Please Explain this for me. When the Dems controlled both

[OHdem10]

Senate and House, on several occasions Nancy Pelosi
Speaker and the Democrats (sometimes a few Republicans)
would pass Legislation. Gosh a lot of legislation.
It would be sent to Senate and never voted on.
Often they knew this before sending it, but felt
compelled that House should state their position.

On TV Programs there MIGHT be a mention. The House
passed a bill on------ today. It is more a statement
of the House. It will go nowhere in the Senate.

NOW. The Teabagbers and Republicans in House pass
these statement pieces of legislation. However they
take up whole sections of the News. THE HOUSE
THE HOUSE THE HOUSE gets breathless coverage
yet the legislation will go to the Senate and
linger never being brought to the floor.

Why is so much importance given to the House
under GOP than Democrats. Tomorrow the House
is going to do some version of what it will take
for them to vote to raise the Debt Ceiling.
It seems Chris Wallace's hour was almost spent
on THE HOUSE THE HOUSE.

The other channels do spend a lot of time on
the House. Again Why the difference???

Especially, with a bunch of whackos.

[21st Century FDR]

1. Because Harry Reid is a spineless coward

Who refused to put an end to the bullshit fiction that you need more than 60 votes to pass ANYTHING.

[bahrbearian]

2. I really hated when he took the Public Option off the table along with Nancy,after he meet w/Bachass

Oh wait a minute that was Obama.

[KoKo]

5. Just listening to anything our of Reid's moth reminds me of a fearful creature with shotgun to head.

But our Democratic Party gave Big Bucks and Big Effort to keep him. So...there you have it.

He's a "tool."

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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[21st Century FDR]

8. But the bastards never filibustered anything.

They just threatened to do so, and Reid pissed his Depends every time.

Also, Harry could have dropped that bullshit "rule" when this Senate was sworn in. He refused to do so.

[dionysus]

13. fillibusters don't work like they do in the movies.. like you think they do...

[21st Century FDR]

16. Make the filthy bastards filibuster

It will air on C SPAN, and the clips will air on MSNBC and Current. Maybe even CNN if Anderson Cooper or Leslie Blitzer is in a generous mood. Hell, even Shepherd Smith on FAUX might slip and let one on the air once in a while.

Let them show themselves to be the fucking pieces of shit that they are, and let the people see it.

[bhikkhu]

17. The one's who elected them would be fine with it, and they don't care about the rest

One of the problems with forcing a filibuster is what it is over; now teabaggers would consider themselves heroes if they could only filibuster some piece of social or spending legislation, and they'd get endless praise from the party, and endless pats on the back from media types.

There's a reason congress has such a low approval rating for the past few years, but it has nothing to do with a lack of filibusters. We don't need more empty political theater and showmanship, in any case.

[21st Century FDR]

19. Wait a minute

Aren't you guys the ones who are always saying that the 20% of idiots who call themselves "independents" and can't tell the difference between FDR and Chimpy are the ones who "decide elections"?

But NOW you say they wouldn't notice a right wing Senator making an ass out of him/herself, defending positions and policies that even most of those mushbrained undecideds oppose.

So which is it? Do they have all the power or not?

And if not, then why should we keep pandering to them?

[bhikkhu]

21. I'm not sure that you know what you're talking about

...the composition of congress determines to a large extent what kind of legislation can be passed. Congressmen and senators represent their constituencies, and are generally elected based on some platform or other, which is based on the platform of the party they belong to. There's not a lot of mystery about it before or after the fact. A member of congress, acting according to the platform they ran on, is not likely to be rejected by the voters for doing so.

[21st Century FDR]

22. How many politicians act according to the platform they ran on?

Sadly, not many these days.

[Obamanaut]

26. Do any of them? nt

[bhikkhu]

27. If you followed voting records, most of them

sometimes the waters are muddied by the need to compromise in order to get needed legislation passed, but for the most part voting records are along party lines, and in accord with campaign platforms.

If you want to argue that, you would need to offer some examples.

[dionysus]

25. all they have to do is refuse to vote for cloture. fillibusters, again, do not work like they did

in mr smith goes to washington. they just don't.

[Obamanaut]

9. How often in the last 3 or 4 sessions of congress was a filibuster used?

Also, isn't it true that at the beginning of each session, changes to some of the rules can be made, among them being the removal of the filibuster option? Or, did the Dems simply fear the prospect of a filibuster?

If this is true, and the majority party is concerned the minority might use the filibuster to thwart the good efforts of the hard working majority :sarcasm: why not change the rule?

[dionysus]

12. yes. the democrats suck.

:eyes:

[21st Century FDR]

23. Democrats don't suck

DLC'ers and Blue Dogs do though.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, A Republican by any other name, still smells like shit.

