Of course the egomaniacs in the Senate are now against reforming the filibuster:
Senate Democrats do not have the votes to lower the 60-vote threshold to cut off filibusters.
The lack of support among a handful of Senate Democratic incumbents is a major blow to the effort to change the upper chamber’s rules.
They won’t get the votes to change it because Senators recognize that these ridiculous cloture rules means they get to bitch slap the House of Representatives whenever they want. The House really doesn’t get to write legislation anymore, they make suggestions, and then the Senate does whatever they want and tells the House to accept it or to eat a bag of dicks, because everyone knows how hard it is to reach 60 votes in the Senate- “Sure, we know you all had plenty of votes for the public option in the house, BUT SUCK ON THIS BITCHES!”
Likewise, preening princes like Lieberman and Nelson and the twin Presidents from Maine recognize that the need for 60 votes means that wholly unprincipled individuals such as themselves can basically get whatever they want regardless of what party is in charge. They get to play rotating bad guy/President and vote the way the highest bidder wants.
Filibuster reform will never happen because these people think the world revolves around them, and majority rule reduces how important. Additionally, the status quo is pretty damned good for the people who buy off these clowns, so why would they want to let mob majority rule threaten their wholly owned House of Lords? Climate change legislation, tax changes, the public option- all these things that scare the shit out of the haves in society might happen with simple majority rule. Can’t have that.
steviez314
Don’t forget that Democratic senators like the filibuster because they’ve convinced themselves they’ll be in the minority sooner or later since even they know they suck.
JenJen
John Cole is shrill!
Bingo.
Martin
Nuke it. Seriously.
BR
Fuck the part about reducing the vote threshold, why can’t they even do something simple like remove the current rules that allow for silent filibusters?
I’d be happy to see those geriatric GOPers stand up there without water or food and have to read the phone book for hours. The current rules don’t require them to, but it’d be nice to have them have to do something to be obstructionist.
Napoleon
What needs to happen is that a chunck of Democratic Senators need to simply inform the rest of the caucus that they will not vote for the leader of the party choisen by the caucus for majority leader unless the filibuster and other rules used to stop the work of the Senate are reformed. Without reform you might as well be in the minority because nothing is going to happen anyways. If that group of Senators are big enough to elect the leader of the caucus they simply should let everyone else in the caucus know that if they kneecap the change they will end up having their only committee assignment being the subcommittee on dog poop in the parks.
They need to play hardball.
Also this which I am quoting from a poster in a thread at Steve B.’s place:
But my point is, when Democrats return to the minority in the Senate, two things are certain:
1.Democrats will use the filibuster rarely, if at all, and certainly not when it matters.
2.If Democrats do filibuster something the Republicans really want, Republicans will not hesitate to use the ‘nuclear option’ and do away with it.
Bottom line: The filibuster will never again be an effective tool for Democrats to thwart a Republican majority. So any Democrats who are currently willing to allow Republicans to continue abusing the filibuster to the country’s great harm are simply cowards.
Zandar
The Senatorial fee-fees.
They are being hurt. Who will stand up for the fee-fees in our viciously partisan society controlled utterly by the Dirty F’ckin Hippies and their incompetent Kenyan Muslim deeply burrowed Clinton-era fascist masters?
The poor fee-fees. Won’t you think of them? Won’t you help the Senate’s Constitutional Christian God-given right by our Founding Fathers to not pass legislation?
AdamK
Time to abolish the House of Lords altogether, and go with a larger unicameral legislature. Who needs a collection of self-centered old white millionaires vetoing laws?
wilfred
Just the function of becoming an Empire. For the House, think the Plebian Assembly; for the Senate…
When Rome became an empire, the Plebeian Assembly lost its influence in legislating anything.
The struggle was between the patricians and the Emperor, just like it is today.
We’re an Empire. The only question left is good and bad Emperors. You may think the current Emperor is more an Antonine than Caligula 43, but what about the next, and the one after that?
Southern Beale
Yes and one of that “handful” is Ben Nelson of Nebraska. I know y’all are shocked.
Digby has said this before and I agree: the filibuster doesn’t matter. What’s the difference between 51 and 60? There will always be some Senator who will have a sad and stamp his or her widdew feet over some bill or other, thereby proving how important they are. If that Senator is the 51st vote or the 60th, what does it matter? It’s going to happen regardless.
Cassidy
Yes, but prima donna at 51 is easier to work around than one at 60. If you’ve got 9 diva’s vying for the 51 slot, then that lowers the negotiation price. We can then start selling ou bills to the lowest bidder.
Matt C.
It’s hard to reach 60 votes in the Senate for the simple reason that the Senate is completely unrepresentative of our society as a whole. It’s a millionaire’s club. They’re completely divorced from the reality of average Americans. The median household income in the United States is $44,000 per annum. They make that in a few hours of backdoor dealing. The river of money flowing through the U.S. Senate is the real aggravating factor. Although it doesn’t hurt that Ben Nelson is a giant douchebag.
Napoleon
@Southern Beale:
It matters A LOT. In order to get to the 60th vote you already had to by off vote 51 through 59. To get to 51 you only need to buy off one vote of those you project as being votes 51 through 60. This means 1) you are able to target those most likely to be reasonable and 2) you have more people to play off against each other.
With 51 votes the HCR package plausible could have had a public option because you had a lot less people to buy off and financial reform would not have been nearly as watered down.
It is a huge difference.
acallidryas
@steviez314
That would be a more rational argument from them if the Democrats ever used the filibuster. Instead what I remember from 2002-2006 is that they couldn’t filibuster this-but don’t worry, they were saving it up for something really important, and would definitely use it soon. And even that got the Republicans talking about doing away with it.
Cols714
I predict that whenever Republicans take back the presidency and the Senate, they will do away with the filibuster.
Democratic Senators are so dumb.
BR
You know the media will go along GOP complaints if Dems reform the filibuster by reducing the votes required.
But if the Dems simply say “we want you to have to do it old school, by talking forever” I think the media won’t easily be able to argue against it.
Zifnab
This works so long as Congress continues to chug along. But let’s be fair. Finance Reform passed. Health Reform passed. Unemployment insurance continues to eek by. The system is grinding it’s gears, but it’s still functioning. The House might hate the Senate, but the House doesn’t get a vote in the Senate.
That said, come 2010 we’re not going to have a 59 vote minority in the Senate anymore. We’re going to have closer to the Bush Era’s 52 vote majority. That means either the Republicans start compromising in greater numbers or the Senate really does just grind to a halt.
