“Holds” in the Senate
Released: 2017-01-24T00:00:00

Background

Senate rules, procedures, and precedents give significant parliamentary power to individual Senators during the course of chamber deliberations. Many decisions the Senate makes—from routine requests for additional debate time, to determinations of how legislation will be considered on the floor—are arrived at by unanimous consent. When a unanimous consent request is proposed on the floor, any Senator may object to it. If objection is heard, the consent request does not take effect. Efforts to modify the original request may be undertaken—a process that can require extensive negotiations between and among Senate leaders and their colleagues—but there is no guarantee that a particular objection can be addressed to the satisfaction of all Senators.

The Senate hold emerges from within this context of unanimous-consent decision-making as a method of transmitting policy or scheduling preferences to Senate leaders regarding matters available for floor consideration. Many hold requests take the form of a letter addressed to the majority or minority leader (depending on the party affiliation of the Senator placing the hold) expressing reservations about the merits or timing of a particular policy proposal or nomination. An example of a hold letter is displayed in Appendix A .

More often than not, Senate leaders—as agents of their party responsible for defending the political, policy, and procedural interests of their colleagues—honor a hold request because not doing so could trigger a range of parliamentary responses from the holding Senator(s), such as a filibuster, that could expend significant amounts of scarce floor time. Unless the target of a hold is of considerable importance to the majority leader and a supermajority of his colleagues—60 of whom might be required to invoke cloture on legislation under Senate Rule XXII—the most practical course of action is often to lay the matter aside and attempt to promote negotiations that could alleviate the concerns that gave rise to the hold. With hold-inspired negotiations underway, the Senate can turn its attention to more broadly-supported matters.

Types of Holds

Holds can be used to accomplish a variety of purposes. Although the Senate itself makes no official distinctions among holds, scholars have classified holds based on the objective of the communication. Informational holds, for instance, request that the Senator be notified or consulted in advance of any floor action to be taken on a particular measure or matter, perhaps to allow the Senator to plan for floor debate or the offering of amendments. Choke holds contain an explicit filibuster threat and are intended to kill or delay action on the target of the hold. Blanket holds are leveled against an entire category of business, such as all nominations to a particular agency or department. Mae West holds intend to foster negotiation and bargaining between proponents and opponents. R etaliatory holds are placed as political payback against a colleague or administration, while rolling (or rotating ) holds are defined by coordinated action involving two or more Senators who place holds on a measure or matter on an alternating basis. Until recently, many holds were considered a nonymous (or secret ) because the source and contents of the request were not made available to the public, or even to other Senators.

Recent Efforts to Regulate Holds

Written hold requests emerged as an informal practice in the late 1950s under the majority leadership of Lyndon B. Johnson as a way for Senators to make routine requests of their leaders regarding the Senate's schedule. Early usage was largely consistent with prevailing expectations of Senate behavior at that time, such as reciprocity, deference, and accommodation of one's Senate colleagues. Over time, holds have evolved to become a potent extra-parliamentary practice, sometimes likened to a "silent filibuster" in the press. "The hold started out as a courtesy for senators who wanted to participate in open debate," two Senators wrote in 1997. Since then, "it has become a shield for senators who wish to avoid it." These and other Senators were concerned that keeping holds confidential tended to enable Senators who placed holds to block measures or nominations while leaving no avenue of recourse open to their supporters. Accordingly, rather than restricting the process itself, recent attempts to alter the operation of holds have focused on making the secrecy of holds less absolute.

The Senate has considered a variety of proposals targeting the Senate hold in recent years, two of which the chamber adopted. Both sought to eliminate the secrecy of holds by creating a process through which holds—formally referred to in the new rules as "notices of intent to object to proceeding"—would be made public within some period of time if certain criteria were met. Prior to these rules changes, hold letters were written with the expectation that they would be treated as private correspondences between a Senator and his or her party leader.

Notification Procedures Established by Section 512 of P.L. 110-81

The first proposal, enacted in 2007 as Section 512 of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act ( P.L. 110-81 ), established new reporting requirements that were designed to take effect if either the majority or minority leader or their designees, acting on behalf of a party colleague on the basis of a hold letter previously received, objected to a unanimous consent request to advance a measure or matter to the Senate floor for consideration or passage. If objection was raised on the basis of a hold letter, then the Senator who originated the hold was expected to submit a "notice of intent to object" to his or her party leader and, within six days of session thereafter, deliver the objection notice to the Legislative Clerk for publication in both the Congressional Record and the Senate's Calendar of Business (or, if the hold pertained to a nomination, the Executive Calendar ).

Under Section 512, objection notices were to take the following form: "I, Senator ___, intend to object to proceeding to ___, dated ___ for the following reasons___." To accommodate the publication of these notices, a new "Notice of Intent to Object to Proceeding" section was added to both Senate calendars as shown in Appendix B . Each calendar entry contained four pieces of information: (1) the bill or nomination number to which the hold pertained; (2) the official title of the bill or nomination; (3) the date on which the hold was placed; and (4) the name of the Senator who placed the hold. Publication was not required if a Senator withdrew the hold within six session days of triggering the notification requirement. Once published, an objection notice could be removed from future editions of a calendar by submitting for inclusion in the Congressional Record the following statement: "I, Senator ___, do not object to proceed to ___, dated ___."

