Talk of your empty threats.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that if Democrats overhauled the filibuster, Senate Republicans would be less inclined to work in bipartisan fashion.
Scot Lehigh
To continue getting breaking news and the full stories from The Boston Globe, subscribe today.
Scot Lehigh
Talk of your empty threats.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that if Democrats overhauled the filibuster, Senate Republicans would be less inclined to work in bipartisan fashion.
Comments
Great story, thank you. Everyone should send this article to your Senators and Reps and tell them to support Filibuster reform. Send it to McConnell, too. Generally speaking, I don't care if our reps vote against bills, but it's frustrating when they use tricks (that their own body's rules allow) to deny any legitimate proposal to even get a vote.
Find your congressman: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/cgi-bin/newseek.cgi?site=ctc2011&state=ma
Join a formal camapign for common sense rules at No Labels: http://www.nolabels.org/work
Speaking preventing votes, do you think Harry Reid might actually let a budget come up for a vote? It's been three years now. Helluva way to run a country.
@HarryRPitts: you are referring to a budget resolution, not an actual budget. The resolution is merely a statement that House and Senate budget priorities are in agreement, if such exists. Beyond that, it has no teeth. The 'budget' for the operation of government functions is accomplished by spending and appropriations bills, and those are getting done. Harping on the budget resolution is an empty, partisan exercise in sanctimoniousness. You might as well complain about Reid's choice of tie in the morning.Oh, and as of now it's been four years, not three.
The filibuster is used far too often, and, as Scot points out, it has been a bipartisan tactic. The sad truth is that nothing gets passed today unless there is a 60 vote threshold passed. It ought not be this way. There are many moderate Democrats who could be persuaded to oppose legislation that is too far to the left, but with a filibuster available, it is easier to block than to negotiate. I would only hope that Reid allows Republican input into the reforms, and that the Dems will accept the changes when they are in the minority.
If the Democrats make the changes while in the majority, they'll have to accept the changes in the minority. They won't have any choice, because they won't have the majority. I do appreciate Scot's balanced view. This is another example of an overreach that started on the Left It was the Democrats that began the abuse of the filibuster, a Senate rule that had worked reasonably well for 100 years, and were then appalled when the Republicans picked up the cudgel that they had made and started using it on them. The Democrats could hardly argue with any credibility that this was far outside the original intent of the rule, although they did make that argument, since they themselves had vastly broadened the application of the filibuster. Sort of like Borking Robert Bork and then whining about the coarsening of political rhetoric and the loss of bipartisan comity.
Does it really matter who started the filibuster problem? Actually the rule's initial intent was to give the minority an opportunity to hold up proceedings long enough to establish whether the issue was important enough for the majority to stay the course and eventually force the issue through the closure of debate. It had never been misused as badly as it has during this session. Frankly I never did like the change to a purely virtual filibuster. A purely political move by both parties to escape responsibility.
Bork really? A very weird view of the Constitution even for a Conservative.
This comment has been removed.
This comment has been removed.
One can understand the minorities position regarding the filibuster rule change. We can be assured if the shoe was on the other foot the Dems. might well howl in pain. In fact I might be fearful of the damage that could be caused by a Senate majority of Tea Party types. However, the purpose of any legislative body is to legislate. This current Congress has been the least effective in my lifetime. It is definitely time for a change.
McConnell may whine but he has brought this upon himself through the actions of the R's and his own public statements. While the Dems have indeed misused the amendment process the R's use of the filibuster has been egregious. Mr. McConnell has been around for a long time and anyone who doubts his knowledge of the Senate does so at his own risk. So I am quite sure for legislation that he finds impossible to stomach he will find other means to delay or defeat.
This change in the rules simply means one has to face the public with the their objection. Deal with the reality that in the next election cycle an opponent will use it against you. That's good for politics and good for America. The public should rally around Sen. Reid and those supporting this change to Senate rules.
This comment has been removed.
This comment has been removed.
Although it was not, as Scot Lehigh points out, part of the original Senate rules, the filibuster used to require that the Senator hold the floor and speak for the duration, thus, it is the reform of the filibuster that is the problem. If anything, what is needed is a counter-reformation.