If the Republicans shut down the Senate, I suspect we will see filibuster reform. As it stands, the Senate isn’t suffering enough. No more than it did under Bush when Frist was screaming and waving his fists about a Nuclear Option and the Dems were muttering and compromising and “keeping the powder dry”. Shut down the Senate and you’ll get your filibuster reform.
But – and here’s the real catch-22 – that shut down won’t happen because it requires both parties to refuse to compromise. And when the Senate is shut down, only one party is going to take the blame. The party in power always wants to compromise.
kansi
I agree that, if they are in the majority, the turn-on-a-dime GOP will rail against minority obstructionism and break out the nuclear option. I don’t know if my head aches from the whiplash they give me, or from wondering what kind of lame a** response the Democrats would have.
Corner Stone
According to this article, in 2008 the 25th wealthiest Senator was Inhofe with a net worth min-max of $3M to $10M.
Your Senator Is (Probably) a Millionaire
Scroll down a little to check the Representatives.
El Cid
Another problem with eliminating the filibuster for Democrats is that it would allow the passage of things which certain conservative Democrats would prefer not pass and the filibuster gives them a convenient excuse.
Matt
Am I the only one annoyed by the proliferation of “fee-fees”? Sounds too much like “feces”. Or is it supposed to?
Elizabelle
I love the headline, John.
danimal
I wish the snark and cynicism could be rebutted, but I have to agree on this one. Whenever the GOP takes over the Senate, the filibuster will be “reformed” within nanoseconds.
Any Dem Senator who does not understand this is a complete fool. They are relying on the good faith of people who do not act in good faith.
Zifnab
@Napoleon:
That depends on how united Senators 51 thru 60 are. If you’re trying to rope in an intractable caucus of Dems, you have a lot more work ahead of you than simply roping in a straggling 51st out of 10 possibles.
Compare the Senate to the House and look at the House Blue Dog Coalition. Voting as a bloc, they do much better at influencing election because when the House needs those last 10 votes and the best 20 pickups are all in the Blue Dog Caucus, the Caucus as a whole can bargain.
I honestly don’t know if the Senate Conserva-Dems are working collectively. There’s at least six or seven Dems I could name that play the rotating bad guy / hold out position.
A 51 Senator threshold would grease the wheels. I don’t think it would unlock the Senate as much as you do.
daveNYC
No, what will happen is that the Senate will grind to a halt for a bit, then the Democrats will start compromising. If there’s one thing you can say about the modern Republican party, it’s that Republicans don’t compromise.
And when the Republican eventually take the SEnate, they’ll pull the nuclear option, then when the Democrats take it back, they’ll demand that the filibuster be reinstated.
It’s all about the Republicans being the ones running the country, even when they aren’t the ones elected to run the country.
Stillwater
So any Democrats who are currently willing to allow Republicans to continue abusing the filibuster to the country’s great harm are simply cowards.
Cowards, I say. COWARDS! The lot of ’em. AND I’M SERIOUS!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
None of this status quo crap will change until this point is hammered home so thoroughly with the voters that when you play a word association game and the 1st word is “Treason” the most common response will be “Senate”.
Because that’s more or less how the 17th Amendment got passed. The Treason of the Senate is a phrase that has some history behind it.
KG77
Buying off the 51st senator is unnecessary anyway. Biden does have a constitutionally mandated job besides attending funerals and being “available”. He’s there to cover the ass of the senators of his party by stepping in and casting that last controversial vote that gets a bill across the finish line. If you go off the assumption that the Senate is full of cowardly power-mongering pricks, well hell, they must’ve known that back in Philly when they wrote the damn constitution, ’cause they gave the VPs the power to step in and prevent the tragedy of any senator having to show that they’ve got a pair. Which is why this whole 60 votes to do anything is an abomination: Biden needs more work!
PTirebiter
@Matt C.: Not to mention California has 200 times the population of Wyoming.
Wyoming has 1 congressman and 2 Senators, go figure.
maya
What this country needs is a successful Guy Fawks.
flounder
We need to get some long view, Grover Norquist-type action going here, like getting Senators and especially candidates to sign a pledge toward getting rid of the filibuster. No signature, no money. I know this doesn’t affect the old entrenched a-holes like Feinstein and Nelson, but Nelson is out in a couple years and maybe Feinstein as well.
Also we need further education on how it was created by a mistake and is not some noble foresight by our 19th century betters.
terraformer
It is this dynamic, and the general (personal) impression that aside from a few folks – not enough to really make positive change – the Senate is largely a singular entity masquerading as two. There is no substantive, for-the-non-rich difference between the two parties.
France or Germany are looking really good for emigration right now, and likely for the forseeable future…
BR
Why don’t we frame this differently? Not as “eliminating the filibuster” but as “restoring the filibuster”.
At first glance that won’t make sense, because everyone thinks we have a filibuster now. But we don’t. We have cloture votes to override a non-existent filibuster.
Most Americans probably still think that the filibuster is the think from Mr. Smith goes to Washington. That hasn’t been done in a couple of decades, but I think it’d be hard to argue about bringing that back if we framed it right.
artem1s
not any more likely than overturning term limits on the President. GOPers loved the idea when St. Ronnie was in power ’cause until George the Greater started to actually demonstrate his monarchical tendencies (not recognizing common plebeian items like grocery scanners) they saw an endless domination of the WH stretching out to an unlimited horizon (or at least as long as their term-limited attentions spans). Once Clinton was in office they did a complete 180 and were the loudest shriekers when it came to declaring Hillary part of a hereditary monarchy and therefore unfit for higher office (never mind that she’s NOT a member of HIS family, unless you still think wives are property). GOPers even loved the idea of overturning the birth requirement before the Governator came to Jeebus and went all global warming on their asses. Can’t only imagine what they think of that idea NOW.
I never understood why any senior Senator would ever run for the WH when they have so much more power in the Senate. It’s always been that way. The Dems who don’t want the thing overturned understand completely that it allows them to be for something publicly they don’t ever have any intention of passing. It just happens that being an obstructionist plays better to the media right now than being the peacemaker (think Teddy Kennedy). The game and the results haven’t changed, just the branding.
A House Rep has the advantage of abstaining or not showing up ’cause one against 400 doesn’t matter much in the big scheme of things. Or they can go nuclear on some issue ’cause it will play well back home and have the added advantage of never having a snowballs chance of passing in the first place. So Reps get to vote with their hearts on their sleeves and damn the consequences. That’s why so many of the extreme wingnuts fit right into the House.
tim
Oh please. Reid and the Dems could make the Pukes do a live filibuster if they had any balls or integrity or spine. They have none of the above, so they don’t.
