1.
Oregon senators face life in the
minority
By Andrew Clevenger
The Bulletin Published
Nov 9, 2014 at 12:01AM
WASHINGTON — When the 114th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 6, Oregon Democrats Ron Wyden
and Jeff Merkley will find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being in the Senate minority for the
first time in eight years.
For Merkley, who has been in office since 2009, this will be his first experience serving in the Senate
minority, although Republicans controlled the Oregon House of Representatives for eight of the 10
years he spent in the state Legislature. Wyden, who has spent almost two decades in the U.S.
Senate, is one of just 16 returning Democrats with minority experience — 15 if Louisiana’s Mary
Landrieu loses a December runoff election.
The most immediate effect will be that Democrats will lose committee chairmanships and the ability to
set the committees’ agendas.
For Wyden, this means becoming the ranking minority member of the powerful Senate Finance
Committee, which he has chaired since February. Merkley will lose chairmanship of two
subcommittees, one each on the Banking Committee and Environment and Public Works Committee.
Speaking after Tuesday’s election, which saw significant GOP gains in both the House and Senate,
Wyden and Merkley struck a conciliatory tone and pledged to cooperate with their Republican
colleagues.
“My responsibilities to Oregon are completely unchanged,” Wyden said in a prepared statement. “The
people of Oregon need us to get things done. And I’m going to work with Democrats and Republicans
to do just that.”
Said Merkley: “The general pattern is we keep working on common sense, problem­solving issues,
keep reaching out to folks across the aisle.”

2. Balance of power
Because resources are allotted based on the proportions of Senate membership, Democrats will
have to cut some committee staff and move into smaller offices, said Bill Hoagland, a senior vice
president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former director of budget and appropriations for
then­Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R­Tenn.
“The issue becomes one of allocation of staff resources and something that sounds kind of mundane,
office space and parking spots,” he said.
The ability of Democrats to have significant input on policy and legislation will depend a lot on the way
the next majority leader — presumably Sen. Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, who has been minority
leader since 2007 — handles Senate business, said Steven Smith, a political science professor at
Washington University in St. Louis and author of a book on parliamentary procedure in the Senate.
If McConnell largely delegates authority for developing and advancing legislation to his committee
chairs, then Democrats will be able to use their personal relationships to create opportunities to
contribute, he said.
Wyden enjoys a cordial relationship with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R­Utah, who is in line to become
chairman of the Finance Committee.
When he was chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Wyden cultivated a
friendship with ranking minority member Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who is now in line to
lead the committee with jurisdiction over many of the land and resource management issues vital to
Oregon.
“The minority has an interest in a more committee­oriented process, where they have a better
chance, at least in some places, to work closely with the majority and contribute to policy making in
some way,” Smith said.
However, if McConnell opts instead to keep power centralized in his office, most important decisions
will be made in leadership offices instead of hashed out in committee offices, he said. This will make
it harder for Democrats to have input, he said.
Because Senate Republicans will not have the 67 votes needed to override a veto, or the 60 votes
needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster, they will likely have to negotiate deals with President
Obama, who will then convince enough Democrats to support them in order to get to 60 votes, Smith
said. Since the Finance Committee has jurisdiction over many issues the GOP hopes to address,
including tax reform, Medicare and the medical device tax portion of the Affordable Care Act, Wyden

3. may be in a position to collaborate with the Obama administration on shaping Democrat strategy, he
said.
“He’s likely to be in the middle of it,” Smith said.
Role reversal
With their roles reversed, McConnell and outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D­Nev., are
likely to engage in strategies they previously found intolerable, Smith said.
For Reid, this means using the filibuster to require Republicans to have 60 votes to advance most
legislation, and requiring McConnell to burn 30 full hours of floor time once cloture, a procedure to
place a time limit on debate, is invoked.
In response, McConnell will likely use a parliamentary tactic known as filling the amendment tree to
keep Democrats from having any input on advancing legislation.
“Over the last generation, any time there’s been a change in party control, attitudes towards the
filibuster and minority rights just turn on a dime. After an election, the parties go into a dark room and
exchange their speeches on cloture reform,” Smith joked.
Filibuster reform
As a proponent of filibuster reform, Merkley helped change Senate rules so that the majority only
needed 51 votes to advance nominations for executive and judicial nominations, excluding those on
the U.S. Supreme Court. While in the majority, Democrats used the new rules to approve multiple
nominees that might have otherwise been blocked by the Republican minority.
“It’ll be interesting to watch how Merkley responds to obstructionism by his fellow Democrats,” Smith
said.
Merkley said he continues to support the changes made during the current session, and hopes to
make more changes during the upcoming session. He would like to give the minority the ability to
attach on­topic amendments to legislation — on­topic being key, because otherwise the minority
could attach “poison­pill” amendments to bills, killing a transportation bill by including an unpalatable
campaign finance provision, for example — which would assuage minority objections over being
locked out.
Merkley also supports the expenditure of energy and time by senators in the minority if they want to
filibuster a motion or passage vote by requiring a lawmaker to be on the floor talking about his or her

4. objection. This would make use of the filibuster less likely, and would make it easier for the majority
to advance legislation.
“In some ways, Republicans might find that more appealing now that they’re in charge than they were
when they were in the minority,” he said. “They have a stake in time being well­allocated, so that they
have enough time to really deal with legislation on the floor.”
Still, Merkley conceded that the odds of more filibuster reform were slim before the GOP takeover
and are even slimmer now.
The GOP takeover makes it highly unlikely that Oregon­specific legislation, like the Bowman Dam bill
that would authorize the release of some of the unallocated water in the Prineville Reservoir, will pass
as standalone bills during the lame duck session, the period between the election and the beginning
of the next Congress in January. One possibility Merkley and Wyden are considering is trying to
attach them to larger, “must­pass” funding bills, but it is unclear whether this option will be available.
“When it comes to Oregon priorities in general, (Senator Wyden is) going to continue to find ways to
get them across the finish line, whether it’s attaching them to other vehicles or finding other ways to
get things done,” said Wyden spokesman Keith Chu.
Wyden and Merkley can’t count on a grace period of GOP largess where non­controversial bills are
passed with little resistance, said Jim Moore, an assistant professor of politics and government at
Pacific University in Forest Grove.
“There, in effect, is no honeymoon period here, partly because 2016 is looming too large in people’s
minds,” he said.
In 2014, Republicans were able to exploit a favorable electoral map as Democrats tried to defend 21
seats to the Republicans’ 15. In the next election, only 10 Democratic seats will be in play while the
GOP defends 24.
— Reporter: 202­662­7456, aclevenger@bendbulletin.com