CONSUMERS: 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...

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