On October 3, 2007, roughly two weeks after the new disclosure procedures were signed into law, the first notice of an intent to object was published in the Congressional Record . A total of 5 such notices appeared during the 110 th Congress (2007-2008), and 12 were published during the 111 th Congress (2009-2010), but these numbers should not be interpreted to reflect the entirety of hold activity that occurred during those two Congresses. Instead, they represent the subset of holds that activated the notification requirements established in Section 512 of P.L. 110-81 . Recall that notification is required when three conditions are met: (1) the majority or minority leader (or their designee) asks unanimous consent to proceed to or pass a measure or matter; (2) objection is raised on the basis of a colleague's hold letter; and (3) six days of session have elapsed since the objection was made.

Many holds lodged during the 110 th and 111 th Congresses (2007-2010) are likely to have fallen outside the purview of Section 512 regulation. At least two reasons account for this. First, the new notification requirements would not apply to holds placed on measures or matters the Senate did not attempt to proceed to or pass (perhaps on account of an implicit filibuster threat contained in a hold letter). When scheduling business for floor consideration, the content and quantity of hold letters received on a particular measure or matter are likely to factor into the negotiations and considerations Senate leaders make. Rather than take action that could have the effect of vitiating the confidentiality of a holding Senator, Senate leaders might simply decide to advance other matters to the floor instead (or at least try to).

A second reason the actual number of holds is likely to exceed the number published in the Record during these two Congresses has to do with the six session day window between an objection being raised and reporting requirements becoming mandatory. Designed to provide Senators with sufficient time to study an issue before deciding whether or not to maintain a hold beyond the six session day grace period, this provision may have encouraged the use of revolving (or rotating) holds. If one Senator removes his or her hold within six session days of activating the reporting requirement and another Senator puts a new hold in its place, the effect would be to reset the six session day clock each time a new hold was placed on a given measure or matter. In this way, two or more Senators could maintain the secrecy of their holds for an indefinite period without running afoul of the new disclosure procedures.

Notification Procedures Established by S.Res. 28 (2011)

In response to the limited applicability of Section 512, the Senate established—by a 92-4 vote on January 27, 2011—a standing order ( S.Res. 28 ) that extends notification requirements to a larger share of hold activity. Instead of a six day reporting window, S.Res. 28 provides two days of session during which Senators are expected to deliver their objection notices for publication. The action that triggers the reporting requirement also changed: from an objection on the basis of a colleague's hold request (under Section 512) to the initial transmission of a written objection notice to the party leader (under S.Res. 28 ).

The proper language to communicate a hold remained largely the same as before, except that holding Senators must now include a statement that expressly authorizes their party leader to object to a unanimous consent request in their name. In the event that a Senator neglects to deliver an objection notice for publication within two session days and a party leader nevertheless raises objection on the basis of that hold, S.Res. 28 requires that the name of the objecting party leader be identified as the source of the hold in the "Notice of Intent to Object" section of the appropriate Senate calendar. The process of removing an objection notice from either calendar remains unchanged.

During the 112 th Congress (2011-2012), a total of 24 objection notices were published in accordance with the provisions of S.Res. 28 . Nine notices were printed during the 113 th Congress (2013-2014), and 34 were published in the 114 th Congress (2015-2016). See Appendix C for an example of how these notices appear in the Congressional Record . As before, caution should be exercised when interpreting these numbers. What looks like a drop-off in the use of holds could instead reflect broader challenges inherent in efforts to regulate this kind of communication.

Challenges Inherent in Regulating Hold Activity

Senate holds are predicated on the unanimous consent nature of Senate decision-making. The influence they exert in chamber deliberations is based primarily upon the significant parliamentary prerogatives individual Senators are afforded in the rules, procedures, and precedents of the chamber. As such, efforts to regulate holds are inextricably linked with the chamber's use of unanimous consent agreements to structure the process of calling up measures and matters for floor debate and amendment. While not all holds are intended to prevent the consideration of a particular measure, some do take that form, and Senate leaders justifiably perceive those correspondences as implicit filibuster threats.

As agents of their party, Senate leaders value the information that holds provide regarding the policy and scheduling preferences of their colleagues. For this reason, rules changes that require enforcement on the part of Senate leaders—as both efforts discussed here do—tend to conflict with the managerial role played by contemporary Senate leaders and the expectation on the part of their colleagues that leaders will defend their interests in negotiations over the scheduling of measures and matters for floor consideration.

A second challenge to hold regulation involves the nature of the transmission itself. Both recent proposals address a particular kind of communication: a letter written and delivered to a Senator's party leader that expresses some kind of reservation about the timing or merits of a particular proposal or nomination. Hold requests might be conveyed in less formal ways as well; in a telephone call to the leader's office, for instance, or in a verbal exchange that occurs on or off the Senate floor. An objection to a unanimous consent request transmitted through the "hotline" represents another common method of communicating preferences to Senate leaders. Some Senate offices have circulated "Dear Colleague" letters specifying certain requirements legislation must adhere to in order to avoid a hold being placed. It remains unclear, however, whether or not these alternative forms of communication fall within the purview of recent hold reforms.

Appendix A. A Hold Letter

Appendix B. The "Notice of Intent to Object" section of the Calendar of Business

Appendix C. A Notice of Intent to Object