Senate Set To Vote On Bush Judge

The Senate voted Tuesday to end years of delaying tactics that blocked the nomination of Priscilla Owen to a federal judgeship, the first fruit of a bipartisan agreement to break the logjam over President Bush's judicial choices.

The vote was 81-18 with opponents of the Texas Supreme Court justice falling well short of the 40 needed to continue their filibuster. A vote to confirm Owen could was expected late Tuesday or Wednesday.

Owen, nominated to a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has been blocked four times by Democratic filibusters in the four years since Mr. Bush first nominated her early in his first term.

But this time she benefited from an agreement reached by seven Republican and seven Democratic senators that opened the way for yes-or-no votes on some of Mr. Bush's stalled nominations while protecting the future right of Democrats to use the filibuster to block nominees they feel are out of the mainstream.

"It is time to close our debate," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who led the failed effort to deny Democrats the use of the filibuster for judicial nominations.

The Senate deal won't guarantee each of his judicial nominees an up or down vote, but Mr. Bush views the compromise as a step forward, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller.

"These nominees have been waiting years for an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor and now they'll get one," Mr. Bush said at the start of a Social Security event in Rochester, N.Y. "It's about time we're making some progress."

Frist said for the second day in a row that he was "not a party" to the agreement sealed Monday night.

At the same time, he said it "makes modest progress, but falls far short of guaranteeing up or down votes on judicial nominations. It needs to be carefully monitored and executed in good faith."

But Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada reminded Frist that the agreement did not alter the rights of the minority to lengthy debate, and in extraordinary circumstances, filibusters of controversial nominations.

He said that also applied to the Senate vote on the highly contentious nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. That nomination could come up this week and "there are a lot of things we have to talk about with Bolton," Reid said.The agreement also opened the way for yes-or-no votes on two other of Mr. Bush's judicial picks who have been in nomination limbo for more than two years — William H. Pryor Jr. for the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Janice Rogers Brown for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The agreement, which also applies to Supreme Court nominees, said future judicial nominations should "only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances," with each Democratic senator holding the discretion to decide when those conditions had been met.

The agreement was extraordinary because the senators did it on their own outside their leadership and special interest groups, said CBS News National Political Correspondent Gloria Borger.

"I think everyone would probably say the Senate wins here," said Borger. "These 14 senators are not only moderates, some of them are quite conservative politically. But they were all traditionalists and they believe they had to preserve the right to filibuster."

There were other political implications, as well, including the shape of the Supreme Court, the midterm election in 2006, Mr. Bush's legislative agenda and the next presidential race, especially the prospects for Frist and potential GOP rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

McCain, who led the compromise effort with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said, "We tried to avert a crisis in the United States Senate and pull the institution back from a precipice."