Silver Owl
Our senate is filled with immature irresponsible debutantes. Being a Senator these days is not quite as respectable as it once was, now it’s closer to being a country club for aged frat boys.
Mike in NC
Senator John McCain says: “
WeYOU are allGeorgiansPEONS now”ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Cols714:
Why bother. When was the last time the Democratic caucus in the Senate went to the wall to block anything the Republicans really wanted? Since 1980 or so.
I’m not snarking – students of Congressional history help me out here. The Bork SCOTUS nomination and John Tower’s confirmation as SecDef are about the only things I can remember.
What else have the Senate Dems ever done by way of obstruction, when the GOP wants something? Seems like the only plans they are any good at obstructing are Democratic plans.
Chyron HR
@tim:
Wow. I didn’t think you could come up with a rebuttal that would top “waaaah waaaah waaaah”, but there you go.
p.a.
Anyone trying to kill the Electoral College? Would that require a Constitutional Amendment?
BR
@tim:
They can’t, actually, under current rules.
But I think the strongest move they could make is to argue to restore the filibuster to the read-the-phonebook kind at the start of the next congress. GOPers will complain, but they won’t have a leg to stand on, and soon we’ll either see Jim Inhofe in a diaper reading the yellow pages or the GOPers will give up and not filibuster every single thing.
suzanne
Not to be all off-topic and shit, but Judge Bolton just blocked most of SB 1070! WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!
Quiddity
Did you read the quotes in that article. Completely absurd.
e.g. Tester (D-Montana):
Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Napoleon
@tim:
It has been pointed out around a million times that the way the rule works you can not require a “live” filibuster. It makes for a great movie but the rule as it stands isn’t going to require Mitch McConnell to read from a list of Kentuckians who have been convicted of making meth in order to fill up time.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
WRT 61 vs 51:
Well, why not just make it 91 votes to break a fillibuster? I mean, that’s the same as 51, right? There still is that last one vote you have to get…
Or we could go with the Glibertarian view, 100 votes in the senate to pass anything, since government can only do wrong anyway, amirite?
How about we make a new Federal office of Polling, an Independant office, much like the CBO, that polls the country on whether or not a bill should be voted on. Then if more than 51% of america thinks the bill should be voted on, then THAT can break a fillibuster. I don’t know, it’s the most frustrating thing about government (and the fact that you KNOW democrats won’t use it when they are in the minority).
Zifnab
@daveNYC:
It’s about Susan Collins and Blanche Lincoln running the country. I don’t think any of the moderates actually want power handed over to some nutter like Bunning.
Right now there’s a bit of an uprising on the right side of the Senate, with Jim DeMint trying to pull the institution even more rightward than McConnell already has it. You haven’t really seen the Republicans running the Senate yet. Not like you saw them running the House between ’02 and ’05.
Comrade Kevin
A nitpick: If the Senate were really like the House of Lords, we wouldn’t be having these problems.
RareSanity
I don’t think ‘coward’ is the correct description. Describing Democratic Senators as cowards infers knowledge of what is right, but the lack of courage to act. That gives them far to much credit. Any person that can conduct a successful statewide election for a seat in the Senate could not possibly be suffering from cowardice.
They are not cowards, they are socio-pathological. Meaning, the only thing that matters, is what is right for them. What will get me reelected? Who financed my last election? Who will be financing my next election? Who could I impress to set me up with a cushy “consulting” job if I lose my next election?
Socio-pathological behavior explains every single action that Democratic Senators have taken since GWB was elected. Not that the Republicans are any less sociopaths, but, at least they can organize and focus all of their pathologies in the same direction, Democrats can’t even do that.
There is no fix for it. None of us plebes can afford to drop everything for 2-3 years and run for a Senate seat. As long as every election we play another round of musical sociopaths, this is the way it will be.
Here’s the kicker, in order to really change anything, you have to convince a bunch of sociopaths to pass legislation in direct conflict with their self interests…sociopaths don’t do anything they know is not good for them.
fucen tarmal
the percentages could stay the same for filibuster etc, but since we are dreaming a constitution changing fix….why not allow the sitting president to add 20 voting senators to the body…it would get folks to sit up and pay attention, and by naming 20 people, not already in the senate, you would get a better eye for what the presidential candidate is, than we have now. plus, as it stands the prez is the only person elected by national vote, many stay in the senate and house by playing local ball, the new senators would either have to pull votes in strategic areas in the campaign, or be national figures, who address the nation as a whole, not just their district, in the senate.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Quiddity:
here’s my favorite quote:
Better get yurself a Snickers bar – this might take a while. We can start a betting pool on when this great thinker of our time has finished with his cogitations. Put me down for the 5th of Never.
Keith
The Louis C.K. “bag ‘o dicks” bit is probably my favorite one that he does.
MattR
Is that like a Ziploc bag with the dicks smushed in there like chicken parts or a paper shopping bag with the dicks sticking out like baguettes?
/Louis CK (EDIT: see Keith’s comment above this for the link)
Zifnab
@BR: I agree. The 60-vote threshold isn’t the worst part of the filibuster. It’s the rules that let the onus of maintaining the filibuster fall on the majority party. These cloture votes shouldn’t just end with the Senators walking out the back door after the vote. They should be able to keep the Senate in session until the Republicans have said their peace or have run out of breath.
The filibuster was meant to allow unlimited debate, NOT as an avenue to strike down legislation with a 41st vote.
Joseph Nobles
Well, for God’s sakes, let the Republicans have the Senate and be done with the filibuster already.
Of course this is hogwash. Having demonstrated its necessity to their own base this Congress, a Republican Senate majority will suddenly discover a cadre of filibuster addicts within their own ranks. It will be terribly shocking. I’m canning some pepper jelly to be served over cream cheese at the party where we can all be shocked together.
RareSanity
@artem1s:
Because the President gets his own house, plane, helicopter and army…
Kryptik
So, I’m told that the Journolist thing has finally managed to hit Politico to where Harris is blaming the decline of journalism on ‘liberal bloggers’.
Who wants to make a bet that Journolist now makes it to Senate hearings before say….Breitbart does? Or any sort of filibuster reform does? Or a climate bill makes it past cloture? Or anything that doesn’t manage to blame the downfalls of all America on Radical Maobama and his leftist bombthrowers?
fghsghhds….
MattR
@p.a.:
There is currently a group trying to make an end run around the need for a Constitutional Amendment by passing legislation at the state level that would grant that state’s electors to the winner of the national popular vote with the caveat that there must be enough other states with the same law so that combined they represent more than 50% of all electors in the Electoral College.
