Game 4 of the 1984 NBA Finals: the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kurt Rambis is breaking down the floor for what should be a routine bucket, until Kevin McHale of the Boston Celtics clotheslined him in one of the hardest fouls ever caught on tape.

It’s sort of a metaphor for the United States Senate, where nothing comes easy. Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who is officially the minority leader given the results of the 2014 elections, is holding up a bill that would fund programs supporting victims of human trafficking. Why? Because the legislation stipulates that none of the funds can be used to pay for abortions.

“The bill will not come off this floor as long as that language is in the bill,” Reid told reporters.

Reid doesn’t have the votes to take the language out of the bill by amendment, which was a “political non-issue” for decades , so he’s just blocking the legislation from getting a vote.

“When we offered them an opportunity to offer an amendment to change that, they said: ‘No, we don’t want an amendment. We don’t want to change it by a vote of the Senate. We just want to block the bill,’” Time quotes Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas), who introduced the bill, as saying. “And that’s what, unless something changes between now and the time we vote on cloture on the bill, is going to happen. Because they don’t want to amend the bill.”

It’s the same tactic Reid deployed, successfully, in the fight over whether the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill would fund President Obama’s executive amnesty. Democrats filibustered the bill rather than cast votes on the substance of the issue, accused Republicans of being the obstructionists, and got away with it.

So, Reid is running that play again, just as Republicans feared he would if Democrats won the DHS fight.

“If the Democrats, as a minority in the Senate, can not only tell the majority what bills they can bring up and whether or not they can or can’t have amendments, but also feel like they have the power to tell the House what bills they have to pass, it’s going to be like this on every single issue,” as one GOP Senate aide predicted to National Review.

Reid hasn’t hesitated to play procedural games that would get him accused of disregarding the needs of women in the past. In 2014, he blocked a bill cracking down on rapists in order to pressure Republicans to take up a broader piece of legislation that contained language they opposed. At the time, of course, he was still majority leader. Old habits die hard.

Note: This post has been updated to correct the details of the strained basketball analogy.