Re: Think Progress » White House Signals That It Will Fight Back Against GOP Abuse Of Filibuster, 01/24/10
…The number of Senate cloture votes, which require a supermajority of 60, “more than doubled — from 54 to 112 — from the 109th Congress (2005-2006) to the 110th (2007-2008), according to the Senate historical office.”
It is hard to imagine that people are just now starting to talk about how to fix the filibuster. How long has it been since the Republicans became the party of “no” and began this campaign to kill everything introduced by the Democrats? 2006?
This is a nice graphic illustrating the right-wing abuse of the filibuster since they lost so bad in 2006:
Cloture Voting, U.S. Senate 1947 to 2008
I know it is amazing, but there has actually been an itty bitty peep of support from the White House on fixing the filibuster. Vice President Joe Biden recently said, “No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.”
Biden’s communication director, Jay Carney weighed in by saying that the filibuster abuse has festered to the point that it is use has doubled in 20 years, tripled in 30. He states, “…it raises a legitimate question about whether this power is being used to protect the minority or merely to obstruct action and progress.” No duh. It sounds like he was born yesterday.
TV One’s Roland Martin also weighed in the fray by remarking about how there needs to be transparency in the cloture process – that Republicans need to be “called out” and made to explain to the people what they are doing and why. My sentiments exactly.
“The Republican strategy in the Senate is to turn 50 into 60, in other words no longer do you need a majority to carry the day in the Senate. You need 60 votes for everything because the Republicans are filibustering every single bill,” he said. “We need to call that out, and they need to explain to the American people whether throwing a wrench into everything at a time of national emergency is the appropriate policy. They want to win and election and take us back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.”
I am happy that the White House and others are finally seeing what we’ve seen all along, that the Republicans are laughing at us behind our backs because of our timidity and our insistence on bringing a knife to every gunfight we encounter. The right-wing’s bad behavior is off the charts and it is high time we acted.
I propose that we use the Nuclear Option to declare all the right-wing filibusters unconstitutional on the grounds that they are invoking the maneuver promote their ideology and gain political advantage in Washington.
Nuclear Option explained:
In U.S. politics, the “nuclear option” is an attempt by a majority of the United States Senate to end a filibuster by invoking a point of order to essentially declare the filibuster unconstitutional which can be decided by a simple majority, rather than seeking formal cloture with a supermajority of 60 senators. Although it is not provided for in the formal rules of the Senate, the procedure is the subject of a 1957 parliamentary opinion and has been used on several occasions since. The term was coined by Senator Trent Lott (Republican of Mississippi) in 2005.
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Fixing the Filibuster Part 5: Back to the Future and the Intoxication of Power
Re: Sen. Tom Harkin: Fixing the Filibuster, Sen. Tom Harkin, Democratic Senator from Iowa, Posted: February 12, 2010 10:39 AM
There are more ambitions for the right than stopping all Democratic nominations and legislation. If you think this one out to its logical conclusion, you can see why the Republicans are going all in with this “anti-Obama” meme, hoping it translates into a throw-out-the-bums wave of support in 2010 and 2012. Obstruction is power, and they are wielding it indiscriminately on any move by the Democrats to govern, then they step in front of media cameras with statements that try to blame Democrats for not attempting bipartisanship. Every perceived exclusion is amplified whether or not it really excluded the Republicans or not. They cry foul that Democrats have private meetings to try to figure out how to govern around the obstructionism. The future looks bright to them through obstruction.
They don’t have to govern, being the minority, so they sit back a lob bombs at the Democrats who are increasingly frustrated that they cannot govern without the Republicans help. What motivates the Republicans to refuse to govern is power. Like alcoholics, they abused the filibuster until they became addicted and now they are sloppy drunkards with the power it wields. The latest evidence of that is the stunt that Senator Shelby (R-AL) pulled recently by filibustering the approval of over 70 Obama nominees for various positions in his government for no other reason than to reach into the pork barrel for his home state. Why isn’t Shelby driven from office in shame?
President Obama, recently interviewed by Jim Lehrer on PBS’s NewsHour, suggested that the if the filibuster is “used prudently, then I don’t think it’s harmful for our democracy. It’s not being used prudently right now. And my hope would be that whether a senator is in the majority or is in the minority, that they’re starting to get a sense, after looking at this year, that this can’t be the way that government runs.” It is too late for prudence. You can’t tell a drunk to stop drinking. The right-wing is one toke over the line and loving it.
What they hope to achieve, of course, is gaining back the majority in Congress and winning the White House, the ultimate prize, and then propel the country back to the future – the Bush years, the days of glory for the right-wing. They will carry the plan of obstruction out to its end by campaigning on the fact that Democrats couldn’t pass needed legislation because of their failure at bipartisanship.
It is imperative that a Bush-like power mad figure stay out of the White House. That will only lead to more economic ruin and more wars. It is time to do something to stop the right-wing plan to paint Democrats as fools and then highjack the government again.
Senator Harkin has introduced and bill, but it will not get passed. Harkin needs 67 votes to change the Senate rules and he will not even get 60, or 50 for that matter. Something needs to be done now, something that fights fire with fire.
This is not a tall order. It is an impossible order. So, the “nuclear option” must be utilized by the Democrats to pass the good legislation for the people, like finance reform, the Consumer Protection Agency, health reform, and many others. This is done by a simple point of order on the Senate floor to declare the filibuster for any particular bill unconstitutional on the grounds of abuse of the rule and obstructionism. After that, a simple majority vote will override the filibuster. This is not in the Senate rules, but it has been done before.
Reconciliation alone cannot get the new programs into place because the budgetary effects can be argued ad nauseum. The Republicans are using every drastic action they muster in order to discredit the President and the Democratic majority in Congress and it is high time that the Democrats used equal drastic action. It is time to move legislation forward at all costs.
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