Naturally, one would not expect an amendment like this to go anywhere; but the vote that killed it is worthy of note.

It was not a straight up or down vote. What happened was that Collins raised a point of order that the amendment breached the budget ceilings previously fixed by the Budget resolution.

[I don't think a resolution for the next fiscal year (FY 2007) has been agreed by both houses - see S Con Res 83 and H Con Res 376 - but that doesn't seem to have discussed (I've skimmed hardly any of the debate on the Reid Amendment, though).]

The rule in §302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act stipulates that a point of order lies whenever Budget limits are breached; but §904(a) says that the Senate can waive the point of order on a vote of at least 3/5 of the membership - the same hurdle as required in cloture votes on legislation.

The vote to waive Collins's point of order required 60 votes to pass; the result was 41-57, 19 votes short of what was needed.

Akaka and Chafee were the non-voters; otherwise, there was a full turnout from the GOP.

As for the Dems - both Nelson boys and Pryor voted against.

How do we look at this? Clearly the amendment was going to be lost by miles even on a party line vote.

On the other hand, this was a procedural vote, on which a much higher degree of party loyalty is expected.

On a third hand, the CBA waiver is pretty transparently a vote on the substance, rather than on the sacrosanctity of budget limits - so why not let Dem senators who feel they need to go off the reservation?

On the whole, I'd say it was a creditable performance from the Dem side of the aisle - though how much whipping was needed to limit the renegades to three, of course, we don't know.

Mildly interesting, though, that Brer Lieberman didn't take the opportunity to show some leg to his possible future GOP colleagues (or flip the bird to his current ones)...