[Peacetrain]

3. The simple truth.. the filibuster.. it was used like a broad axe

[KoKo]

6. Wasn't there a huge effort to do something about Filibuster when Obama was Inaugurated?

Didn't we see that some Senators were pushing to do away with it? There were posts here on DU and I got e-mail alerts to Progressive Sites I'm subscribed to about our GREAT HOPE for Filibuster Change with Obama as the new President because the Repugs had so abused it that it was time for a change.

You see the Change? :shrug:

[KoKo]

4. Murdoch Media Control and the rest too scared to to anythin or payed by MIC...

That's it.... And yes...you raise the question we've been beating our heads over here on DU for YEARS!

Thank You! K&R

[unblock]

10. the whole murdoch / criminal spying / extortion / propaganda thing explains a lot, doesn't it?

[JoePhilly]

11. The issue was the Senate.

Let's review ... we all know that the GOP Senate remains AGAINST almost anything Obama id for ... keep that in mind.

To have an up or down vote on ANYTHING in the Senate, you need 60 votes willing to allow the vote to occur at all. This is true in almost all cases (there are a few exceptions, but not many).

At the start of Obama's term, you had 59 Dems, and 40 Republicans in the Senate. Many forget that the GOP blocked the seating of Al Franken for about 6 months during ridiculous recounts.

But the result, was to allow the GOP to block almost anything. Which is why the passing of ANY stimulus package was so amazing.

Then, Franken is seated. About 6 months later Ted Kennedy dies.

Which means that once again, the Dems have 59 votes who can vote to hold a vote ... but they need 60. The GOP's 40 vote NO to holding any vote. And thus, nothing happens.

The only reason ANY health care legislation passed is that at the very end of those 6 months, the senate had 60 Dem votes, for it.\\

The GOP House is now going to pass lots of nonsense bills that would NEVER pass in the Senate.

The Dem Senate won't vote on them because you need 60 votes to even have a vote. And that's not going to happen.

But it makes for good TV.

[dionysus]

14. that, and holy joe and the blue dogs meant it never was a true 60 votes.

[JoePhilly]

15. very true ... Lieberman campaigned AGAINST Obama

the idea that we could count on him to vote for anything at anytime is silly.

[BlueDemKev]

24. A fragile 60, for sure!

The stimulus passed because there were three (3) Repubs with at least one brain cell who voted in favor of it (after forcing Obama to cut down its size so much that it was almost impotent).

It was actually only about six weeks after Franken was finally seated that Ted Kennedy passed away. His interim replacement, Paul Kirk, gave the Democrats the 60th vote they needed. However, it took everything Harry Reid had to get all 60 of those votes in favor of the health insurance reform law after every fucking Rethug in the Senate refused to support it. Then, after Massachusetts voters made total asses of themselves by electing a tea party-supported Republican to replace Ted Kennedy, giving the Rethugs 41 votes (enough to block a vote on the bill's final passage), Pelosi and Reid had to employ procedural gymnastics to get health reform passed and to the president's desk.

You guys can knock Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi all you want....they are GREAT congressional leaders and we are so lucky to have them.

[hvn_nbr_2]

18. Because CorpoPravda is owned and controlled by the Republican plutocracy. nt

[csziggy]

28. +10000000000000000000

[BlueDemKev]

20. Divided Congress, Highlighting Conflict

When one party controls Pennsylvania Ave, it's considered that one party is the governing party and the other is the opposition party. It is not enormous news if one house passes a piece of legislation because it won't become law unless the other house also approves it and sends it to the president. However, when Congress is divided, when one house does something, everyone knows it ain't going anywhere in the other house, so the media says "oh look, a fight! This side passed this legislation but the other side passed that legislation." Then we have a war of words and the media has something to talk about.

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Who controls the media?

That is part of your answer

[eomer]

30. Amazing that no one in this thread has mentioned the budget reconciliation process.

All this talk about filibusters during a Congressional session when Democrats held both houses and therefore could use the budget reconciliation process for anything they wanted as long as they met its rules. And yet they used it only for a corporatist health insurance reform plus a minor reform of education finance.

Democratic politicians have apparently succeeded at their disinformation campaign to convince their supposed constituents (voters) that there was nothing they could do. Apparently while in the backrooms assuring their real constituents (corporations) that they were following the marching orders.

There *was* something they could have done. Much of what we would want them to do could have been done through budget reconciliation. Most of what couldn't be done through reconciliation could have been done by Presidential order (like bringing the troops home and not starting any new wars, not creating new secret prisons, not going further than Bush in some areas of secrecy and violation of our Constitutional rights, and on it goes).