Late Wednesday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed a motion to proceed to legislation extending unemployment benefits. But the majority leader was quick to clarify that the move is no indication that he’s struck a deal with GOP leaders over how to pass the bill.

“We’re trying to work something out,” Reid said, adding that the cloture motion was intended “to move the process along as we continue to negotiate.”

Republicans are hoping to attach a series of amendments, including a provision to expand the homebuyer tax credit and another to pay for the unemployment extension with unspent stimulus funds. Still other Republicans have offered immigration- and ACORN-related amendments they hope will fly alongside the unemployment benefits bill.

“We’ve exchanged the papers with the minority,” Reid said. “We would hope that they come back with a reasonable number of amendments.”

Meanwhile, it’s estimated that 7,000 Americans lose their benefits each day. The House passed its version of the unemployment insurance extension in September.

Some movement here, also as of Oct. 22.

It’s a moderate’s world on Capitol Hill right now, and the latest evidence arrived yesterday when the Democratic sponsors of a controversial labor-friendly proposal dropped the bill’s central tenet: A provision allowing unions to organize by getting a simple majority of workers to sign cards in support. Under current law, workers organize unions by secret ballot. The Democrats’ proposal would have given workers the additional option of a public ballot, making it easier to unionize.

The so-called “card check” bill — supported by President Obama — has been labor’s biggest legislative priority this year, prompting a fierce battle with business groups that have spent bill millions to kill the measure. Moderate Democrats like Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) have come out squarely in opposition to the bill, making the party’s 60-member majority irrelevant. Yesterday, those moderates won an enormous concession with the removal of the card-check provision. From The New York Times:

In its place, several Senate and labor officials said, the revised bill would require shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections.

While disappointed with the failure of card check, union leaders argued this would still be an important victory because it would give companies less time to press workers to vote against unionizing.

The move might have changed the support dynamics on Capitol Hill, but it hasn’t changed the lobbying dynamics. Indeed, labor groups are still supporting the underlying bill — the Employee Free Choice Act — while many businesses are still opposing it. The Workforce Fairness Institute, a business group formed to fight EFCA, just shot out an email announcing its continued opposition based on language that forces government arbitration when workers and employers can’t agree on a union contract.

“The most damaging aspect of the bill — the binding arbitration provision, will remain intact,” the group rued.

With Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) suffering poor health, there’s no guarantee that even the diluted proposal can win 60 Senate votes.

From CQ:

Republican senators want more time to prepare their questions for the nominee, especially about a legal advocacy group for Latinos that Sotomayor was affiliated with in the past.

The group, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, turned over hundreds of pages of documents to the committee last week.

Sessions said the committee had received “only about 1,000 pages” out of 300 boxes of material in the group’s archives.

“I just don’t know whether everything’s been produced that’s legitimate to be produced,” he said.

The tactic is clear: The nomination might be inevitable, but each day that Congress is scrutinizing Sotomayor is another day it’s not tackling health care, climate change and the other legislative priorities the Democrats had hoped to take up while President Obama still has the political capital to push through controversial reforms — priorities the Republicans are hoping to kill.

Indeed, the White House has already conceded that there’s likely no time on this year’s legislative calendar for either immigration reform or a transportation bill (they’re opting for an 18-month extension of the current funding instead).

More and more, this is looking like a one-issue year.

Scrap all that.

The Senate last night voted to boot Specter to the back bench of four of those panels — Appropriations, Environment and Public Works, Judiciary and Veterans’ Affairs — while he’ll sit second to last on the Special Committee on Aging.

Paul Kane of The Washington Post points out today why all of this is significant:

The loss of seniority could prove costly to Specter in his campaign to win reelection in 2010, denying him the ability to distinguish himself from a newcomer in his ability to claim key positions.

