Senate leaders close to pact on filibuster reform

From Ted Barrett, CNN, January 24, 2011

Washington (CNN) -- Top Democratic and Republican senators, negotiating proposed reforms of the use of filibusters and other legislative stalling tactics, are close to an agreement on modest changes to curb the practices but not eliminate them altogether, two Senate aides said.

Despite increased public attention to the often-controversial procedures, supporters of reform don't appear to have enough bipartisan support to force sweeping changes, the aides said. Much of the opposition to the changes comes from senior senators who have seen party control of the Senate switch several times and are wary about giving up the considerable rights available to the minority.

Instead, Senate negotiators -- led by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee -- are considering at least three smaller changes aimed at preventing individual senators from clogging up the Senate's legislative pipeline.

Under the emerging deal, senators would still be able to put a "hold" on nominations and legislation -- and therefore prevent quick votes on them -- but instead of remaining anonymous for several days as current rules allow, the name of a senator who employs a hold would be made public right away. Supporters of this reform believe that senators will be less likely to drag out a dispute if they need to defend it publicly.

In an effort to reduce the Senate's workload, senators also are considering scaling back the large number of presidential appointees who need their confirmation. Supporters believe that reducing the number of typically noncontroversial nominees will streamline the Senate's calendar and provide fewer opportunities for holds and filibusters.

Negotiators are also considering, one of the aides said, eliminating a senator's ability to demand that entire bills be read aloud on the Senate floor, another stalling tactic that's occasionally employed, to the distress of the vocal cords of Senate clerks.

Talks about reforming the Senate rules came about after a group of newer senators, frustrated by the slow pace of legislative action on the floor, proposed major changes to the filibuster -- including when they could be used and reducing the 60-vote threshold required to break one.

Schumer and Alexander plan to present their proposals to their respective caucuses Tuesday. If there is a general agreement in both parties, a vote on the changes could happen in the next few days.

Republicans at War with America

A Party of Refuseniks and Obstructionists
By DON MONKERUD

Under the Republican Party's new blueprint for America, BP will no longer be required to clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the F.D.A. will not restrict the new diabetes drug Avandia just because it's unsafe, and donors will be required to keep their contributions to political campaigns secret.

These positions, based on recent votes in Congress, foretell how the Republicans will govern if they win in the upcoming November elections.

Republicans would prevent the unemployed from receiving Medicaid; prevent treatment, screening or compensation for Americans who assisted during the 9/11 attacks on the WTC; eliminate extensions of unemployment insurance; allow the oil industry to write their own rules for oil exploration and clean up; open all off shore areas to oil wells; and stop funding state governments to stimulate the economy.

Senate and House Republicans recently voted to prevent bills from reaching the floor, or took positions, that would: bar homosexuals from the nation's military; allow the ash from burning 136 million tons of coal to be dumped into the nation's waterways; ignore greenhouse gases and the build up of CO2 in the atmosphere, fire tens of thousands of government employee; and drastically cut welfare, food stamps, health care for children and other government programs to aid the poor.

Long-term goals of the GOP include eliminating unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, Social Security and Medicare, most government regulations, consumer protection laws, and federal aid to education, along with many other government programs they consider detrimental to corporate-business control of the country. Republicans that are even more radical want to make Christianity the state religion, declare war on Islam, assign the death sentence for performing an abortion, and bomb and invade Iran.

Small government, lower taxes and no regulation, mantras of the Republican Party since the Reagan era, are enshrined in new promises to "take America back". The party's so-called road map-Pledge to America-attempts to win new votes for the party and put them in control of Congress, even after their policies led to the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

At every turn, Republicans hamstring the Democrats to create a totally dysfunctional governmental process. For example, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office lists over 300 bills passed by House Democrats that cannot make it to the Senate floor due to Republican opposition. Democrats overcame major Republican opposition to pass bills, often with the aid of only one or two Republicans who switched positions to vote with the Democrats.