This reform is needed only when the Republicans can use it against the Democrats. When the Democrats need this in previous sessions, no reform is necessary as it's part of the democratic process and the rule of the senate. Scot, you are a hyprocrite.
This comment has been removed.
I'm a liberal and a Democrat, and for most of my adult life I've felt that the filibuster should be limited to delaying a bill no more than a few days. I thwarts democracy and I'm a true believer in that form of government.
I admit it fits the current Republican reality, though. It's just another meathod of limiting democracy, like all the restrictions on voting that they try to implement at the state level wherever they can.
In any case, beginning in the 1970's Republican use of the filibuster has steadily increased. It has been used by Republicans over 100 times in some sessions since the turn of the century. That's many, many times greater that it has been used by the Democrats.
This proposal reminds me of how MA Democrats keep switching the law for filling an empty Senate seat depending on whether the Governor is a Dem or not... they are comfortable twisting any set of pronciples for their short term gain. Pretty despicable in my mind.
This comment has been removed.
Ouch! Stop twisting my "pronciples", dude!
Maybe they should adopt the policy of the NFL on challenges to plays. You only get a certain number of them and if you fail, you loose one of your filibusters. And there are some things you can filibuster and some you cannot. Then maybe we could keep the filibuster but limit its use to important matters. At the same time, you allow the minority party to bring things to the floor, a privilege now controlled solely by the majority leader. Can you image a business meeting where a minority of the participates have the right to declare that a topic cannot be discussed.
I once worked in a Quarker organization where a concensus (unanimous vote) had to be reached for anything to pass. Not everyone agreed with every decision, but it took a strong conviction for someone to actually stop the concensus process. Congress will never be run by concensus, but they could take a lesson from the dynamics of the concensus process.
This comment has been removed.
Somewhere out there in the grim darkness, a comment-remover lurks....
allwoing these people to make their rules is preposterous. A third party group, bipartisan, should be created to make the rules and they have to stick to them.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
For me the two biggest points here are:
"Are those reforms something Democrats would feel comfortable with if they were in the minority?" --For years now I've been aggravated at the state and federal politicians who rewrite the rules while they're in power in order to improve their control then seem totally surprised when their opponents return to power and abuse the changes several times over when they have a chance. If it's not a change you could handle being used to its fullest extent when you're not in power, it's not a change you should make, pure and simple!
"That “virtual” filibuster lets senators delay legislation or nominations with little effort and few consequences." --And again, for years now I've been annoyed that the filibuster was turned into a farce where there is zero cost to filibustering. I didn't even know when the change allowing no more than a declaration of an intent to filibuster to stop progress was made, I just knew filibustering used to actually require a level of dedication, investment, and pain, to interfere with the actions of the Senate, and now nobody has to do anything. It's ridiculous. Frankly I think there'd be much less obstruction of this form if they'd simply restore the true filibuster.
Just for the record, when Ted Kennedy used the same power to block a nominee, I castigated him for it.
You know scott, you try too hard to make equivalencies. Kennedy was blocking an extreme supreme court justice, which is exactly the type of situation that the filibuster was for. And while I can't say I remember every Democratic filibuster over the last couple of decades, the ones I do remember were over substantive issues, not the blanket lets-gridlock-government approach the GOP has adopted.
What's more, over the years, I have found it frustrating that Republicans force Democratic presidents to not even consider the most liberal nominees for the court, or, for instance, Elizabeth Warren for the consumer agency, because the GOP will just block it, yet Republican presidents can nominate the most rightwing nominees for the Supreme Court -- Scalia, Thomas -- and, except for Bork, Democrats, in the end don't filibuster. And in the case of some of them, the Dems had a majority in the Senate, yet still granted the Republican presidents the power to appoint whom them wanted. Republicans haven't done that for Democrats in decades. There just isn't any equivalence.
Take the current example of Rice and the secretary of state post. Besides the fact that it's a made-up controversy by the Repubs, in the past presidents were pretty much given free rein to appoint whom they wanted to such key posts, yet now, even the so-called moderate, Sen. Collins, is ready to filibuster. It's downright anti-democratic (small d) and should be denouced without making false equalencies to Democratic tactics.
Where's WayToo?
This comment has been removed.