Specter said last week that becoming chairman of the Appropriations Committee was a personal goal of his, and his Senate service seemed to put him in position to be the third-ranking Democrat there. Now, though, he will not hold even an Appropriations subcommittee chairmanship in 2011 — a critical foothold Specter has used to send billions of dollars to Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately, the Senate move was done by voice vote, so we’ll never know who voted how.

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Specter himself voiced the same sentiments Tuesday, as did former GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island — who was quick to point out in a phone interview that the same conservative Club for Growth that contributed to his defeat in 2006 is largely responsible for pushing Specter out of the party this year.

Echoing Snowe’s criticism of the GOP’s misguided focus on hot-button social issues, Chafee blasted the 2006 decision of party leaders to dwell on contentious items like bans on gay marriage and flag burning — things popular among the Rush Limbaugh base, but alienating to many moderate Americans.

The message from these moderates seems to be this: The decision by Republican leaders to unite around a theme of right-wing social conservatism should also be accompanied by the recognition that most of the country thinks differently — and the shift in congressional power is simply the natural consequence of this ideological incongruity.

Snowe ends her screed by invoking the words of Ronald Reagan:

We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only “litmus test” of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty … As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Snowe writes. “We can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand.”

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

“The ramifications are huge,” Chafee said of Specter’s exodus Tuesday, “and the main message is that the Republican Party’s not changing.”

Chafee pointed out that it was the conservative Club for Growth’s backing of his primary challenger in 2006 that forced him to rifle through much of his war chest long before he faced Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse, who won the general election by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. Similarly, the Club for Growth has backed Specter’s more conservative challenger, the Club’s former President Pat Toomey — support that’s contributed largely to Toomey’s lead in the polls, and Specter’s decision to flee to the Democrats in an attempt to keep his day job.

Such primary challenges, Chafee said, have divided the GOP and contributed to the enormous Democratic gains of the past two elections. “You look ahead to 2010 and it doesn’t look any better,” he said. “What’s the party doing?”

Chafee, now a visiting scholar at Brown University, also predicted that Specter’s flip lends the Democrats enormous advantage — with morale as well as legislation — as party leaders try to move an ambitious legislative agenda this year.

“It’s a numbers game, and the Democrats just got one more,” Chafee said. “[Specter] toed the party line a number of times and he doesn’t have to do that anymore. Now he can toe the Democrats’ line.”

“In discussing that issue with Sen. Reid,” Specter said, “the fair approach which we both agreed to was to be where I would be had I been a Democrat coming into the Senate with my election in 1980. So you can take a look at the charts and figure out exactly where I’d be.”

Notwithstanding any arrangements that Specter might have failed to mention, that means that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who has six years seniority on Specter, would remain at the helm of the Senate Judiciary Committee (where Specter was the senior Republican until today), and would also outrank Specter on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

Asked, however, if he might be in line to take over the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee’s subpanel on labor, health and education, which is currently chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Specter said only that “we haven’t worked that out yet.”

Harkin, who was first elected to the Senate in 1985, was in the middle of presiding over a swine flu hearing Tuesday afternoon as Specter was making his remarks. You can bet, however, that he’ll be interested to learn that his seat might be up for grabs.

Also of note, Specter will outrank all of the Democrats on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, including chairman Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, who first arrived in the Senate in 1990. Does that mean Specter will replace Akaka at the head of the VA panel? We’re looking into it.

Update: The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has clarified that no committee or subcommittee chairmanship posts will change this year or next as a result of Specter’s switch.

[Specter] is tough, thorough, and he can’t be intimidated. I am delighted to welcome him as a Democratic colleague. Arlen Specter gives our side of the aisle not only a numerical boost, but also an intellectual shot in the arm.

And indeed, Specter’s reputation is one of a free-thinking moderate. Yet if he wasn’t intimidated by GOP leaders, what’s to indicate that he’ll suddenly latch on to the Democrats’ legislative priorities simply because he’ll have a “D” before his name?

Politically speaking, Specter’s move is a desperate attempt to salvage his career in Washington. What it means legislatively has yet to be seen.