Even if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan win on November 6, his agenda will be stymied if Republicans can't pick up at least three more seats than their current 47 and control the Senate. That's clear from the last two years, when Harry Reid's not-so-deliberative body became the graveyard for fiscal and other reform.

House Republicans won an historic midterm election in 2010, picking up 63 seats. They also gained six Senate seats, but a handful of weak GOP candidates (Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Christine O'Donnell) cost them control of the upper body. Back in charge in 2011, Mr. Reid proceeded to stop nearly everything that House Republicans passed. President Obama hasn't even had to sweat a veto fight because nothing escapes Mr. Reid's lost world.




Mr. Reid even declared in 2011 that it would be "foolish for us to do a budget," no doubt because he thought that would allow voters to see that what Democrats really want is even more spending and higher taxes. This would have made life difficult for vulnerable Democratic incumbents who pass themselves off as moderates in election years, such as Pennsylvania's Bob Casey, Montana's Jon Tester and Florida's Bill Nelson.

So Democrats simply sat back and took shots at the Ryan budget. Meanwhile, these same incumbents are now campaigning at home as champions of domestic energy, lower taxes, spending restraint and regulatory relief—everything the Democratic Senate helped to kill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Getty Images

The Senate also failed in 2010 and 2012 to pass a single appropriations bill. According to an analysis by Senate Republicans, that hadn't happened before in the 150-year history of the current spending process. This year the Senate even failed to enact a national defense authorization bill, which almost never happens.

The House passed a bill to avert the tax cliff looming in January, but the Senate failed to act on that too. Last week Mr. Reid's chief Senate lieutenant, Chuck Schumer of New York, warned that Democrats will stop any attempt at bipartisan tax reform next year, calling the idea "obsolete." He's essentially promising pre-emptive gridlock in 2013 no matter who wins.

Voters can be forgiven for not knowing all this because the media mostly ignore Senate obstructionism these days. Instead, they dutifully follow Mr. Obama's lead when he says of Congress that "I think the American people will run them out of town because they are frustrated and they know we need to do something big and bold." He means Republicans.

But if it's big and bold that voters want, House Republicans have passed it. What stands in their way are Senate Democrats. One reason the Reagan policy revolution became law in 1981 is because Republicans scared enough Democrats into cooperating by picking up a net gain of 12 Senate seats in 1980 to gain control 53-46.

If voters want to break the gridlock of the past two years and start addressing the country's urgent fiscal and economic problems, they're going to have to elect a Republican Senate as well as Mr. Romney.