Under the current proposal, those amendments would occur in post-cloture time, and that would mean they would be subject merely to an up-or-down vote

If you assume these would inevitably be Republican poison pills, isn’t the current method of dispensing them simply tabling them – that already needs just 50 votes anyway.

There is no evidence that these rule changes will lead to desirable outcomes that outweigh the undesirable outcomes.

The US Senate is not a democratically constituted body, Senators are apportioned two per state, not by population. This means that a 41 Senators can represent between 38% and 61% of Americans, rendering the filibuster number either very democratic or very anti democratic. These proposals do not distinguish between those two very different cases.

Fast tracking a the Senate where Senators representing a minority of Americans can move legislation, given the Democrats uselessness, will open the door to major damage to federal policies that progressives and liberals hold dear:

- Social Security
- Medicare
- Choice

There are times when the blogosphere would jump into a pool of molten lava upon command by the Democrats, and this is one of them.

-marc

they should know the goopers will change the rules in an instant if they get control AND run the white house.
judicial nominees will make roberts look like a moderate.

Sen. Jeff Merkley acknowledged that one component of the consensus plan on Senate rules reform put together by him, Tom Udall and Tom Harkin would probably get tweaked be abandoned, and that the biggest concern for skittish spineless Democratic lawmakers was changing the rules at all, lest they be changed on them when Republicans take over called “liberals”.

There. That looks closer to reality now.

The Dems have no problem voting for other “stinky” legislation. This is just another show of defense. There is really nothing to it, other than a show.

All that will happen will be theater. In the end the minority will still be able to stop anything they wish. Unfortunately the majority will not do this when enough Blue Dogs join the minority to make a working majority of Conservative votes.

So Here’s what 2011 will bring us:

1) Massive cutting of regulations on business
2) Cuts in Social Security
3) Flattening the rates of the Income Tax
4) Cuts in corporate taxes
5) More escalation in Afghanistan instead of the start of withdrawal
6) Bombing of Iran

#5 won’t need Congressional approval. #6 should but might happen without, but if Congressional approval is asked for it will sail through the Senate.

They don’t need to be blue douches dogs anymore to vote for these policies. They are all terrified of being called “liberal”. I’m afraid you’re right though…about all of those things. And Daily Kos will cheer louder.

I can’t understand why they’re all so afraid of being identified as liberal. Do you think it has something to do with the violent factions of the right wing? Are they scared of a Gabby Giffords type tragedy?

Or are they all just scared of losing corporate campaign donations?

It’s still going to take 60 votes to invoke cloture. So how does what’s being proposed, in the way of filibuster reform, make it easier for the repeals you suggested?

Possibly all that and more but it isn’t a new phenomenon. Rush led the way in turning the word into a pejorative, then, encouraged by his success has tried to turn the word “Democrat” into a pejorative. And the toady media laps it up.

“the biggest concern for skittish Democratic lawmakers was changing the rules at all, lest they be changed on them”
what goes around, comes around

If they passed some popular progressive legislation and did their jobs the way a majority of voters want them to they wouldn’t have to worry about ever losing the Senate.

Idiots. Every one.

The problem in that case isn’t rush, but the mass media. A vast majority of the people in this country don’t listen to Rush. That majority does watch the nightly network news, though. I blame them.

If Senate Dems do not vote, en mass, to change the rules at the very first opportunity, in a manner that will significantly limit the ability of the GOP to thwart otherwise supported legislation, what more evidence will be needed to show that they’re just hiding behind the Party of No?

If we change the rules the rule will be used against us . . . what hogwash. What, then, is the reason for the past 4 years?

No filibuster reform, no support in 2012. there has got to be a line in the sand somewhere.

People who oppose rules reform are almost uniformly ignorant – they know nothing about the proposed reforms, the current rules, or Senate history. They just like being holier than thou, or contrarian for the hell of it, I guess.

And there my friends is the ugly truth. If they behaved like liberals instead of trying to demonstrate their conservative bona fides, they would never lose either house of Congress or the White House.

When given the choice between a Republican and a Person who acts like a Republicans, the people will choose the real Republican every time.

Harry Truman

Gregg Levine has a fresh post already in progress: Live Video: Lieberman Bows Out of 2012 Race

Thanks but I think I’ll skip Short Ride’s “it’s all about me” swam song….

I’m with you. He makes me want to puke every time I watch him talk. On a personal level, I don’t understand how he can live with himself.