Southern Beale
The difference between 51 votes and 60 only matters in the current context of the makeup of the Senate. We won’t always have 59 votes. My point is, it doesn’t matter, there will always be a President Nelson or President Blanche Lincoln or President Snowe.
Here’s what I don’t get: how come Bush was able to do whatever the fuck he wanted when the Republicans didn’t have anything close to 60 votes in the Senate? How come he was able to go to war–twice–and give his wealthy buddies tax cuts and gut civil rights and eavesdrop on Americans and all sorts of things when he just had 50 votes in the Senate, and Dick Cheney to break a tie? For that matter: he was able to steal a freaking election when Al Gore was Vice President and could break a tie.
What about when the makeup of the Senate was 51-49 in favor of Democrats? We were told over and over again that we needed MORE Democrats in the Senate to get anything done, so we not only did that in 2008 but we gave them the damn White House and we STILL can’t get shit done because we need more than 60 Democrats in the Senate? Give me a break. We could have 100 Democrats in the Senate and they’d still find an excuse why they can’t do any better than GOP-lite.
Our politics is hopelessly, horribly broken and the filibuster is only an excuse.
Stooleo
I’d like to see the Senate not get rid of the filibuster, but limit the number of times it can be used in a session. That way it forces both parties to engage in the process, but if something really odious comes up the minority could block it.
Southern Beale
… adding, we wouldn’t have a President Nelson if our Democratic leadership could actually, you know, lead …
(and just to clarify my comment above, yes I know Olympia Snowe is a Republican … )
stuckinred
PHOENIX — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.
Cols714
@Chyron HR: They didn’t filibuster Bork.
NobodySpecial
But why waste time trying to remove a Ben Nelson or a Max Baucus? We’re never gonna get any better than them, right? I mean, America is a great center-right nation, and hippies have next to no power or say in how things go. Unless, of course, the hippies say they like something, which is the kiss of death for both legislation and nominees.
This post was brought to you by the Committee of Nothing Can Be Done!
Southern Beale
The Very Serious Erick Erickson says there is “growing evidence” that the government caused the BP oil spill:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007280022
CNN’s credibility takes another hit.
MattR
@Southern Beale: I am reminded of the episode of the Simpsons where they go to Australia and Homer discovers that the American embassy is considered American soil. He stands right outside the entrance and says “Look, I’m in Australia” then jumps a step over into the embassy and says “Now I’m in the US” then jumps back across and says “Now I’m in Australia”. He does this a couple more times until he jumps back into the embassy and the guard knocks him on his ass, saying “We don’t tolerate that kind of crap in the US”. That guard is basically the Republican party. They don’t tolerate the kind of “most times we’re with you” attitude of Nelson, Lieberman, etc. It did not hurt that they could always offer to send holdouts on a hunting trip with Cheney.
fasteddie9318
@Southern Beale:
He didn’t get everything he wanted; amazingly, considering it’s going to eventually happen anyway, the Dems didn’t roll over on privatizing SS and defeated that. Bush also didn’t get his immigration reforms passed, but that was mostly over opposition within his own party. There were a handful of other things along the way too, but there was never a perception that the GOP majority was routinely having its ass handed to it by the minority party on major initiatives the way there is about the Democrats. Part of that reflects reality, but part of it also is a corporate media that’s only too happy to paint Democrats as bumbling fools if it helps get the industrial titan-friendly Republicans back in charge. Part of it also is the nature of the major initiatives Bush was able to pass; wars will always be supported, as will tax cuts, and all the encroachments on civil liberties came in the shadow of ZOMG TEH WORSTEST THING TAHT EVAR HAPPENED TO ANYBODY, when Democrats were pissing themselves over the fear of swarthy terrorists and the fear of being seen as weak on fighting swarthy terrorism.
Davis X. Machina
@Southern Beale:
Then, as now, there are at least three parties in the Senate, from which a governing coalition from time to time is cobbled together.
There are:
1. the Democratic senators who are Democrats,
2. the Democratic senators who are Republicans
3. the Republican senators who are Republicans.
(There used to be Republican Senators who are Democrats — Javits, Brooke, Hatfield, Chaffee, Stafford; Snowe and Collins five years ago — but they’re extinct. )
Bush could count on 2 and 3. Obama’s got 1, mostly, most days.
Only a little more than one-third of the Senate actually improves their political prospects by standing with the president. The Republicans-who-are-Republicans certainly don’t. Two or three Democrats-who-are-Democrats (Russ Feingold, e.g.) on any given day can decide that they don’t, either.
What’s left isn’t enough left to defeat a filibuster. There are barely enough Senators left to pass a bill.
Nick
@Napoleon:
And that’s going to solve this problem how? You can’t put this on Reid. He hates the filibuster and wants it reformed. Leadership hates the filibuster because it takes power from their hands and into the deciding Senators.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
No, you’re right, Senator Scott Kleeb sure proved us wrong and you right.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Southern Beale:
In reality we have three ideological groups: a center-left party of milquetoast social democrats, a center-right party of banksters, oligarchs and MIC patronage vultures, and a far-right party of neo-Confederates, Xtianists, and bloodthirsty crypto-fascists.
Each group commands the alliegance of roughly 1/3 of the electorate. The first two groups more or less caucus together as the Democratic Party and the third group (with some participation from elements of the oligarchic group) is the GOP.
When any two of these groups combine together and are willing to make it stick, they have enough votes to overcome all but the most stubborn resistance from the third group. Right now the oligarchs are right where they want to be, sitting in the middle between the other two groups cutting deals and collecting rent.
If the center-left group wants to get anything on their agenda passed, then they are going to have to find something the oligarchs really want and hold it hostage. So far we haven’t done a very good job of that. Holding TARP hostage would have been a perfect opportunity, but that didn’t happen.
RareSanity
Off Topic, but this is some good news from my home, the oasis of the south, Atlanta:
Also…
And the NPR affiliate:
Bobby Thomson
OT, but Jan Brewer ordered to eat a bag of dicks by federal district judge.
fasteddie9318
@Nick:
I don’t think it’s about punishing Reid as much as it’s about threatening Baucus, Nelson, et al with losing their chairmanships unless they straighten the fuck up. If the Republicans are going to control the body anyway via the filibuster, why not just let them control the body via the Majority Leader’s floor powers?
Davis X. Machina
If the status quo delivers everything you could ask for, the number of potential useful hostages is indeed very, very small.
(Philological note: Agenda is a Latin neuter plural future participle, ‘Things to be done’. Conservatives don’t want anything done. So, there is no ‘conservative agenda’.
