By Hanlon, on March 3rd, 2010 at 01:06 PM
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 24th, 2010 at 06:14 PM
Does a higher income tax lower the GDP? Hell no!
Was John McCain misled by Bernanke and Bush? Hell no!
Asked about McCain’s claim by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Frank said it was a “pathetically, obviously untrue statement.”
“Those of us who were there know it,” the Massachusetts Democrat said of the meeting Paulson and Bernanke had with lawmakers to request the funds. “I`ve gone beyond being disappointed for John McCain to feeling sorry for him.”
Was the right happy that Scott Brown mentioned his vote for the jobs bill on Facebook? Hell no!
But that didn’t stop former fans from piling on. “I just love Taxachusetts in the spring when the naked Senators are out frollicking [sic] and all the tea is being bagged. A little slice of heaven here on earth,” one commenter snarked. “WWTKD?” another asked, in one of the more polite references to Teddy Kennedy.
Note: Brown has since taken that post down. And for what it’s worth, big time props to the guy for bucking the party. That had to be difficult after the saga that was the election.
Thanks for that first link, Dormi!
By Hanlon, on February 18th, 2010 at 06:25 PM
By Hanlon, on February 17th, 2010 at 07:40 PM
 At least that seems to be the possibility.
Four more Democratic senators have signed on to a letter asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring the public option back up for a vote. Today, Sens. Al Franken, Pat Leahy, John Kerry and Sheldon Whitehouse signed on to the letter sent to Reid yesterday. The original signers were Sens. Michael Bennet, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown.
With Democrats pursuing a reconciliation strategy that requires only 51 votes to pass a bill, progressive groups have pushed Democrats to reintroduce the public option in the debate after it failed to get 60 votes in the Senate. Still, its inclusion in a reconciliation bill is a long shot, as many Senate Democrats are loath to refight the public option battle.
What drives me up a goddamn wall is that we’re talking about the Democrats trying to get the Democratic leader to follow through with this. It’s not Democrats trying to get Republicans to sign on, the party itself can’t seem to come together. What the hell?
Almost worse is the fact that Democrats are loath to fight the battle regardless of whether it’s the right thing to do. Come on guys, get your shit together.
Yes, I’m fired up right now.
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 3rd, 2010 at 02:19 PM
 There’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever utter, but it’s entirely true. No sarcasm, no backhanded compliments. Just a 100% true applause for Senator Lindsey Graham’s fight against what he called a “half-assed” energy bill.
Background: there have been calls for an “energy-only” bill that scraps ideas like cap and trade, and it looks like Obama might cave to the demands. Take it away, Senator.
“It’s the ‘kick the can down the road’ approach,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “It’s putting off to another Congress what really needs to be done comprehensively. I don’t think you’ll ever have energy independence the way I want until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon. The two are interconnected.”
…
But Graham pledged to fight back against Senate Democratic leaders if they ultimately heeded the moderates’ call to just pass the Energy and Natural Resources Committee bill (S. 1462) that establishes a nationwide renewable electricity standard, along with a raft of other energy incentives, including a provision that could bring oil and gas rigs closer to Florida’s Gulf Coast.
“If the approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill and say that’s moving the ball down the road, forget it with me,” Graham said, adding that the energy-only proposal does not do enough to promote nuclear power and it ignores revenue sharing for states that agree to offshore oil and gas exploration.
Can you argue with that? I sure as hell can’t.
Okay, sure, I’m not a big fan of offshore drilling, but within the backdrop of using it as a bridge between dependence on foreign oil and a break from fossil fuels entirely I have always promoted the notion, and defended Obama’s similar stance before. The cyanide pill here is obviously the potential for ANWR drilling, but Graham is 100% right that an energy bill that ignores emissions is terribly inadequate.
Okay, fine. Well played, Senator Graham.
By Hanlon, on January 30th, 2010 at 02:04 PM
Well, he is a Massachusetts Republican, so it’s not inconceivable that he’ll break ranks with them Olympia Snowe-style.
By Hanlon, on January 21st, 2010 at 08:02 PM
 I sat here examining this article on Lisa Murkowski’s efforts to stop the government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, thinking of various ways to explain what my problems are with her premise and whatnot, but in the end I discovered I could not possibly do better than her own amazing cognitive dissonance.
Murkowski is the senior Republican on the Senate Energy Committee and represents a major energy-producing state that also is showing signs of suffering from global warming. While she has said she supports looking at ways to address climate change, she has mainly supported more narrow bills on developing alternative energy and allowing more domestic oil and natural gas drilling.
Add that one up. Republican on the energy committee, says she wants to address climate change, but does so by pushing for more domestic oil drilling.
To use the age-old analogy, it’s like having someone on the AA board who wants to help alcoholics by encouraging them to buy cases of beer and take them home rather than drinking at the bar.
This is what we’re dealing with, folks. These are how the senior Republicans deal with climate change: by saying they want to help and then endorsing absolutely everything that’s going to make it worse.
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