Never mind his wife. She must be blind, deaf and entirely numb.

I won’t even speculate on her problems. For her own sake, I hope she’s blind, deaf, and numb.

They’re worried about setting a precedent that will be used against them when the Repubs take over, hence we must settle for more gridlock. Given their history (think the “Gang of Fourteen” era), what’s the difference? The two-party system is a game of good cop/bad cop, with the working class on the hot seat.

The two-party system is a game of good cop/bad cop, with the working class on the hot seat.

And the poor in the can.

And the public defender drowning in the bathtub.

Have you looked at the combined total of network news viewers recently? Nobody, with the exception of the brain dead, those over 85 confined to nursing homes, and those under 2 yrs. old with TV as their babysitter, all physically unable to change the channel, are getting their news from the networks. Check out the numbers…

Because this is a moving target and it is the Democrats who are moving the target, having to negotiate to appease their least common denominators, as it were. What they say they want to do and what they end up doing are often significantly different.

With the GOP in charge of the House and many bills to be sent to the Senate, I would like to see the filibuster rules relaxed so that some of those House bills can come forward.

But, I am a bit more sane than that. I know someday, things will turn around and getting things through without filibuster will NOT be such a good thing.

So, while relaxing the filibuster rules will help me now, in the long run, it isn’t a good idea.

Some Democrats may also have this twinge of sanity.

People who oppose rules reform are almost uniformly ignorant – they know nothing about the proposed reforms, the current rules, or Senate history. They just like being holier than thou, or contrarian for the hell of it, I guess.

Wow… Look who’s talking.

In this one-way echo chamber for the Democratic Party, I won’t bother to elaborate, except by repeating parts of two recent comments I’ve made at FDL, about the Democratic Party’s proposals to permanently entrench their (and the Republican Party’s) backroom practices in the Senate.

Perhaps the most important point about the dishonest Democratic Party-driven discussion about “reforming” Senate rules is this fact:

No Democratic Senator can publicly admit that “filibuster” as they’re using the word actually means “cloture,” because the Democrats, as the current majority Party, are responsible for filing the record-breaking number of cloture motions in recent years, despite the absence of debating (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style) filibusters.

If the significance of that sentence escapes anyone, it’s probably because they’re willfully or otherwise “ignorant” of the fact (since the media likewise apparently doesn’t know it, or won’t report it) that only the majority Party files optional Rule 22 cloture motions in the Senate (and yes, they have their unspoken reasons for doing so – avoiding public debate and reverse-engineering partisan legislation through Congress high among them). In turn, only cloture motions can impose a supermajority threshold (and debate-free delay) on the Senate, in place of its simple-majority regular order, for the passage of legislation or confirmation of nominees.

[In contrast to incumbent Senators (Republicans included, because they're hardly going to look this supermajority-cloture gift horse from the majority in the mouth), those of us not invested in shielding the Democratic and Republican Parties from the consequences of their actions, should try to avoid employing such deceptive and confusing word play; we can say "cloture" when we mean voluntary, debate-suppressing, supermajority-invoking "cloture motions" filed by the majority Party, and "filibuster" when we mean that long-lost parliamentary tactic of physically-taxing floor debate (or some form of minority objection(s) to majority requests to waive regular order).]

As for the mechanics of imposing the Democratic Party proposals on the Senate (such as Tom Udall’s version of the well-named Nuclear Option), the clear facts about how and when Senate rules may be and have been historically changed disprove claims that the way in which Senate rules are revised is different (easier or more difficult) on the first day of (or during) one Congress compared to the Congress that precedes or follows it.

Senate Standing Rule V:

1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on one day’s notice in writing, specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided by the rules.

2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.

The opening paragraph, on Page 1217 [PDF Page 1 of 12], of the “Rules” PDF of Riddick’s Senate Procedure:

The Senate has readopted or made only seven general revisions of its rules since 1789 – on March 26, 1806; January 3, 1820; February 14, 1828; March 25, 1868; January 17, 1877; January 11, 1884; and November 14, 1979. The rules of the Senate, however, are subject to amendment at any time and have been amended regularly in part in most, if not in all, Congresses since 1884, and on occasions several times in the same Congress.

