th Congress) *courtesy of Campaign for America

I couldn’t agree more. As the bar graph at right (courtesy of Campaign for America’s Future) clearly shows, the Republican legislative strategy since slipping into the minority in 2006 has been obstruction. Republican senators threatened a filibuster and forced a cloture vote more than 100 times and counting during the current 110th Congress — breaking the previous record of 62 filibusters in a two-year legislative session in less than one year. Is it any surprise that Congress’ approval rating fell, as Sen. John McCain liked to say on the campaign trail, to just nine percent, and the Republicans subsequently took a walloping at the polls last month.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the Republicans out on their threat and forced a traditional all-night “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”-type filibuster only once during the current session, on a proposed amendment to a 2007 defense authorization bill that would have mandated the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. In many cases, the mere threat of a filibuster was enough to effectively kill a piece of legislation.

If Reid forced the Republicans to actually go through with all, or at least some, threatened filibusters, chances are pretty good we’d see a lot less of them. GOP leaders might pick and choose their battles a bit more strategically if they knew there’s a good chance they’d have to make good on their promises and stay up all night.

Of course, it would suck for the Democrats as well, as nobody likes to stay up all night to listen to politicians ramble on and on, but do it a few times on key issues just to show you mean business. With Democrats holding 58 or 59 Senate seats, a few real filibusters with the threat of more might be enough to wear down one or two moderate Republicans and separate them from the pack once in a while.

At the very least, it would be a symbolic gesture that would let the American people see clearly why its so difficult to pass legislation, and who is responsible for gumming up the works — and might help solidify a 60-seat filibuster-proof super-majority in 2010.

“I am disapponted that the Senate could not reach agreement on a short-term plan for the auto industry. I share the frustration of so many about the decades of mismanagement in this industry that has helped deliver the current crisis. Those bad practices cannot be rewarded or continued. But I also know that millions of American jobs rely directly or indirectly on a viable auto industry, and that the beginnings of reform are at hand. The revival of our economy as a whole should not be a partisan issue. So I commend those in Congress as well as the Administration who tried valiantly to forge a compromise. My hope is that the Administration and the Congress will still find a way to give the industry the temporary assistance it needs while demanding the long-term restructuring that is absolutely required.”

The revival of our economy should not be a partisan issue? Surely, nobody in Congress would play partisan politics with such an important issue…would they, David Rogers of Politico?

The final day in the Senate captured these different currents as Dodd and the United Auto Workers made a last effort to reach a compromise that would bring over Republican support. But the talks broke down over conservative demands that the UAW accept wage cuts by a date certain in 2009, putting its members at parity with workers at auto plants owned by foreign competitors like Toyota and Honda—many in the Republican South.

Oh.