With Trump in the White House, this is a load of crap! We have, perhaps the last opportunity to save our country, and the filibuster is a detriment to that effort. Besides, when and if the RATs take charge again, it’s gone anyway, so we should make the first move with the hope that the legislative process can undo what the RATs have done to such and extent that it will take them decades to “put things back” should they ever get the chance.
Keep the filibuster. Just require the senators to actually do a filibuster.
“Gridlock is the greatest protection to our personal liberties.” - Judge Clarence Thomas
GRIDLOCK is not the same as SEDITION. America is in the midst of a COUP.
FACT - If/When/God Forbid Chuck Schemer becomes Majority Leader the filibuster will be eliminated.
FACT - Chuck Schumer pushed Harry Reid to eliminate filibuster on Judicial picks
Republicans might as well take advantage while they can.
Stupid, misleading article.
There is no filibuster. A real filibuster requires the senator to speak till he drops. Ask Jimmy Stewart.
Modern filibuster means just one stupid senator (a redundancy) can just threaten a filibuster, and the Republicans all cower and say ok, we’ll quit.
The democrats have perfected this, and the Stop-Trump forces thwart the will of the people.
Kill the filibuster. it’s 51 votes. If Mc Connell doesn’t do it now, Schumer will certainly do it next January.
Add me to the folks that would require an ACTUAL filibuster. Not a “virtual” one.
Two easy answers to the author : (1) Keeping the filìbuster won’t protect us because only people like him will observe it. (2) We’ll never get back to small government if the Democrats can block us when we are in power.
Back in Obama’s second term Senate Dems ended the filibuster for Federal judges and administration and agency employees.
At that time they were sure that a Republicans would not win the WH in their lifetimes.
Demographics made it impossible for a Republican to win the WH so they had no risk that Senate Republicans would use it to get their appointees through on 50 Senators, so they were sure.
Bad gamble for them.
Regardless there are not near 50 votes in a Senate to end it for laws so its a moot point.
Remove the 17th!!!!!
The State legislatures should have the right to determine their Senators. The people get to determine their representatives, the Legislature the Senate. The Founders knew what they were doing!!
I disagree. It’s not easy for one party to get control of both houses and the White House. If the people give them that power they should have a chance to enact their agenda, for better or worse. Once upon a time the opposition party would accept that the winner had a mandate and cooperate. Reagan got his tax cuts through without Republicans controlling the house because people agreed with that premise. Those days are over, at least for the Democrats. The pubs can’t continue to play by the old rules when the Democrats will do anything to obstruct and will ditch the filibuster if the situation is reversed.
I may agree except IT’S ALREADY GONE. The next time Ds are in majority, the minority Rs will not be allowed to use it. By keeping it now, Rs are just screwing themselves (and us) and delaying the date when it is officially declared dead.
Reid fully ended the ideal that the minority should have a say - even if only in limited cases. Without both parties trying to live up to that ideal it’s stupid for one party to accept the filibuster.
Reid didn’t “partially remove” the filibuster because he thought it should be kept. He removed it in limited cases because he only NEEDED to remove it in limited cases at the time. And he hoped Rs would not take it the next step if they became majority (and he seems to have been right). But he fully intended for Ds to go the next step whenever they wanted.
It’s as dead as the concept of senators representing states. They can’t bring back the filibuster any more than I can get rid of the 17th amendment. And small-government conservatives are doubly screwed until they figure that out.
The problem is not the filibuster, the problem is the 17th Amendment and the liberals designed it to cause the problems we have today.
BUT, we have grown to be a big government country. We need changes to bring us back to a limited sized government. If we retain the filibuster then I believe the change that we need would be impossible.
Removing the filibuster is our best chance to return to limited government.
We have already seen an unresponsive central government which listens to the voice of big money contributors, rather than the voice of the citizenry.
I humbly disagree.
EVERYTHING should come to a floor vote.
Make every one of the bastards take an on-the-record, yea or nay vote on EVERYTHING.
Than let the voters decide.
With all due respect to Justice Thomas, please consider the following.
Noting that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had decided not to give the power to vote for senators and presidents to ordinary voters, Justice Thomas may be overlooking the following.
It is necessary for the anti-constitutional republic Progressive Movement to effectively repeal constitutionally enumerated controls on both the senate and executive branches in order to unconstitutionally centralize government power. The Progressive Movement evidently does this by exploiting the voting power of ordinary, misguided citizens to enable the federal government to steal state powers.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
More specifically, while the Progressive Movement has long since seized control of the Senate, evidenced by the ratification of the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, today’s controversy over the “obsolete” electoral college is the last battle for the Progressive Movement to also win control of the executive branch.
Regarding the Senate’s 60 supermajority vote, unconstitutional imo, please consider the following.
First, constitutionally enumerated exceptions to the Senate's one vote rule aside, unlike representatives, the delegates to the first Constitutional Convention expressly guaranteed senators one vote.
"Article 2, Section 1, Clause 1: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature."
(Each representative is not guaranteed one vote; "fractional" votes evidently permissible.)
"Article 3, Section 1, Clause 1: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, (See Note 3) for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote [emphasis added]."
Consider the following example concerning the 60 vote rule versus the Constitution.
If the 60 vote rule is in effect and the vote is split 50-50, then it's wrong to say that the vote fell short of the 60 needed to pass a bill imo.
Instead, the Senate has no choice but to apply the Constitution's one vote per senator guarantee with the vice president's power to cast the deciding vote.
"Article I, Section 3, Clause 4: The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided."
And even if the vote isn't split 50-50, unless a vote requires a constitutionally mandated supermajority to pass, the one vote per senator must still be respected imo, not politically repealed.
Otherwise, the Progressive Movement arguably wins the vote whenever the Constitution's one voter per senator, or the vice president's power to decide the vote, are ignored.
In fact, note that Thomas Jefferson, a president of the Senate at one time, had put it this way about ignoring parts of the Constitution.
"The general rule [is] that an instrument is to be so construed as to reconcile and give meaning and effect to all its parts." --Thomas Jefferson to -----, 1816.
Again, constitutional exceptions to the one vote rule aside, the Senate's 60 vote rule wrongly ignores the Constitution's one vote per senator rule imo.
Corrections, insights welcome.
Simple majority like the Constitution says. The extra Constitutional Senate “rules” need to go. Why do we need a “parliamentarian”?