Tag: TMC Politics. Politics

Yes, the New York State legislature passed a really important bill yesterday fixing a long neglected problem of importance for the all New Yorkers. No, it was not the Marriage Equality Bill that would allow same sex marriage in New York. It was naming Sweet Corn as the official state vegetable. Just what we need in NY, more starch in our diets. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for equality for our GLBT brothers and sisters.

Up Dated: We’re getting there. I’ll keep you posted.

NY pols begin to clear way for gay marriage vote

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.

With the obstruction of a very united minority, there has been a great deal of debate about the filibuster and the reform of Senate Rule 22. In a New York Times op-ed, Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, recalls how in 1975 when he was a Senator, the Senate voted to reduce the number of votes required to end filibuster from 67 votes, a super majority, to the current 60 votes. Clearly, he states this was not enough. Filibuster threats and cloture votes blocked legislation nearly 100 times in the 111th Congress.

Mr. Mondale argues that essentially, these rules abrogate the Constitution which only requires a 67 vote majority for the approval of treaties, “in all other instances it must be assumed that the Constitution requires only a majority vote”. In other words, many of the Senate rules are unconstitutional and could be done away with on a simple majority procedural vote under Parliamentary rules. That was the “nuclear option” that was used as a threat by the Republicans to force the Democrats to capitulate when they were n the minority.

The Constitution is clear that under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution: “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.” However, it is very explicit about the few instances where a super majority vote is needed, it must be assumed that the Constitution requires only a majority vote in all other cases.

Congressional expert and Washington University in St. Louis political science professor Steven S. Smith, has testified before U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration that there is an unhealthy exploiting of the Senate rules to block important legislation and limit debate. Prof. Smith also stated that

“wishing for better behavior” on the part of senators and their leaders won’t reverse the consequences of “two decades of intensifying parliamentary warfare” that has contributed to the demise of the appropriations process, more packaging in omnibus bills, and a shift of policy decision-making from committees to party leadership offices, among other changes

He proposed that these changes be made:

   (M)ore clearly protect each senator’s opportunity to debate and offer amendments;

   (L)imit debate on motions to proceed and combine and limit debate on the three motions to go to conference;

   (L)imit debate on appropriations bills and executive calendar business; and

   (W)here debate is not otherwise limited, allow a simple majority to eventually close debate.

On of the rules being considered is forcing the filibustering Senator to actually stay on the floor speaking for the duration of the filibuster, a la, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ recent 8 and a half hour tour de force on the Senate floor. There is also a need to end the policy of “secret holds” which prevents a bill or nomination from being considered even though it has cleared committee. The Democrats need to stand firm on rules reform, otherwise, we are in for an even more obstructive Senate in the 112th Congress.

I have said this a number of times, the filibuster as it is currently being used to obstruct the Senate is unconstitutional. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and cannot be abrogated by the Senate merely making a rule. The Vice President presides over the Senate and has a duty to make rulings on order and procedure when the Senate is in session. The Constitution provides for “one-person-one-vote” and “majority rules”, there is no mention of “filibuster”.

It is amazingly simple:

  1. During debate, a Republican Senator engages in a standard obstruction tactic, such as a hold, actual filibuster, or proposing numerous, non-germane Amendments.

  2. The Vice President, as Presiding Officer, rules that Senator’s hold, filibuster or spuriousamendments out of order.

  3. The Senator who holds the floor, and had attempted the hold (filibuster, or amendments), could then appeal the decision of the Presiding Officer to the Senate as a whole.

  4. A simple majority (51) can then vote to uphold the ruling of the Presiding Officer that the hold (filibuster or amendments) were out of order.

This mechanism is not without precedent:

In 1975 the filibuster issue was revived by post-Watergate Democrats frustrated in their efforts to enact popular reform legislation like campaign finance laws. Senator James Allen of Alabama, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate and a skillful parliamentary player, blocked them with a series of filibusters. Liberals were fed up with his delaying tactics. Senator Walter Mondale pushed a campaign to reduce the threshold from sixty-seven votes to a simple majority of fifty-one. In a parliamentary sleight of hand, the liberals broke Allen’s filibuster by a majority vote, thus evading the sixty-seven-vote rule. (Senate rules say you can’t change the rules without a cloture vote, but the Constitution says the Senate sets its own rules. As a practical matter, that means the majority can prevail whenever it decides to force the issue.) In 1975 the presiding officer during the debate, Vice President Rockefeller, first ruled with the liberals on a motion to declare Senator Allen out of order. When Allen appealed the “ruling of the chair” to the full Senate, the majority voted him down. Nervous Senate leaders, aware they were losing the precedent, offered a compromise. Henceforth, the cloture rule would require only sixty votes to stop a filibuster.

When the Republicans held the Senate majority during the previous administration, then Vice President Dick Cheney threatened to invoke the “nuclear option” ending filibuster if the Democrats continued to filibuster President Bush’s nominees. The Democrats backed off. So why hasn’t President Obama done just that? This is just another game of ‘Constitutional chicken” to excuse the President’s failure to get a liberal/progressive agenda passed.

It is high time the Vice President Biden took his seat and gaveled filibuster out of order.