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This could actually be damaging for the GOP. Never before has the reality of their historic obstructionism been so obvious. Judd Gregg has now created an obstruction manual that can be distributed in a viral way. You can do charts showing how many times the GOP has used the filibuster, or videos showing them objecting, but they don’t have the impact of this step-by-step guide for how to endlessly delay the health care bill, in this case, because they have no ideas and only wish to deny the American people any tangible benefit. The import of this goes beyond the health care debate and toward real procedural change. After all, if we had a Senate that worked like the House, a health care bill and a climate bill would already be behind us.
The letter, which can be found here, basically says that Senators can engage in a whole host of actions to obstruct the will of the majority. He discusses the use of hard quorum calls rather than waiving them, done specifically to slow down the process. He talks about amendments having to be read in full. He talks about offering unlimited amendments that are both “germane or non-germane.” There are even a set of delay tactics after the bill goes into the conference report, things like the “motion to instruct conferees” to endlessly play out that process.
I mean, this is just, in plain language, a 3-page summary of why American government doesn’t work. If Democrats cannot make use of that in the same way that conservative activists make use of stolen emails, they should get out of the whole “politics” game.
Every statement by every Democrat between now and passage of health care should cite this document.
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What can we do to assure that that happens? Can you blast fax dems likely to appear on news shows? Do you think it will work?
How about contacting Rachel and Keith, maybe even the network news shows? Possible?
I’m assuming you have the contacts, hopefully.
Because you are soooo, sooo right.
It’s tactics where Dems need to emulate the R’s more, not policy.(well, as if you didn’t know that.)
What do you have against minority rights, dday?
Gregg’s letter is actually a very handy, helpful and clear compilation of the present legitimate debating procedures of the Senate. Most of which are well-known, and widely understood, in the Senate at least.
We could have used a similar compilation from Chris Dodd or his allies when he tried to block the FAA immunity provision last year, at least to help reporters (who have basically stopped covering Congress) and everyone else understand what was going on. Dodd used some of these same procedures to good effect, though he took particular advantage of the built-in delays of the cloture process when it was initiated by Reid (with 15 other Senators).
It’s interesting that this was written by Gregg, not McConnell, or someone else in Party leadership.
At any rate, I’ll note again that at least two of the possible delaying tactics outlined in Gregg’s letter have already been waived on this bill by the Republicans via Unanimous Consent Agreement. Those are the reading in full of the Reid substitute amendment (the base Senate bill), which only needed its title read, and the post-cloture 30 hours of debate that could have followed Saturday night’s successful adoption of the motion to proceed.
And, thus far, Harry Reid is the only one I’ve heard threatening to use a “Hard” Quorum Call if need be – regardless of the hour – to get Senators into the chamber (a tactic I applaud Reid for threatening to use, if and when necessary).
The obstruction manual is definitely a sign of the very poor character of Gregg. However, the reason that American democracy is broken is not Congressional obstruction so much as it is corruption in general. The deep-pocketed special interest group is the bane of representative democracy. At this point, the nation is effectively governed by a largely unaligned conglomerate of special interests exchanging campaign donations and favors for votes, appointees, administrative rules, and legislation.
The Senate is a huge joke. What a bunch of clowns.
this is a GREAT find, let’s see if the democrats can get some leverage out of it
however it’s going to take a lot to get democrats voting next cycle, everyone, including myself are incredibly disappointed with their lack of gamesmanship of just plain not caring to pass the bills teh republicans block
I have no problem with minority rights when the minority is using them to impact governance and not to obstruct for the sake of obstructing.
When Dodd used these tactics, did he or other Democratic Senators offer constructive and viable alternatives? Did they offer constructive criticism based on reality and not on the talking point of the day?
I would surprised and delighted to find that the Dems HAD a talking point of the day. They seem disorganized to the point of hilarity most days….if it were not so sad.
The donkey was a poor choice of mascot, most of the time they couldn’t find their ass with both hands.
