End the Filibuster

[davidswanson]

From Jonathan Tasini:

It's time for the Senate to abolish the filibuster.

The filibuster is undemocratic and contradicts the core principle that legislation should become law by majority vote. The mere threat of a filibuster can bring the business of the Senate and the American people to a halt.

The filibuster allows a minority of 41 Senators to block the will of 59 Senators. Even when 60 Senators support a bill, the 60th Senator can hold the bill hostage to individual demands that can warp important legislation.

We call on every candidate for Senate in 2010, and every Senator who will continue to serve in the 112th Congress, to pledge to vote, on the first legislative day in 2011, to change the Senate's rules to eliminate the filibuster.

This petition will be delivered to all current 100 Senators and all identifiable non-serving 2010 candidates for the Senate



Even the New York Times has a good op-ed today calling for ending the filibuster.

[ixion]

1. un'recd

changing the game because you can't play it is called cheating, no matter WHO is in the majority.

[Deep13]

5. This is national policy, not a football game.

If we have to cheat to win, then it's time we learned how. The Rs have been cheating since the beginning and the whole country suffers for it.

[ixion]

10. cheating is not the answer

learning how to play tough is what the dems need to do. Lowering themselves to the sleazy level of the rethugs will solve nothing.

NOT LETTING THEM CHEAT when they try would be better than cheating back, in my opinion.

[Deep13]

16. "Learning to play" in a corrupt system = cheating.

I think we probably mean the same thing, but are calling it different things. In any event, we are losing HCR, the end of the war and a number of other things that matter because of this idea of not lowering ourselves. How many will die today because they have no health care. And it is not cheating to use the Senate rules to restore democracy to the system. Nor is it cheating to use the lawful Constitutional amendment procedure to clarify what should be obvious anyway: equal representation of the states requires majority voting.

[ixion]

20. Don't let the cheaters cheat. It's just that simple.

If the dems didn't consistently let the rethugs frame the debate, the rethugs wouldn't always control the field, even in the minority.

There doesn't need to be cheating. There needs to calling people out when they cheat -- when they lie. But see, when people like George Stephanopolus allow lying creeps like Guliani to lie outright, it allows them to frame the debate. Doing a Mea Culpa afterwards is moot. The crap -- the frame -- has been entered into the collective conscience because it wasn't diffused immediately. This seems to be the way the dems play it, and it causes them all sorts of grief. The "Dean Scream," the 'swiftboating' of Kerry, impeachment off the table, the list goes on and on and on. And as long as you're (apologies for the sports analogy) playing softball to their hardball, you're going to lose every time.

If you call them on the crap, if you don't let BS idiotic statements get entered into the collective conversation as fact, then they have no power. And you don't need to cheat to do that, you just need to dismantle their ridiculous assertions with extreme prejudice. :hi:

[MadHound]

2. No, sorry, but this is simply happy horseshit,

Sour grapes because Democrats can't currently ram through whatever legislation that they want to. They want their work in Congress to be easy, but I'm sorry, this is why we pay them the big bucks, to go out and fight for what is right in this country, not simply take the path of least resistance.

What the short sighted fools who want to do away with the filibuster can't seem to get through their heads is that at some point in the future, perhaps the near future, 'Pugs are going to be in the majority again in Congress, and do we really want them to have the ability to do what they want without the constraints of a filibuster?

Our founding fathers were wise in the ways of providing checks and balances so that no party would ever get all that it wanted. Who are we to try and fuck with that?

[Deep13]

7. WTF are you talking about?

We won the election. Why shouldn't we get our way?

[MadHound]

11. Yes, we won THIS election

There will elections in the future where we will LOSE, badly. I personally don't want to face that scenario without having the ability to check the excesses of either party via the filibuster.

The fact that you're down with this simply shows how short term your thinking is. The Dems won't always be in power, remember that.

[Deep13]

17. We won't EVER win under the present system.

And people ought to be held responsible for how they vote. If they want R. policies, then they should suffer under them.

