(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
It doesn’t look like the Senate Democrats have the courage to stand up the the very loud Republican minority and reform filibuster. As reported by Paul Kane in the Washington Post, the Senate has ground to a halt in order to continue to consider the rules changes that were suppose to have come to a vote on January 5th, the first day of the new congressional session.
Amid a long-running dispute over decades-old filibuster rules, Senate leaders have used a parliamentary trick to leave the chamber in a state of suspended animation – in reality adjourned since Jan. 5 but officially considered in a long recess that’s part of the same individual legislative day.
This nearly three-week break has taken place in large part so leadership could hold private negotiations to consider how to deal with a group of Democrats agitating to shake up the foundation of the world’s most deliberative body, right down to challenging the filibuster.
To the dismay of a younger crop of Democrats and some outside liberal activists, there is no chance that rules surrounding the filibuster will be challenged, senior aides on both sides of the aisle say, because party leaders want to protect the right of the Senate’s minority party to sometimes force a supermajority of 60 votes to approve legislation.
However, the rules changes proposed by Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) don’t propose the end of the need for a 60 vote majority that has permitted the Republican minority to halt nearly all Senate business for the last two years. David Dayen explained what they offered as a compromise to the current situation of announced filibuster by one Senator then wait out the 30 hours and try again:
After 41 Senators or more successfully maintain a filibuster by voting against cloture, they would have to hold the floor and go into a period of extended debate. Without someone filibustering holding the floor, cloture is automatically invoked, and the legislation moves to an eventual up-or-down vote, under this rule change.
This would institute the actual filibuster. The Majority Leader would have the capacity, which Harry Reid says he doesn’t have now, to force the minority to keep talking to block legislation. It becomes a test of wills at this point – whether the minority wants to hold out for days, or whether the majority wants to move to other legislation.
Kane’s article, while otherwise correct, muddles the debate on the rules, which is nothing new for the corporate controlled mainstream media.
While ending filibuster was never on the table, the proposal to even limit it in anyway is now mute because senior Senators, like Charles Schumer (D-NY) who has been negotiating it away with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and some progressives fear a day when Republicans control the upper chamber. Alex Seitz-Wald at Think Progress reports that:
….a deal has emerged that, while disappointingly unambitious, would move in the right direction by doing away with secret holds and make it easier to confirm presidential nominees:
There’s now a strong chance for a bipartisan agreement to make it easier to confirm, at least, noncontroversial judicial and executive branch nominees. Chances also remain high that the sides will agree to do away with secret holds, which allow senators to block nominations or bills anonymously.
But that may be as far as the Senate goes in overhauling its rules.
The Republicans railed when Democrats held up some of President Bush’ most extreme judicial nominees, Republicans have defended the obstructionist tool tooth and nail as sacred claiming falsely that it has been a “tradition” that originated with our Founding Fathers. Those conservatives sure to like to rewrite history because the first filibuster occurred in 1841 and the current rules went into affect in 1975 because racist Southerners kept filibustering civil rights legislation and it took 67 votes to stop a filibuster. For the last 10 years it has been only been used to create a de-facto need for 60 votes to pass most legislation.
As former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats crippled the liberal/progressive agenda by limiting the use of reconciliation to once a year. It was the only way that Bush got his tax cuts through and his last round of cuts required a tie breaking vote by Vice President Cheney.
The Democratic Senators by ditching any reform to reign in the abuse of filibuster will cripple any progress except a conservative, destructive agenda fostered by the Republican minority who are stalling until they are in the majority once again. They are just hastening their own demise in 2012.
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