“My clients will take gristle. Just don’t cut them off.”
“Look, I just won’t schedule the bill.”
In the Senate, if a chairman didn’t want a bill to get out of
committee, he simply didn’t schedule it for hearing, as Milstead was
now suggesting. Buchanan had played that game many times before.
“But Pickens could end-run you on that,” Buchanan said. “Word is he’s
dead set on getting this thing heard one way or another. And he might
get a more sympathetic audience on the floor than he would in
committee. Why not put a hold on the bill and run it out of
session?”
Buchanan suggested.
Danny Buchanan was the master at this technique. A hold was simply one
senator objecting to a pending bill. The legislation would be in
complete limbo until the hold was removed. Years ago, Buchanan and his
allies on the Hill had used it to stunning effect in representing the
most powerful special interests in the country. It took real power in
Washington to make things not happen. And for Buchanan, that had
always been the most fascinating aspect of the city. Why health care
reform legislation or the tobacco settlement bills, propelled by
intense media coverage and public clamor, simply disappeared into the
yawning gulf of the Congress. And it was very often the case that
special interests wanted to maintain the status quo they had worked so
hard to erect. For them change was not good. Hence, a good deal of
Buchanan’s previous lobbying work had focused on burying any
legislation that would harm his powerful clients.
The hold maneuver was also known as the “blind rolling” hold because,
as in the passing of the baton on a relay team, a different senator
could place a new hold when the previous one had been released, and
only the leadership knew who had placed the restriction. There was a
lot more to it, but at the end of the day the blind rolling hold was an
enormous waste of time, and hugely effective, which explained much of
politics in a nutshell, Buchanan well knew.
The senator shook his head. “I found out Pickens has holds on two of
my pieces, and I’m close to cutting a deal that’ll make him let go. I
hit him with another hold and the sonofabitch’ll clamp down on my ass
like a ferret on a cobra.”
Buchanan sat back and sipped his coffee as a number of potential
strategies rolled through his mind. “Look, let’s go back to square
one. If you have the votes to knock it out, schedule it and let the
committee vote on it and kill the bastard for good. Then if he takes
it to the floor I can’t believe he’ll have the support to carry it.
Shit, once it’s on the floor we can hold it up forever, ask for
amendments, hit it in the cloak room, cut the crap out of it pretending
to want to deal for some juice on one of your bills. In fact, were so
close to the elections now we can even play the quorum call game until
he yells uncle.”
Milstead nodded thoughtfully. “You know Archer and Simms are giving me
a little trouble.”
“Harvey, you’ve sent enough highway construction dollars to both those
bastards’ states to choke every man and woman and child there. Call
them on it! They don’t give a damn about this bill. They probably
haven’t even read the staff briefing materials.”
Milstead looked suddenly confident. “One way or another, we’ll get it
done for you. In a one-point-seven-trillion-dollar budget, it’s not
that big a deal.”
“It is for my client. A lot of people are counting on this one,
Harvey. And most of them can’t even walk yet.”
“I hear you.”
“You should take a fact-finding trip over there. I’ll go with you.
It’s really beautiful country, you just can’t use the land for shit.
God might have blessed America, but he forgot about a lot of the rest
of the world. But they keep going. If you ever think you’re having a
bad day, it’s a good memory to have.”
Milstead coughed. “My schedule is really full, Danny. And you know