Nick
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Social Security privatization, 2006. Do you people create your own alternate reality?
MattR
@RareSanity:
Heh
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Then somebody please explain to me why the DFHs were such morons for seeking out the 60th vote for the Public Option, whereas the pragmatists have been harping on filibuster reform for several months now. This ought to be good.
Common Sense
Buncha Tea Bag nutters in a rich Texas suburb commit voter fraud. REAL voter fraud, the kind that actually swings an election.
Nick
@fasteddie9318:
Well Nelson doesn’t have a chairmanship and in the Senate, the ranking member has almost the same power as chairman anyway.
The thing about the Senate is very little individual power changes whether you’re in the majority or minority, and you need 51 votes to be majority leader. So if a handful of Dems decide not to vote with the chosen majority leader, the Senate doesn’t even go into session. It doesn’t threaten their chairmanships, it threatens the entire country.
Mark S.
@BR:
I agree. The problem is this might cut into the Senate’s standard five day weekends. They need these long weekends to
return home to their constituentshoover up money from their corporate johns.On a more serious note, I wouldn’t be that opposed to the filibuster if it weren’t used for every goddamned thing. It’s a completely dysfunctional system that generally favors Republicans since they generally don’t care if anything ever gets passed besides tax cuts and military spending.
MattR
@Nick:
I think there is a decent argument to be made that Bush’s plan was not something that Congressional Republicans really wanted. If anything, I would say that opposing the nomination of John Bolton among others was probably where Democrats had the most success in stopping the Republicans from getting something they wanted.
Omnes Omnibus
Good ol’ Barry McGuire had it right more or less around the time I was born.
fasteddie9318
He’s got two subcommittee chairs, one of which is in the Appropriations Committee. Nothing to sneeze at.
jl
Anyone consider a constitutional amendment outlawing filibuster? As in, requiring majority rule to bring measure to a vote.
Living in California, I should know that writing too much stuff into a constitution is not in general a good idea. But if both parties evolve to make the abuse of a custom a rule, and one party takes it to very harmful extremes, then maybe an amendment writing sensible rules for the Senate would be a good idea.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Nick:
I left that out because IIRC that was blocked in the House by the Dem caucus – Pelosi made a big point of pounding the table on that issue, it was one of the feathers in her cap before she became Madame Speaker. Please educate me if I’m wrong.
RareSanity
@MattR:
I got this off of the “radio and tv” blog on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website. Of course, we know that the author, drawing an obvious conclusion from the facts that he, himself presented, would disqualify him as a “serious” journalist.
You know, impartiality and all of that…
fasteddie9318
Shoveling trillions in Social Security money to Wall Street isn’t what they want?
Glidwrith
@Napoleon: Yes, it has been pointed out, but then we see Reid keeping Bunning from going to see his game and forcing a more classic filibuster. I also remember at least one other time, though I can’t bring the details to mind. So, can someone clarify how we can’t have a classic filibuster because the rules supposedly don’t allow it, yet we’ve got at least two incidents this past year where it sure looked like the Lords were forced to stay and actually do the work of a filibuster?
Southern Beale
All good arguments folks, and this is why (my own political junkie-hood notwithstanding) I am ever more convinced that politics is a waste of time and energy.
I’ve said it before a thousand times but if you *really* want to change things, the best platform for doing so is in the realm of the culture. Music, literature, theater, film, art, comedy, satire … these are areas where liberal thought still prevails.
I am more and more of the belief that politics is a dead end. Politics is about power, and progressives will never be allowed to have it because the plutocrats have too much vested in maintaining the status quo and pacifying the masses with Tea Party bread and circuses. For crying out loud, how is it possible that we had Big Oil running the American government for 8 years, during which time we quite predictably went to war in the Middle East, yet this was never, every talked about openly except on a few DFH blogs?
We can change the nation and indeed the world but we must first spread our message through the creative arts. Get busy, people.
Cacti
Well, the problem with the Senate is that it was designed thwart the popular will. For all the talk of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, they were a rather elitist bunch.
The Senate, the Electoral College, limiting the vote to property owners; all of these things were placed in the constitution with the intention of throwing a road block in the way of the hoi polloi.
The Senate needs more than rules changes. The entire institution needs a structural overhall. This will never happen though, as the small states would never support a constitutional amendment that took away their wildly disproportionate representation in the upper chamber.
p.a.
33 milquetoast social dems? (assuming 1/3 of the electorate=1/3 of senators). oh if it were only so!
fasteddie9318
@Southern Beale:
Hell, the fact that our idiot media insists on treating the white, upper-middle-class, pro-big business Tea Party, one of whose platform issues is the repeal of popular elections for the Senate, as “the masses” tells you how much of a lost cause this whole thing is.
Davis X. Machina
@Southern Beale
Spoken by someone who’s never seen me sing or act…our message is not ‘Run for your lives!’ is it?
MattR
@fasteddie9318:
That is exactly what they want. But generally, they try to be subtle about the fact that they are doing that. And subtelty was not Bush’s strong suit.
@Cacti:
I am not arguing with your facts. I am just saying that I have seen enough stupidity from the population that I can understand why the Founding Fathers were wary of giving unchecked power to the masses. To paraphrase George Carlin, “Think about how stupid the average American is. Now realize that half the country is dumber than that.”
MattR
@Davis X. Machina:
You do comedy pretty good though.
Southern Beale
Face
H’ackivist judge, natch.
Lawnguylander
Is “the Democrats never used the filibuster the new” “Bush got everything he wanted through Congress?” Or just a new flavor of the same old cry that isn’t factually true but feels like it must be? The Democrats when in the minority under Bush used the filibuster pretty frequently. Not as often as the Republicans have over the past years* but come on, stop making shit up.
*On a deadline so don’t have the time to get into the weeds on this but maybe one of my readers can find the data and do a comparison. /loadberg
Southern Beale
Ooops, that was supposed to be:
“You do comedy pretty good though.”
Ditto.
Don’t know how to do the blockquote thingie you guys are doing I guess.
jl
@Cacti:
I agree in general that they were elitist. But ‘thwart’ might be too harsh a term. In conversation with Jefferson, Washington said that the purpose of the Senate was to ‘cool’ legislation, he did not say ‘to always thwart them commies in the House’.
Also where did they require a property test for voting. They left most voting qualifications to the states. And property requirements in some of the more egalitarian states, mostly in the mid-Atlantic region got higher in the early nineteenth century. At the time, allowing the states to set most of the requirements meant low property requirements in some northern states at the time of the Convention, if not 20 or 30 years later.
