Dem Defection Seems to Doom EFCA

Losing their lone Republican supporter in Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Democrats pushing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in the Senate faced what best could be called an uphill battle.

With the announcement yesterday by Democratic Senator Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas that she "cannot support that bill," however, things are now trending decidedly downhill.

Without modifications, EFCA may be finished in the 111th Congress unless the Dems resort to the reconiliation process to bypass a cloture vote, which requires 60 Senators to move a bill along. However, reconciliation would set up several nuclear explosions politically and would have a hard time surviving the Byrd Rule, which states that reconciliation must be used only for budget matters (although they're already hinting about enclosing health care reform in reconciliation).

Other than modifying the EFCA or passing just parts of it, supporters may have to wait until 2010 when there will be more Republican than Democratic Senate seats up for reelection. The Democrats might well end up with a filibuster-proof Senate, or they may get spanked as they did after two years of Bill and Hillary in 1994.

Time will tell.