From Page 935 [PDF Page 2 of 4] of the “Motions” PDF of Riddick’s Senate Procedure:

“A motion directing the Chair to put to the Senate without further debate the consideration of a resolution to change the rules under his [claimed - pow wow] constitutional right to get a vote on changing the rules at the opening of a new Congress [by first dissolving or violating the carried-over rules of the preceding Senate - pow wow] is not in order.“

Again, readers should understand that a key subterfuge of Tom Udall’s debate-hostile scheme (and thus of those who parrot him, like FDL News) is to confuse and conflate (now routine) optional majority-filed “cloture motions” – which ask that Rule XXII’s supermajority cloture order replace regular simple-majority Senate order – with (very rare) extended minority-conducted debating “filibusters” – which may occur under regular, default Senate order (and are necessary to prevent a simple-majority vote automatically being put), whenever the fake quorum call is not being used by the majority to suspend floor proceedings without bothering to formally recess the Senate. [I elaborated on the difference between the two in this recent comment - among others in the same thread discussing the destructive proposals to profoundly redesign Senate parliamentary procedure by first violating existing Senate rules and precedent, in order to avoid debating that radical redesign.]

Filing a Rule 22 cloture motion is, and has always been, both optional and a tool of the majority Party in the Senate, not of the minority – a minority whose rights in the Senate are much less formidable than Senate Democrats today like to pretend that they are, in part to avoid accounting for the Democratic Party’s ongoing, undemocratic and public debate-suppressing abuse of Rule 22′s optional cloture provisions.

Thus, the intended result of the proposed rule-change resolutions in the Senate – even when not offered as part of a disguised nuclear option – seems to be to impose and institutionalize a form of supermajority cloture rule on the Senate as the new “regular order” (the option of cloture was created in 1917 to allow a supermajority of the Senate to overcome the rare, overdone debating filibuster that remains possible under existing, simple-majority regular order), evidently to avoid any future risk of the return of the routine use – in practice, as it exists in the rules – of default simple-majority regular Senate order and, especially, of public debate in the Senate Chamber (where floor debate and Senator-directed, as opposed to Party-directed, business, as in the Speaker-dominated House, is under siege).

Udall’s Nuclear Constitutional Option scheme (which has been tried before in the Senate, in addition to when Bill Frist toyed with it, although never in an era, like this one, when obstructive debating filibusters had basically ceased to exist) is centered on the claim that it is “unconstitutional” to “require” that Senate rules be changed by a supermajority of the Senate. Because every Senate “should have” the right to change its rules by simple majority. Fine. Sounds eminently sensible and reasonable, right? As far as it goes, at any rate, and provided that we deliberately overlook or conceal the inconvenient fact that nothing in Senate rules “requires” that Senate rules be changed (or legislation passed or nominees confirmed) by supermajority vote. Ever.

Every Senate, therefore, already has the right to change its rules by Constitutional simple majority, “as provided in [those] rules,” if and when it pleases, while in session, at any time – as another recent comment of mine further details.

So Udall, shielded by the myth he promotes that to change Senate rules “requires” an “unconstitutional” supermajority of Senators – because there’s an optional Rule 22 motion, introduced in 1917, that the majority Party may invoke to require a supermajority vote of 60 or 67 to end any ongoing debating filibuster, rather than waiting the filibuster out for a couple of days or perhaps a week at most – wants to throw all Senate rules out of the window next week (and thus every two years thereafter, from here on out), simply to avoid the need for his Party majority to honorably change or amend Senate rules (many of which are essentially unchanged since the Senate began) by simple-majority vote “as provided in [those] rules,” before his majority Party can restrict every Senator’s right to debate on the floor in future.

Helping to shield Udall and those allied with him is the common failure to appreciate the role and importance of “regular order” in a legislative body like the Senate. If an existing “order,” once established, is not honored during floor proceedings by the Senate’s members and its President (when, for example, those members desire to change that order), then raising “points of order” – whose purpose is to ensure that the Presiding Officer/Vice President, with the assistance of non-partisan advice from the Senate Parliamentarian, enforces the established order in a fair, unbiased way – becomes an exercise in futility for members, and an arbitrary charade and mockery of process by a power-abusing majority and/or Senate President, that’s worse than having no order of procedure at all.

Why do you ideological types always oppose progress?

It is obstructionists like you who keep us from “getting things done.”

Effin retards.

Given Obama’s existing cuddled inside the pocket of the oligarchs, restraining the Democrats from working their will on the country is probably a good thing.

The sheer horror of the vast majority of actions that Obama has taken unilaterally which do not require congressional approval, as pure discertionary powers of the presidency, should be evidence enough to assuage any doubts in this regard.

-marc