And one of the purposes early legislation under AofC and Constitution was to provide funds for widespread ‘communist’ public education to encourage a more ‘elite’ population of voters.
So, I don’t think the supposed elitism of the Founders is a good argument for or against anything we should propose now.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@jl:
You’d either need 2/3 of the Senate to approve it or you’d have to convene a Constitutional Convention. The former won’t happen per John Cole and the latter would be a very bad idea, as it would quickly devolve into a clown show of every addlepated right-wing trope you can imagine.
malraux
@fasteddie9318: It’s not like SS privatization ever came up for a vote or anything. What doomed it was the massive response to the issue from voters. Certainly it wasn’t the filibuster that saved it.
@Zifnab:
Oh please. The purpose of the filibuster has been to protect the interests of white southerners.
Southern Beale
I other news, did anyone else get a by-invitation-only survey today fro Hart Research Associates? I suspect it was commissioned by the DSCC as many of the questions were of the “under what circumstances would you contribute to the DSCC” variety. Their fundraising must have taken a huge hit.
lol
@Nick:
Bush’s social security privatization scheme didn’t have a majority in either the House or Senate. Bush’s failed initiatives didn’t fail because of the filibuster, they failed because they were horrendously unpopular even with Republican electeds.
Democrats successfully filibustered… what? Three judges? when they were in the minority.
Between the DINOs and Dems like Russ Feingold (who defers to the President, except when the President is a Democrat), Bush had all the votes he needed to get shit past the Senate, filibuster or no.
Brien Jackson
@Southern Beale:
Well, if that were true, why isn’t the House having that problem on every vote?
jl
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Then go the state legislature route. If that takes a long time, then more the reason to get the effort started now.
I do not consider fear of nutcases trotting out right wing tropes a good reason at all for not doing or proposing something. These tropes will be trotted out anyway for something else. That fearful attitude is defeatist, and will eventually result (or maybe already has resulted) in sensible people doing and proposing measures that are too little, too weak and too late, in a timid way.
Look, the right wing nut cases are coming for everybody who does not jump in 100% with their racket. Look at the disgusting charges of death panelism over a scientific dispute over the proper use of Avastia (Edit, sorry, the name of the drug is Avastin) today (featuring those exemplars of integrity Vitter and Breitbart on front page of Talkingpointsmemo today).
These people are coming for you, no matter who you are or what you do, and being timid because you fear that scoundrels trotting out right wing tropes will always win the day is a loser strategy. If you believe trotting out right wing tropes trumps everything, even common sense and truth, in this country, then you should be making plans to emigrate.
my name here
Since it has been a general theme in this conversation I feel I should add some perspective on the whole “lets go back to a real, read the phonebook kind of filibuster.” The reason that was changed, and has never been reimplemented , is because those rules hurt the MAJORITY, not the minority. That jackass reading the phonebook can call for a quorum at any time, and if there aren’t at least a certain number of senators there (I believe it is 40 but I could be wrong on that) then the senate adjourns and phonebook reader gets to go home and sleep. So that means obstructionist needs to keep 1 guy on hand, people trying to do shit have to keep a bunch more on hand to stop him from just adjourning the session. This is why they changed it, and why its never going to go back the way it was.
lol
@Southern Beale:
They’re probably building a fundraising model to target future solicitations. It’s what successful fundraising organizations. Why would you assume they’re fundraising has taken a “huge hit”?
Brien Jackson
@tim:
Going with this again? Really?
Please just fuck off.
lol
@my name here:
I think you just described how the filibuster currently works, not how it previously worked.
MattR
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I don’t think there is any legislation that could be passed that would make me flee this country, but the results of a Constitutional Convention are an entirely different matter.
Southern Beale
I think the House is a completely different animal from the Senate procedurally, is it not?
Davis X. Machina
@Brien Jackson: Patience. Give it time. It’s still several repetitions short of magically becoming true.
Southern Beale
Why would you assume they’re fundraising has taken a “huge hit”?
Aside from the fact that I’m no longer donating to them, you mean?
:-)
I think the sucky economy and lack of motivation by the base are 2 reasons, off the top of my head….
jl
@MattR: Passing a single amendment is not the same as having another constitutional convention. The constitution has provisions for passing amendments, and the addition of amendments started immediately after the Constitution was adopted, with the Bill of Rights, and then the fix for election of President and VP.
So, I was not proposing anything radical that should make people fear to stay in the US.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
Hate to break this to you, John, but part of the reason this doesn’t get done is Rahm-Obama-Lama-Ding-Dong.
The main reason the Republic Party leadership gets almost unanimous votes is that they threaten people with loss of leadership positions or committee assignments. For example, President Collins is on Appropriations (money) and Armed Services (military bases). President Snowe is on Finance (money) and Commerce (fisheries).
When Mitch McConnell needs to block something and they’re not going along, he asks them whether they’d prefer to be on Veterans Affairs or Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (to name two of the least popular).
(If anyone wants to learn which committees suck, look at where the least consequential senators serve. Everyone gets one loser, but the people out of favor get a bunch.)
When Holy Joe Lieberman– who’d just finished campaigning for John McCain– was in danger of losing his chairmanship, who lobbied publicly for him? Guess which of his staff members is telling Harry Reid that he doesn’t want Ben Nelson punished– that they’re worried he’d just switch parties?
The Republican leadership doesn’t care if it puts members in an untenable position– forcing them to cast votes that make it tough for them to hold seats (Boehner is better on this, because the House doesn’t have a filibuster, so he lets people go if he knows he’ll lose.) That might backfire in the 2010 election– if it does, they might back off (although they might keep going off the cliff.)
Democrats, on the other hand, will do anything to keep the gavels, even if the member is no help to them– or even if it hurts them (“You have 99 senators and still can’t pass anything”).
Partly that’s because Obama is a nice guy who doesn’t want to be seen as playing politics. He doesn’t want to tell Dan Akaka that his seats on Arned Services and Indian Affairs (which also includes Hawaiian natives) are in play.
Partly it’s because Rahm doesn’t care about substance. He’s telling people “As long as we pass a bill that has something to do with energy, we can tell voters we acted on climate change. ” And he’s still convinced that Obama passed more health care than he needed to.
They’re not to blame for the entire problem… but they’re not making it better. I’ll tell you one story that I just heard.
In Ohio, “Landslide” Lee Fisher is running for George Voinovich’s seat. Fisher is a terrible campaigner who will need all the help he can get if he expects to win (I don’t think he has a prayer).
