Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) has announced publicly that he intends to vote against cloture on The Employee Free Choice Act, thus depriving us of the 60th vote.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) just dealt a big blow to the labor movement by announcing publicly that he would support a GOP filibuster of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), unions' No. 1 priority for this year and a subject of intense lobbying on both sides of the aisle.

"My vote on this bill is very difficult for many reasons," Specter said in a Senate floor speech, minutes after the news was broken by the Washington Independent. "It is very hard to disappoint many friends ... who are urging me to vote their way."

But Specter affirmed that he would join his fellow Republicans to block cloture on EFCA, effectively dooming the union-organizing bill's chances of becoming law in its current form.

This represents a 180 for Specter from his vote for cloture in 2007, the only Republican vote the cloture motion received that year. On one hand, this switch shouldn't be surprising considering Specter is facing a tough primary challenge from Pat Toomey.

As Markos wrote on Twitter:

@markosmoulitsas Specter will vote against cloture for EFCA. Says he'll wait until economy improves, but really he meant "when I survive my primary"

In a very real way, with Specter's announcement today, Toomey's mission has already been accomplished -- keeping Specter from siding with Democrats on crucial legislation. Specter needs to go down.

Update [2009-3-24 15:53:40 by Todd Beeton]:And Specter lies about EFCA in his statement opposing cloture:

On the merits, the issue which has emerged at the top of the list for me is the elimination of the secret ballot which is the cornerstone of how contests are decided in a democratic society.

Even the Wall St. Journal conceded that EFCA "doesn't remove the secret ballot option."