Senate Democrats have been decrying Republican filibusters all year long, and they've forced one cloture vote after another to define the GOP as obstructionists.

But faced with a filibuster threat from within their own ranks, Senate Democrats have made a deal to require 60 votes on key farm bill reform amendments in a bid to avoid an embarrassing intra-party cloture fight that could saddle them with the blame for another farm bill delay, and blunt their favorite anti-Republican talking point.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), staunch proponent of unlimited, multi-million-dollar subsidies in perpetuity to plantation-scale operations in the South, threatened to filibuster at least one proposed farm bill amendment, the Dorgan-Grassley payment limit reform. It would "limit" subsidies to $250,000 per farm per year.

Everyone saw Sen. Lincoln's filibuster threat coming. The choice was to let her make good on it, then file for cloture to cut off debate and proceed to the farm bill.

If cloture had failed to gain 60 votes, a Democrat's filibuster would have been blamed for killing the farm bill in the Senate this year. So far Democrats have pretty successfully managed to blame Republicans for that possibility, particularly among farm groups who have grown increasingly impatient with the Senate impasse.

Which is precisely why, with so much pressure building in both parties for the Senate to pass a farm bill before the Christmas recess, it is almost certain that a cloture vote would have prevailed over Lincoln's filibuster at this stage. Almost all Democrats, and a large number of Republicans, would have voted to cut-off the filibuster.

That high-profile dust-up, played over multiple news cycles, would have been embarrassing not just to Lincoln, but to Senate Democrats in general, who have (often justifiably) made Republicans' procedural roadblocks a central explanation for their legislative difficulties this year.

But once cloture had been imposed, it would have meant that these key farm bill reform votes could have prevailed in the old-fashioned, 50-vote majority way. That's not what the subsidy lobby wanted or their protectors in either party wanted.

Instead, Senate Democrats put reform at risk and gave the subsidy lobby yet another procedural advantage by agreeing to a special deal that requires 60 votes for passage of Dorgan-Grassley's payment limit amendment or Amy Klobuchar's tightening of 'means testing' (and several amendments by Sen. Gregg). The Washington Post succinctly described the combined effect of these amendments:

Note that even if both of these amendments pass, a farm family making $749,999 a year could still receive a $249,999 handout from the taxpayers. For a Democratic Congress eager to restore a modicum of balance to the distribution of income in America, this should be a very easy call.

If these reform votes now fail because they get 59 votes or less, we'll be placing the blame squarely, and relentlessly, where it belongs--on Democrats, who talk a big game about equity, fairness, progress and making change, then once again give the subsidy lobby every legislative advantage to perpetuate the wasteful, scandalous status quo.

And it didn't even take a pork chop on a stick to convince the Senate Democrats to cave.

While it is subject to change, we understand that the first vote, on Dorgan-Grassley, is set for 9:15 a.m. tomorrow morning. Votes on Klobuchar's AGI amendment and the Brown-Sununu-McCaskill RESCU amendment will follow.