Sherrod Brown and his political guy John Ryan have told Fisher that if he expects help, he’s got to come out publicly and say he’s committed to ending the filibuster. Rahm didn’t just say “You don’t have to”– he said “If you want help from the president, don’t do it. We do not want to be seen as trying to stack the Senate and we’re taking the position that the filibuster is entirely up to the Senate, and the WHite House will not get involved.”
Really kinda hard to change things when that’s how the big dog thinks.
Brien Jackson
@Lawnguylander:
I’d modify it somewhat to “the Democrats didn’t filibuster everything that came up, and didn’t force cloture votes and literally every procedural matter the Senate faced.” Sounds like a matter of degree, but it’s really quite an important point.
gene108
I’m glad the filibuster exists. Democrats using it or threatening to use it is one of the main reasons Republicans couldn’t open ANWR up to drilling during Bush, Jr.’s first term.
There will come a time, when Republicans take back control of at least one branch of Congress and I don’t want those bastards to be able to pass crap at will. All they’ll need in the Senate is 50 votes, if they have the White House, since the V.P. would cast tie breakers for them.
Reforming the filibuster shouldn’t be to just let a simple majority pass crap, but to find a way to keep from being abused like it has been during this session of Congress.
Brien Jackson
@lol:
That’s somewhat assymetrical by nature though. Republicans really only care about cutting taxes, and they can do that with reconcilliation. There’s no particular social policy they really want to enact through Congress that Democrats could block with the filibuster. On the other hand, by forcing Republicans to go through the reconciliation process, Democrats did make the Bush tax cuts temporary, which isn’t nothing.
Brien Jackson
@Southern Beale:
Yeah; the Senate has the filibuster, the House doesn’t.
MattR
@jl: Though it has never actually happened, the conventional wisdom is that if a Constitutional Convention is called to ammend the Constitution the only possible restrictions on the scope of the convention would be those placed on it by the states who called the convention. And if the convention goes beyond its scope in proposing an ammendment and that ammendment is properly ratified by the states, there is quite a bit of doubt whether or not it would be valid.
But the other part of my point is that it is only a change to the foundation of this country that would cause me to seriously consider leaving (or when my medical bills force me to Canada)
@Brien Jackson: The House also doesn’t operate under the same unanimous consent rules, IIRC
Davis X. Machina
They may only be able to do that via reconciliation. The 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts were both passed that way.
kindness
Ya know, welfare wasn’t created to help poor people. Welfare was created so that America wouldn’t go through it’s own French Revolution. The Rich, the Haves understood that and acted according to their own self interests in allowing Welfare to become law.
All too many ‘very important people’ seem to blindly forget there are consequences any longer. Now I’m not suggesting we overthrow the government or start offing those we don’t agree with….but this is America and this America is very highly armed. Me thinks that some of these folks have forgotten how easy it would be to throw some nitwit over the edge and have them run around and kill some of these ‘very important people’. All you have to do is remember the DC Sniper case. Wasn’t that long ago.
The right wing nuts have the numbers and the crazed ideas….but it will only take one or two deranged lefties to make a bunch of ‘very important’ pine boxes. I don’t look forward to that and hope it doesn’t ever happen.
suzanne
@Face:
Oh, God, I am just LOVING watching Brewer eat this shit sandwich.
malraux
@gene108: You have to weigh the victory of not opening up anwr with delaying the ending of jim crow for quite a long time, not stopping lynching for a long time, the failure to establish some form of universal healthcare for half a century, etc. It also means that some form of carbon pricing is going to be delayed for another decade, the US economy will be rather poor for who knows how long, etc.
On balance, a supermajority requirement is a bad idea.
Davis X. Machina
I think the presumption has to be is that the amendment would be valid.
The 1787 Constitutional Convention went far beyond the mandate given it by the Articles Congress, but the product of the Convention, ratified by a process established by the Convention and existing only in that product, held up regardless.
Frank
@MattR:
As I recall, about 25% of our population still believe that Iraq attacked us on 911.
Scott P.
Sorry, Woodstock was a lot of fun but it didn’t do a lick to advance liberal causes in the nation.
ed drone
@Davis X. Machina:
Maybe we need a word for ‘an agenda of inaction.’
Antigenda?
Retrogenda?
Undo-genda?
Agendon’t?
Republican Dance Card?
Ed
Frank
@Frank: @gene108:
Yes, but can’t it be repealed just as easily since there is no filibuster?
And isn’t this how it works in just about any other democratic country, ie no filibuster? If it can work fine in other countries, why not here?
Thomas Coats
@Davis X. Machina: Pedant’s Note: Agenda is actually a gerundive, not a future participle.
Lawnguylander
@Brien Jackson: Yes, their use of it is in many ways unprecedented and insane and I could have made my comment with more detail and more care. I just wanted to point out that it’s nonsense to say that the Democrats have never used it and that they would never use it if in the future they’re a minority again.
ed drone
@Nick:
How can the country be threatened when the legislature (in this case, Senate) is not in session?
Ed
Bill H
Ending the filibuster means that the party in the minority is rendered utterly powerless, almost to the degree that it is pointless for them even to bother to attend sessions of Congress, which is a good idea only if you are in the majority. Democrats think right now that it’s a good idea, but it will seem less so when they become the minority.
The point is that the filibuster rule is not bad in itself; it provides the minority with a voice, and assures that the minority is allowed to remain a part of the governing process. It provides balance in governance, preventing ideology from running rampant.
There is no question that the rule is being abused at this point, but that does not mean that the rule should be abolished, thereby damaging the integrity of our governance. The problem is not the rule itself, the problem is the current abuse of the rule. There should be found some way of preventing the abuse of a rule that has actually served us well for a very long time.
Drivers on our freeways abuse the speed limits regularly. Does that mean that we should abolish speed limits?
JasonF
Nobody is ever going to read from the phonebook on the Senate floor ever again for the simple reason that the combination of partisan think tanks with 24-hour news channels and C-Span means that if you make a Senator speechify for hours on end, he’s going to speechify with canned talking points, not the phone book. Bringing back the old filibuster would be a perfect way to give the Republicans hours on end to spew their nonsense to a captive audience.
MattR
Is there any chance of getting bipartisan support for some kind of filibuster reform if it does not take effect until 2020 or 2024? Or would y’all like some of what I’m smoking?