Hey, I LOVE donkeys! I really do!
You just have to untie your donkey, and set him free…
http://s185.photobucket.com/albums/x79/flat_denver/?action=view¤t=Donkey.flv
Isn’t it way past time we launch the nuclear option? Do away with all this minority rule crap?
I know it’s terrifying to imagine the Republicans, if they retake control of the Senate, being able to pass their agenda with a simple majority vote, but, really, the best prospect for STOPPING them regaining control is for the Democrats to pass the legislation they were elected to enact.
I’d love Sanders or Feingold or someone to start whipping his colleagues to see if there can be 50 votes for this.
The Senate tells us it is the worlds greatest deliberative body.
It is a place full of pompose asses that think they are the most important people in the world.
We let them and it become what it has, because we allowed them to decide everything by thinking they are Senators, and forgetting they are still supposed to be representative of their states, not Gods from their State.
Once You let somebody get such a highly inflated opinion of themselves, you can never take it back from them, especially when the are in charge.
All You ever hear from these assholes is, “I think,” they are supposed to do what we think, not what they think. There is a F#&k of alot of difference in that.
The people and the Media look at these people as if they are our supreme leaders and that only magnifies the problem. They are never refused a mic.
You have forgotten one thing, the underlying unspoken rule never to be broken by elected officials:
Thou shalt not make legislation that benefits the common citizen. All the spoils are now belong to the aristocracy.
Let the sham debates begin. The Unanimous Consent Agreement that will allow roll-call votes on amendments to be voted on today (the Vitter second-degree amendment below is in fact the first to be adopted, by UC), as propounded last evening by the Democratic leadership:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2009_record&page=S12151&position=all
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a Democratic majority in the Senate afraid of open amending on the Senate floor, and prepared to let worthy Democratic amendments die in the name of preventing “tough” votes on Republican amendments. This is the Democratic Party leadership supporting silent, painless Republican filibusters.
I think it’s safe to say, that if this is a sign of things to come, we can all safely tune out now and miss nothing of substantive import in the amendment department, while the Two Parties play The Blame Game to zero substantive effect for the next some-odd weeks.
As I elaborated/ranted further here.
I guess that depends on whether you consider the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution a “talking point.”
Chris Dodd did an outstanding job of arguing, on principle, against the FAA immunity provision, in particular. [Other Senators, offering various alternatives to provisions of the proposed bill, also made good arguments in opposition to their own Party's machinations.] Dodd’s arguments couldn’t have been much more “constructive” in the criticism department, for those interested in honoring their oaths of office. His argued “alternative” was simply to leave in place the accepted status quo of obeying the law and letting the Judicial Branch supervise the enforcing of the law for lawbreakers. But those pushing for the telecom-blessed “talking point of the day” of immunity from the law for powerful corporate lawbreakers certainly tried to characterize Dodd’s principled criticism and opposition as, in effect, not “based on reality” and/or not a “viable” alternative.
All of which helps demonstrate why we need full, free, and open public debate in our federal legislature, so that we can make up our own minds. Free and fair debate is one extremely vital service that safeguarding minority rights brings to the nation, if not always to the perceived benefit of the Party in power.
By the way, for those trying to make logical sense of the Senate maneuvering, I did a disservice, in my comment @ 2 above, by conflating acceptance of the actual “motion to proceed” Saturday night with the vote to invoke cloture (on the debate about the motion to proceed). The 30 hours of “post-cloture” debate that proceeds unless waived by Unanimous Consent (as it was in this case), transpires between a successful cloture vote and a final vote on the measure on which cloture was invoked, in this case the actual “motion to proceed.” So when I said above:
I should have said:
In fact, the Republicans agreed to waive those 30 hours (and the reading of the 2000-page Reid base bill) days before the Saturday night vote, so that when cloture was successfully invoked Saturday night, the Senate immediately also adopted, without a roll-call vote, the actual motion to proceed, without further delay.
He would have made a terrific Commerce Secretary.