Senate May End an Era of Cloakroom Anonymity

By CARL HULSE
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — Nowhere in the ponderous rules of the United States Senate is there any reference to the Mae West hold, the chokehold or the rotating hold.

Yet over the past 50 years, all three variations on the Senate hold — one of the most secretive backroom weapons in Congress — have been used to tie the chamber in knots by allowing senators to block legislation and nominations anonymously, and to do so for reasons as simple as pique or payback.

Now senators are considering bringing the secret hold into the open by requiring those who use it to disclose their identity and their rationale in The Congressional Record. The proposed rule, virtually revolutionary in the staid realm of the Senate, is part of the ethics and lobbying overhaul headed for a final vote this week.

The latest effort to curb the number of holds reflects the frustration of many senators with the way colleagues have increasingly been able to stall stacks of bills and piles of nominations by virtue of a quick phone call to the Senate cloakroom.

“A hold in effect stops a bill dead in its tracks — in secret,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a longtime advocate of banning anonymous holds. “This is an acknowledgment of how serious a problem it is.”

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