From the eMail Bag: Fixing the Filibuster, Part 3

The Progress Report wrote:

Democracy Subverted

From: The Progress Report [progress@americanprogressaction.org]
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 10:10 AM
To: tom
Subject: Democracy Subverted

Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: Red
CONGRESS

Democracy Subverted

Right-wing Subverts our Government

While it is now taken for granted than any major piece of legislation needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, this has not always been the case. Use of the filibuster– the minority’s tactic to halt action on a bill through endless debate –has skyrocketed in the past two decades, creating a de facto need for 60 votes to get anything done. It only requires 51 votes to pass any bill, but it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture to end debate and pass the bill. There are now double the number of cloture votes as there were a decade ago, and triple the numbers of 20 years ago As evidenced by the ongoing health care reform debate, the filibuster cripples the Senate’s ability to make progress. The filibuster also gives an undue amount of power to individual senators and allows them to exploit the process for their narrow interests, dictating policy outcomes. For instance, Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) threat to filibuster health care reform forced the removal of the public option and the Medicare buy-in, despite their tremendous popularity. Moreover, as Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) noted, the filibuster removes electoral accountability by giving the losing party the ability to obstruct the winning party’s agenda. “It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure,” Center for American Progress Action Fund fellow Matt Yglesias noted. Under President Obama, the Republican minority has repeatedly used and abused the practice of filibusters to obstruct the progressive agenda. The House was able to pass a health care reform bill with a robust public option, a clean energy and greenhouse gas pollution reduction bill to fight climate change, and acomprehensive financial regulatory reform bill with majority votes. However, because of the filibuster, each bill has languished in the Senate.

The Senate minority has the power to ensure the failure of our government. Never before in the history of the United States has a major political party set out to purposefully ensure the failure of the government. The right-wing nut jobs are forcing every bill in Congress to a 60 vote margin, and impossible bar to reach, and are using this tool to bring down the President.

This unprecedented use of the filibuster is obvious in its intent. The Republicans find themselves, as a result of the horrible abuses of power by President George Bush, in the smallest minority they have seen in several generations. They are striking back with everything they can throw at the Democrats from the filibuster, to heckling at town hall meetings, to employing their own cable television network (Fox) to propel their talking points and other proapganda. It is time that the Democratic majority fights back.

I have emailed my Senators urging them to convince the Democratic majority to employ the “Nuclear Option”, a parlimentary proceedure that is not a Senate rule, but has been used in the past to overcome filibusters. It is time to act. Here is my email to my two Senators.

The Senate Republicans are abusing the use of the filibuster. When they use the filibuster they are not honestly debating issues, instead they are obstinately refusing to listen to our side and voting “no” on any legislation no matter what concessions have been made to them. The result is that a small minority is holding Congress hostage until they get every single thing they want and that is not the way it is supposed to work.

It is time that Senate Democrats stood up to the right-wings insistence on a 60 vote supermajority and take direct aim at the abuse of the filibuster. To do this, I recommend the use of the so called “Nuclear Option”. If you can get a simple majority to vote on a point of order challenging the constitutionality of the filibuster, then the filibuster can be defeated. I strongly recommend this action. The Republican minority must realize that elections matter, and that they cannot suffer the Senate to abide by a minority that could conceivably be as small as one Senator. Please stop this abuse, convince the Democratic Senators to use the nuclear option.

Please do something, call or write your Senators.

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