Last week, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) sent a letter thanking the U.S. Senate for taking decisive action to close gaps in our nation’s intelligence gathering capabilities. The Senate worked late into the night last Friday to pass critical legislation to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA.)

Senators from both sides of the aisle put our national security above politics to ensure our Intelligence Community had the tools to protect our country, and the McConnell-Bond legislation passed with wide bipartisan support. It was a victory for our national security, as well as for the Senate as a whole. The DNI’s letter was a reminder of what the Senate can accomplish when we work together. I hope it also served as a wakeup call to the Democrats that bipartisan successes yield tangible results.

Seven months ago I opened this session by reminding myself and my colleagues that the work we do and the way we do it will be judged, not only by the voters, but by history. Future generations will inherit the laws we pass, the problems we ignore, and the institution we leave behind.

When the Majority lets Republicans participate in shaping legislation, we’ve achieved good, bipartisan results. When they’ve blocked cooperation, we’ve failed. Yet the Democratic Majority has spent most of the year trying and failing to advance its agenda by insisting on the path of political advantage.

The truth is, as she explained, that as far back as January, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that he would insist on a 60-vote majority, rather than a simple 50-vote majority, for getting bills through the Senate, claiming that this is "the ordinary procedure." But it's not, as the Campaign for America's Future has painstakingly documented. The reality is that McConnell's abuse of Senate procedures to block the majority will on legislation is "unprecedented" according to CAF. Senate Republicans have launched 43 filibusters on popular reforms in the first seven months of this Congress. That's on pace to triple the previous record. McConnell and Senate Republicans like the filibuster now, but they felt differently when Democrats used it far more sparingly in the 109th Congress against President Bush's most extreme judicial nominees.

“There’s a pattern here: When the Majority has agreed to let Republicans participate and shape legislation, we’ve achieved good, bipartisan results. When they’ve blocked that cooperation, they’ve failed. But just like a fly that keeps slamming its head into the same windowpane trying get outside, the Democratic Majority has spent most of the year since those small, early gestures at cooperation trying and failing to advance its agenda by insisting on the path of political advantage.

“The problem took root early on. Soon after the 9/11 Bill came the first attempt to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. The Democrats knew it had no chance of passing the Senate, let alone being signed into law. Two weeks earlier they had forced a vote on the Petraeus Plan for securing Baghdad, and lost. The President had made clear his opposition to timelines. And Republicans insisted that Congress should not be in the business of micromanaging a war.

“Yet they persisted anyway. The first timeline vote failed. It was followed by fourteen more political messaging votes on the war, votes that promised to have no practical impact on our military conduct. The Senate would spend two months debating legislation that in every case was bound to fail. For the entire spring and summer, the Majority insisted on political votes, culminating in the theatrical crescendo of an all-night debate that even Democrats admitted was a stunt.

“What seems to have happened here is that at some point in February, after the minimum wage vote, the political left put a hand on the steering wheel. And the unfortunate result was that nearly five months would pass before a single item on the ‘Six for ’06’ agenda would become law — and even that had to be tacked onto a must-pass emergency war spending bill that the Democrats had been slow-rolling for months.