By Hanlon, on March 2nd, 2010 at 06:11 PM
 I’ve got my fingers crossed that this is going to start a trend. One that will put an end to the Grand Ol’ Party’s filibuster-fueled stranglehold on our legislative process.
So we’ve got Jim Bunning. The former MLB pitcher has made some waves recently by blocking an extension on unemployment benefits. After all, if you’re in a recession that’s costing jobs, obviously the one thing to do that won’t piss off everyone is shut down unemployment insurance. That’s just simple stuff, there.
Well the Dems have had enough, and they’ll let him filibuster, sure. All goddamn night if he wants.
“We’re not having four votes,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday following a weekly Conference luncheon in which Democrats rejected the GOP offer. Although Reid and his colleagues are willing to allow one vote on a pay-for — the original agreement Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) cut last week — they see no reason to go further in mollifying Bunning.
Although no final decisions have been made, Democrats confirmed it is increasingly likely that Democrats will force Bunning into an actual filibuster of unemployment insurance extension Tuesday night by repeatedly offering up unanimous consent agreements to bring the bill to a vote.
The thing is, we may have hit a “tipping point” of sorts. Over the past few years, the Republicans have been filibustering like it was going out of style, using it as the insta-stopper on everything and anything that they felt would be advantageous to block, either because they disagreed with it or because they felt that doing so would look good on the 2010 campaign trail.
It looks like they’ve overplayed their hand, though. The Republicans have been playing a severely shortsighted game for a while, hoping to reap rewards in the current news cycle without considering what will happen down the road. Nonstop filibustering might seem great today, tomorrow, and next week, but there are two big things to consider:
- Weak as they are, the Dems have their breaking point like anyone else. Filibuster too many times and they’ll figure out that there is no chance of consensus, so instead the task will shift from compromise to force. Eventually Charlie’s gonna figure out that Lucy won’t hold the ball.
- As great as it seems in terms of winning an election cycle, what then? Let’s say, hypothetically, that the Republicans take Congress back this year. What they’ll have done is use Senate rules that allow the minority to hold the chamber hostage… and then give that power to the other team. They’ll have set a rather unpleasant precedent.
Me, I’m optimistic that this is the beginning of a trend, because that’s the exact method by which I’ve said time and time again we can finally break the cycle of filibustering. Make the minority party actually fucking do it and you’ll see just how passionate they are about blocking that legislation.
By Hanlon, on March 1st, 2010 at 06:38 PM
 I’ve always been a bit wary of cries to change the Senate rules over the current spat of filibuster abuse. From my perspective, the problem isn’t so much in design as in execution in that the fault lies largely in the form of the “gentleman’s agreement” that states that there needn’t be an actual filibuster, only the threat of one. In my eyes, the problem can be resolved via non-legislative means.
That said, Tom Harkin makes some great points, and even has a damn good solution.
That is why I recently introduced legislation to change the Senate rules with regard to the filibuster. Under my proposal, over an eight-day period, the number of votes needed to end a filibuster would progressively decline from the 60 votes needed currently down to a simple majority.
In 1995, when Democrats were in the minority, I introduced the same proposal. My feeling was then, as it is now, that use of the filibuster would only continue to ratchet up unless we broke the cycle. The fact is, elections should have consequences. If the nation elects a majority of Republicans to the Senate, as it did in 1995, then after the minority has an opportunity to make its case, the majority should prevail. And it should be the same when voters send a majority of Democrats to the Senate. If the people do not like how the majority is governing, they have the ability to change the composition of the Senate at the next election.
Harkin’s key point, which is rooted in a concern of James Madison’s, is that we are in a situation where anything south of a supermajority can be rendered impotent if a particularly nefarious minority party wants it to be so. Doubt me? Listen to, read, and watch the discussion on whatever bill may be contentious this week. Notice how the phrasing is that the Democrats “lack the 60 vote to pass” the bill. Not to “break the filibuster”, but to pass. We’ve arrived at a point where as long as the Republicans have 41 votes, legislation cannot move forward. Period.
Whichever party does it, though, it’s patently anti-American. Not in the sense of against our ethos, but in the sense of against its people. When your party gets stomped in two running elections and you go from controlling all three branches to only having a tenuous grasp on the judicial, it means the people want the other guys to run things for a while. Yet here are the Republicans, in a severe minority, spitting in the faces of the American people who often overwhelmingly support the legislation the GOP is busting its ass to put to a halt.
However, I have to say, proposing this bit of legislation could prove brilliant if the Republicans filibuster. It would practically be advertising itself.
By Hanlon, on February 11th, 2010 at 08:58 PM
That’s the number of cloture motions that have been filed by the Senate just since last fucking January.
This year, 7 out of 22 votes were cloture motions. Meaning 32% of our Senate’s votes have been cloture motions.
Our Congress is a joke.
By Hanlon, on February 2nd, 2010 at 10:49 AM
…of a totally routine nomination. Ready to get pissed off? Here we go!
In a particularly pugnacious move, the GOP insisted Monday evening on a 60-vote threshold for a fairly middle-of-the-road nominee to be solicitor general at the Department of Labor. To be sure, Patricia Smith, the New York State Labor Commissioner, wouldn’t be nominated by a Republican president and has the support of the AFL-CIO. But she also has the backing of New York business groups and local Chambers of Commerce, as well as GOP members of the New York House delegation.
Still, for Senate Republicans, she might as well have been Karl Marx and Van Jones wrapped into one.
Every Republican who showed up voted to sustain a filibuster against her nomination. As a result, it took every member of the Democratic caucus to end the filibuster, on a 60-32 vote. In a normal legislative body, a 2-1 vote is a rout. In today’s Senate, it’s a squeaker.
This is where the GOP has brought us. They’re bitching and whining about reconciliation possibly being used on health care, but they’re filibustering absolutely everything.
The Republicans have turned the filibuster from a desperate measure to daily routine. Remember this chart?
Welcome to the Republican minority. Bring government to a grinding halt and then call it leadership. Of course, Obama’s actually slightly wrong. When the right is worried that these liberal commies are going to turn the USA into the USSR, spending four years stopping them is an accomplishment. So, unfortunately, spending a few years doing nothing beyond stopping legislation from passing counts as a victory.
And people wonder why I’m so burnt out.
By Hanlon, on October 27th, 2009 at 07:13 PM
Yeah well fuck you too, buddy.
Can we just boot him from the party, yet?
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