[Romulox]

12. Democray = "sour grapes"? What a strange post.

"Our founding fathers were wise in the ways of providing checks and balances so that no party would ever get all that it wanted. Who are we to try and fuck with that?"

We are citizens of a representational democracy--that's all that matters. Moreover, somebody should've taught you that an appeal to authority is one of the main logical fallacies.

Finally, the "founding fathers" were all slaving owning aristocrats. It takes a special sort of lack of self-awareness to say "Who are we to try and fuck with" this or that bit of their alleged "genius". :hi:

[bigtree]

15. one quibble

I think the present way the filibuster is being employed isn't consistent with the 'founders' original plan. The evidence I'd cite would be the perfunctory manner in which Congress enacted and could dispose of the rule as presently constructed if they wished. I really don't think the founders intended for the Senate to be so influential.

here's one argument from the NYT:

This change to the Constitution was not the result of, say, a formal amendment, but a procedural rule adopted in 1975: a revision of Senate Rule 22, which was the old cloture rule. Before 1975, it took two-thirds of the Senate to end a filibuster, but it was the “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” filibuster: if senators wanted to stop a vote, they had to bring in the cots and the coffee and read from Grandma’s recipe for chicken soup until, unshaven, they keeled over from their own rhetorical exhaust.

For the record, nothing like Senate Rule 22 appears in the Constitution, nor was there unlimited debate until Vice President Aaron Burr presided over the Senate in the early 180os. In 1917, after a century of chaos, the Senate put in the old Rule 22 to stop unlimited filibusters. Because it was about stopping real, often distressing, floor debate, one might have been able to defend that rule under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, which says, “Each house may determine the rule of its proceedings.”

As revised in 1975, Senate Rule 22 seemed to be an improvement: it required 60 senators, not 67, to stop floor debate. But there also came a significant change in de facto Senate practice: to maintain a filibuster, senators no longer had to keep talking. Nowadays, they don’t even have to start; they just say they will, and that’s enough. Senators need not be on the floor at all. They can be at home watching Jimmy Stewart on cable. Senate Rule 22 now exists to cut off what are ghost filibusters, disembodied debates.

As a result, the supermajority vote no longer deserves any protection under Article I, Section 5 — if it ever did at all. It is instead a revision of Article I itself: not used to cut off debate, but to decide in effect whether to enact a law. The filibuster votes, which once occurred perhaps seven or eight times a whole Congressional session, now happen more than 100 times a term. But this routine use of supermajority voting is, at worst, unconstitutional and, at best, at odds with the founders’ intent.

read: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11geoghegan.html?pagewanted=print

[BP2]

3. Be careful what you wish for. It may come back to

bite you in the ass if the majority switches.

I hate this stone-walling too, but it's better to have rules in place instead of
letting the :puke: Pukes run the table unchallenged if they take control.

[Deep13]

6. No doubt, but then not getting anything done is worse...

...than letting the pukes do what they want when in the majority. Besides, remember how well the filibuster worked when the Rs had the majority? Neither do I. It will also prevent the Rs from being able to shield themselves with D. opposition when they propose crazy shit.

[davidswanson]

4. i remember when

i used to think of DU as being MORE supportive of democracy than the New York Times

[Deep13]

8. The filibuster is unconstitutional...

...because it undermines equal representation of the states in the Senate. Minority Senators effectively have more voting power than majority Senators. The only purpose of this is to subvert the will of the voters and undermine democracy.

[davidswanson]

9. damn

how did that bit of truth slip in here?

[alfredo]

14. If the majority ruled in all cases, women may not have the

right to vote, same goes for African Americans. Some times the majority is wrong.

[Deep13]

18. The filibuster did not make those things happen.

And in the case of the voting rights act, it very nearly stopped voting rights in its tracks.

[alfredo]

19. What I am saying is that it prevents the majority from

walking all over the minority like you see in the house. Some times it is a good thing, some times not.

[alfredo]

21. But a simple majority rule may have allowed a simple majority to pass

legislation to further restrict women's rights and the rights of other hated minorities.

[Iggo]

13. What filibuster?

I want to actually see one before they decide to get rid of it.