Close to Cloture

For only the third time in the past half-century, the Senate last week went to a fourth cloture vote to break a filibuster: the two-month-long rearguard action to keep a bill creating a consumer protection agency from coming to a final vote on the Senate floor. The cloture vote, 64 to 34, was two short of the 66 needed to end the filibuster, but proponents of the bill refused to let it die. Convinced that they could muster two additional votes, they asked Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield for an unprecedented fifth try. If they can prove they have the votes, he is likely to agree.

The controversial measure would create an independent federal agency that would review consumers' complaints and represent their interests before federal courts and regulatory agencies but have no regulatory power of its own. It would in effect institutionalize consumer advocacy and provide an agency that Ralph Nader believes would be "a hair shirt" for other federal departments. That proposition has been desperately fought by lobbyists of the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and other business groups, who feel that it will bring harassment by yet another bureaucracy. They have stalled passage of similar legislation for five years, although the number of companies supporting the bill is gradually increasing.

If the bill does not reach the floor this session--a fifth unsuccessful cloture vote would certainly kill it--its proponents feel that it will easily pass early next year, probably in an even stronger form. Five or six opponents of the measure are retiring, including Sam Ervin of North Carolina, who helped lead the filibuster, arguing that the bill "is repugnant to the free-enterprise system." As chairman of the Government Operations Committee, which is responsible for such legislation, Ervin delayed the bill's entry onto the Senate floor. No problem is anticipated with his probable replacement: Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, one of the bill's chief sponsors.

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