Posted on 02/01/2019 6:39:55 AM PST by C19fan
Democrats have a lot of big ideas if they win back the White House and Congress in 2020. But it’s not clear they are willing to do a key thing needed to implement them: eliminating the filibuster.
Senate Democrats pursuing the White House are split on whether to even consider getting rid of the chamber’s longstanding supermajority requirement. The debate is heating up as the race for the presidential nomination begins and will largely determine whether the party can enact a “Green New Deal,” Medicare-for-All and other top priorities on the left.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Push the button.... on CW2.
Once this nation is schizophrenically zig-zagging from D to R back to D, with huge pendulum swings in agenda, it’s time.
Of what possible benefit is the filibuster? Is it any more than grandstanding to put off the inevitable? What am I missing?
If they move to eliminate it, that means they are 100% confident they will never be in the minority again.
Ask yourself why they would think that.
I’d totally be for eliminating the procedural filibuster, and requiring Senators to perform their filibuster ING while standing at a lectern.
Even better would be a requirement for every senator to be able to demonstrate their capacity to perform a cogent filibuster of a minimum eight hour length once a year as a condition of their continued eligibility for office. Video of this yearly filibuster would be accessible to the public and usable in campaign commercials.
The filibuster is not a super majority requirement. You don’t need a super majority to pass legislation. It is used to end debate. If McConnell had any balls, he could force the Dems to stand at the podium 24/7 until they gave up. Instead, they just refuse to bring up the bill for debate unless they have 60 votes. Cowards.
I would favor this on appropriations bills. Trump would have had his wall if he hadn’t needed 60 votes in the Senate. I think the filibuster still has a role to play in other legislation though.
If you’re out of power and the government passes appropriations you don’t like, win the election and change them back.
I think we’re already there. The fat lady was Obamacare.
Any government that passes laws without reading them is the definition of decadent. Then to swing back the next cycle by gutting and hopefully getting rid of the last cycle’s singular biggest achievement, is the definition, I would think, of huge pendulum swing.
You may recall that when Newt engineered the GOP takeover of Congress, it was the first GOP Congress in over thirty years. Now, it changes hands frequently.
But since no button is being pushed, then schizophrenic zig-zagging is not the trigger.
Since voter fraud allows democrats to win EVERY race that’s within the margin of error it won’t be long before they control both houses of Congress.
George W Bush had times of GOP controlling both Senate and the House plus a conservative USSC, and he did nothing with it, unless you count blowing down the barriers of federal control over the states with Gonzales v Raich.
A Dem president with both House and Senate might not be so lazy. I hope we don’t find out.
No, the filibuster works. If you can’t get cloture to end debate on a matter it never comes to a vote at all.
This is why “the Republicans controlled both houses of congress” is a lie. They controlled the house, but not the senate because they couldn’t get cloture to stop debate.
It’s why the last appropriations bills didn’t pass. It’s why the tax cut was passed under special reconciliation rules that allowed it to move with only 50%+1 rules.
I think for real legislation, in extreme cases, the filibuster is sensible. But it’s used on every single bill, and even on appropriations, which is why congress never gets its spending bills done on time and we have all these continuing resolutions.
Totally agree. If they take over we will have lost any chance to recover the nation. They will continue to flood the nation with illegals and we will never again have the power to vote in our way of life. Our only options will be to segregate from them or use brute force against them.
There is still one option if President Trump is unable to turn the ship. We still have not tried the Constitutional Convention/Convention of States option and I will not give up on our President.
Dem-o-graphics trending to a strong Heartland GOP with those on the fringes on the fringes, e.g., the Democratic Nationalist Cosalists Party. The numbers are trending GOPt.
Of course they will.
McConnel didn’t get rid of it because he wanted Democrat cover because he opposed the conservative agenda.
He wanted an excuse for “failure”.
I would have favored it last year before the dems took back the House. Now it makes no difference.
Its a device favored by both parties because it allows them to avoid voting on controversial issues. They can both go back home and say ‘well we tried but we didn’t have the (60) votes’
They are cowards - all of them. They do not represent the states as they should. They represent their respective parties.
Forget the Russians , Chinese or Islam the Dems are the real enemy of the US
Nope.
The Republicans worry about future consequences. That is why the Republicans refused to abolish the judicial filibuster during Bush's second term, when a democrat minority in the Senate was blocking Bush's judicial nominees, and why the Republicans refused to abolish the filibuster last year to pass a budget. In both cases, it was stupid to assume that if the Republicans did not nuke the filibuster then the democrats would honor it the next time the democrats were in power.
The democrats have never cared about future consequences and do whatever gives them the most power at any point in time. That is why Harry Reid unilaterally nuked the judicial filibuster to push through Obama's last few judicial nominees and why they will nuke the filibuster entirely the next time that they control the Senate, if it suits their purposes at the time. They are even talking about enacting a court packing scheme if President Trump gets to replace Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg.
Well, since that's not the trigger, then the only remaining course is essentially automatic: Instead of lurching towards it like Harper's ferry, we'll just slouch towards CW2 - ease into it.
we’ll just slouch towards CW2 - ease into it.
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