Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has given up on a package of unrelated, narrowly tailored legislative proposals that were bundled together to try to overcome opposition from Republican Sen. Tom Coburn.

The measure (S 3297) failed Monday to clear an initial procedural hurdle, and Reid, D-Nev., said he doesn’t intend to try again.

“You can go home and explain to your constituents how you refused to move forward on some of the most sensitive issues that are in our legislative portfolio in the Congress today,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

“We will not be able to take these up at a later time, and we’ll have to wait until a new Congress. And in the meantime, there will be much suffering and mental distress.”

At the direction of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who instructed his caucus to keep the Senate talking about energy, Republicans foiled Reid’s plan to complete a wide range of bills with a single swipe.

Reid’s measure drew support from just three GOP senators and, by a vote of 52-40, fell eight votes short of the 60 required to limit debate on a motion to proceed to the package.

So Reid abandoned the so-called “Tomnibus” and focused on blaming Oklahoma’s Coburn and his fellow Republicans. Meanwhile, some other Democrats started looking ahead to September in the expectation that there might be an opportunity to put together another Coburn-circumventing bundle of bills.

Reid’s megabill gambit relied on finding 60 votes.

The presumption was that Republicans either liked enough segments of the package or were worried enough about campaign attacks to buck their leadership and vote with the Democrats.

Only three Republicans defected from the party line: Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, who both have difficult re-election races, and John W. Warner of Virginia, who is retiring.

Coleman and Smith were cosponsors of multiple bills in the package, which included proposals as wide-ranging as disease-specific research bills, environmental protection measures and legislation designed to encourage stability and stronger economies in foreign countries.

Coburn said he would try to negotiate changes to the individual bills in the package that would allow them to pass by voice vote.

“We’ll go back and try to work with everybody on the concerns we have with each the bills and see if we can get them so they can go through by unanimous consent,” Coburn said. “They shouldn’t be a package. The package was a way to try to get rid of one of the rights of the minority in the Senate.”

Democrats who have pushed hard for passage of pieces of the package said they didn’t think Reid was bluffing about offering no second chances.

“So women will continue to suffer, and Sen. Coburn can explain to them why they should suffer just because of his obstinacy,” said Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the sponsor of a bill (S 1375) incorporated into the package that would encourage the study and treatment of postpartum depression.

Democrat Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said he could think of no plausible scenario that would allow the Senate to separately pass another section of that larger package this week — a bill (S 535) that would authorize funds for the Justice Department to hire special investigators to focus on solving civil rights crimes committed before 1970.

“I don’t know what we can do, given the time constraints,” Dodd said.

Coburn tried late Monday to get consent to pass a version of the civil rights investigation bill that included offsets, but Reid objected.

On July 26, Coburn introduced a bill (S 3344) that addresses his objection to legislation (S 1738) designed to protect children from online predators, but Democrats oppose his alternative.

Meanwhile, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman is urging Reid to make time in September for a bundle of lands bills being blocked by Coburn.

The measure (S 3213) combines more than 90 individual bills that designate certain lands as federal wilderness areas or in other ways provide federal protections for lands, rivers and streams.

Coburn said he expects Democrats will try to give Bingaman, D-N.M., what he wants.

“It’ll come next,” Coburn said. “You’ll see another omnibus public lands bill. . . . We won’t fund taking care of the national parks, but we’ll add more land to them and give them more to do.”

Earlier this year, Congress enacted a similar measure (PL 110-229) combining more than 60 natural resources bills.