@JasonF: Could this work like advertising where a certain amount of repetition gets it into your head, but once you hit a “critical mass” it becomes annoying and counterproductive.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@jl:
The problem is that you’re going to have to get 2/3 (then 3/4 to ratify) of the states to consider your proposal. There is no path to this without some of the south, plains and mountain west going along with you, so problem one is finding the coalition to even consider filibuster reform. Problem two is that they might agree to talk about it provided we get to talk first about the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, the Flag Desecration Amendment, the Jesus Christ is Our Lord and Saviour Amendment, etc. Sometime in 2035 the Convention will finally get around to considering filibuster reform.
Amending the Constitution is hard, it’s only been done 17 times since the Bill of Rights.
my name here
@Bill H:
Interesting then that the minority party in the house routinely shows up.
Davis X. Machina
@ed drone: Damned if I know. It just tickles me that ‘conservative agenda’ belongs in the same bucket with ‘Colorless green ideas….’
The Romans were sooooo conservative….
How conservative were they, Johnny?
They were so conservative that the phrase rēs novae, ‘new things’, was also the word for ‘revolution’.
(My first boss, a lapsed classicist, was such a stickler for detail that when there was only one item for discussion at a meeting he circulated an agendum. True.)
lol
@Bill H:
How has it served us very well? Name all the terrible legislation that died thanks to the filibuster.
Now, name all the great forward-thinking legislation that died or was watered-down because of the filibuster. Guess which group is bigger.
It’s a tool to preserve the status quo and nothing else.
And I’m fine with being in the minority and not having the filibuster.
Lawnguylander
Also, DSCC Outraises NRSC in June, Retakes Cash Lead.
Brien Jackson
@Bill H:
Your analogy doesn’t hold up. Speeders risk getting caught and fined, getting in an accident, etc. The voters hold the filibuster against the majority party because by and large they don’t understand what’s going on. It’s an either or thing; either you give the minority veto power over the chamber or you don’t.
Mark S.
@Bill H:
That isn’t true at all. Yes, if you only had 41 seats, you’d be pretty damn powerless (and rightfully so), but most of the time one party doesn’t have that big of a majority. If it were 53-47 or something you’d only have to siphon off 3 or 4 votes, which is very doable in the Senate.
Mark S.
@Davis X. Machina:
Dear God that’s dorky.
Davis X. Machina
@Mark S.: All a finely calibrated performance — turned it on and off like a faucet. Great administrator, too, because he could turn it on and off. Nothing’s worse than being bossed by someone who’s conflated what they do with who they are, or vice versa.
licensed to kill time
@ed drone:
Nogenda. Maybe Nullgenda.
Joseph Nobles
Not too far OT:
Fallen Soldiers’ Families Denied Cash as Insurers Profit
Monsters. How is this not class warfare? Evil, despicable monsters.
NR
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: This. A thousand times this.
Lots of people don’t know this, but after Clinton won in 1992, the Republican leadership was terrified that they were going to get steamrolled. They thought that Clinton was going to be able to pick off the moderates in their caucus (back then, there still were some) and push through whatever he wanted.
So you know what they did? They got all their caucus members together and told them that if they voted for anything on Clinton’s agenda without being given express permission to do so by the leadership, they would get a well-funded primary challenger in their next election. Many of their members complained that these challenges would result in their seats falling to the Democrats in the general election, and the leadership responded that they didn’t care if the challenge would cost them the seat in the general. Their position was that if their members were going to be voting for Clinton’s agenda, they might as well have an actual Democrat in the seat, because they weren’t going to be any worse off.
In this way, the Republicans were able to enforce tremendous party discipline. Bob Dole held on to 43 votes in the Senate and killed most of Clinton’s agenda (with help from Sam Nunn and some other Democratic pains in the ass). The only things Clinton was able to pass were a few very popular measures like the Family and Medical Leave Act, and what he was able to pass through reconciliation. The Republicans blocked Clinton at every turn, and they were rewarded for it – we all know what happened in the 1994 elections.
The Democrats could exercise this same kind of discipline over their caucus. But they won’t do it. Whether it’s cowardice, incompetence, or complicity with the monied interests who want to block reform is largely an academic question.
The problem isn’t the filibuster, it’s the Democrats.
Animals of the Fo'c'sle
If the Obama administration doesn’t help the House get filibuster reform, the House should school the Senate and the Obama administration in the fine points of the Constitution.
“No spending bills will originate from the House until we get up-or-down votes on these bills.”
Bill H
@my name here:
Well, yes, the filibuster hasn’t been ended.
@Mark S.:
I’m talking about issues on which parties maintain unanimity.
@Brien Jackson:
It wasn’t an analogy, other than saying that one doesn’t attack the rule, one attacks those who are breaking (abusing) the rule. Rules are not bad, assholes are bad.
Citizen Alan
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not to be contrarian or anything because I really do want to see the filibuster abolished, but it seems to me that the only reason the Bush tax cuts are going to expire next year (assuming gutless cowardly Democrats don’t make them permanent) is because of the filibuster. The Republicans couldn’t get 60 votes to pass those tax cuts permanently, so they used reconciliation to bypass the filibuster rules. As I understand it, reconciliation bills can’t increase the federal deficit, so the Repukes got around that limitation by having the changes sunset in 2010 at which point a miracle of lax accounting means you don’t have to count all that lost revenue in the budget process. Had there been no filibuster in 2003, the Republicans would have likely been able to abolish the estate tax permanently.
My Name Here
@Bill H:
There is no filibuster in the house, or are you saying that the presence of the filibuster in the senate keeps the minority party present in the house? And if that is what you are saying, then why do minority parties show up in, for example, England, where there is no filibuster or similar provisions that I am aware of?
Just Some Fuckhead
There will be no reason for Republicans to nuke the filibuster if they regain power. They don’t have any problems picking up enough Democratic votes to pass legislation.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Citizen Alan:
That is a very good example. Thanks for remembering that.
So thus far the What have the
RomansSenate Dems ever done for us? list stands at:spiked the Bork SCOUTS nom
spiked the Tower SecDef confirmation
forced a sunset date on the Bush tax cuts
might have helped a little on killing SS privatization
What else have I missed? Anybody else?
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@NR: Yeah, I know that story. People make fun of Newt– and he was a complete disaster when he got the gavel. But, man, was he ever good at tactics He told Dole that if he’d hold the fort in the Senate, he could run for president in 1996 as Majority Leader. (And, if he didn’t, that Trent Lott would be Leader.)
I honestly don’t know if that would work if the Dems tried it. I don’t know if you’ve ever read John Barry’s book about Jim Wright (absolutely fantastic work), but when Wright tried that level of discipline, he had real problems. (Although he and Tony Coelho also had ethics issues and Newt nailed them.)
But, man, I’d sure like to see that tried– with support from the White House. Beats the hell out of where this approach is heading.