Turkey Time
The cloture vote on the farm bill failed, so the farm bill is put on hold until at least December. Starting later today, the Senate will go on a 2 week vacation- I mean recess- for Thanksgiving,
For those who have better things to do with their time than keep up on Senate procedural terms, all “cloture” means is that the Senate has a vote to end debate and proceed to actual consideration of a bill for a set period of time, at which point there would be a vote on the bill. Since Senate procedure usually allows for unlimited debate, cloture is the primary way in which the Senate forces an end to debate on a bill and schedules an actual vote.
The key, of course, is that you need 60 votes to win a cloture vote. Not a simple majority. Since there are 51 Democrats in the Senate, they needed 9 Republicans to break with their party and vote for cloture. That didn’t happen, so now the farm bill is put on the back burner for a time- but nobody really knows how long. We’ll have more commentary later today.