While there are no estimates of how many of the 300 bills are progressive, a number of them involve significant changes in the areas of most concern to voters: economic recovery and job creation, consumer protection, assistance to homeowners, affordable health care, clean energy jobs, fiscal responsibility, and national security.

In the Senate, the Democrats again convinced one or two Republicans to join in passing major bills signed into law by President Obama. These laws include: a $30 billion lending program and $12 billion in tax cuts for small businesses; stimulus funds to save 3.5 million American jobs; a new manufacturing enhancement act; extension of unemployment benefits; estate tax relief that protects inheritance for 99.8 percent of citizens; Wall Street reforms; a credit cardholder bill of rights; health care extension for 11 million children; and the creation of 1.7 million jobs in clean energy. Republican opposition was almost unanimous.

"It's hard to compromise with people who are against government solutions," said Congressman Sam Farr of California, a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "Republicans pushed for the election of ultra-conservative ideologues who don't want to cooperate because they don't think the government should be doing education, fire protection or jails; they want to contract out government jobs to the private sector."

The principle of democratic government-majority rule-is being turned on its head. Minority rule is especially troublesome in the Senate, where the GOP holds up bills passed by the House and threatens to filibuster every Democratic proposal. They also refuse to confirm over 240 Obama appointees, in an effort to paralyze government.

Historians haven't seen such minority obstructionism since 1917. In the 1960s, 8 percent of major Senate bills were subject to filibusters: Today Republicans filibuster 70 percent of major Senate business. Senators with few constituents are behind many of the filibusters, which point to systemic problems. For example, a California senator represents 18 million voters, while one from Wyoming represents 260,000 voters.

The country is in a deep depression, trying to recover from four large items that President Bush put on our national credit card-tax cuts for couples making over $250,000 a year, two wars, and a prescription drug program-in addition to the collapse of the housing bubble. Republicans hope their negative stance will drive voters away from the polls and allow conservative ideologues to put them in office.

Whether Americans fall for the Republican refusenik stance that's full of contradictions, negativity and faulty logic remains to be seen. The new Republican roadmap to prosperity doesn't add up. Republicans are not only at war with logic, but they are also at war with America.

Senate breaks filibuster, passes $26B in aid to states

By The Associated Press | Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Senate Democrats on Wednesday overcame Republican opposition and cleared the way for a $26 billion measure to help states ease their severe budget problems and save the jobs of tens of thousands of teachers and other public employees.

The bill advanced by a 61-38 tally that ensures the measure will pass the Senate on Wednesday or Thursday. The House may return early during from its August recess for a final vote that would deliver the bill to President Barack Obama, his larger jobs agenda curtailed by Republicans who argue against the spending it would entail.

Moderate Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine cast the key votes to break the GOP filibuster.

The bill would extend programs enacted in last year's stimulus law to help preserve the jobs of teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public employees.

The legislation is scaled back from versions that stalled earlier this summer as part of a larger tax-and-spend measure extending jobless benefits and a variety of expired tax breaks. The first piece is $16 billion to help states with their Medicaid budgets in the first six months of next year.

It's less generous than the help provided under the stimulus law but is still desperately sought by governors, who have already made big budget cuts as tax revenues have plummeted in the recession and warn of even worse cuts if the federal help is not continued.

The measure also contains $10 billion to help school boards hit with similar budget woes avoid teacher layoffs this fall.

"This legislation makes a difference," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. "Real people in real jobs. Real paychecks."

But most Republicans opposed the measure, calling it a payoff to public employee unions and warning that it would make the states ever-dependent on federal funds.

The spending is accompanied by tax increases and spending cuts to avoid increasing the budget deficit. The bill eliminates in March 2014 an expanded food stamp benefit enacted last year and limits the ability of some U.S.-based multinational companies to use foreign tax credits to reduce their U.S. taxes.

"That would have the effect of driving jobs overseas," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

Democrats, who control the chamber with 59 votes, needed to pick up at least one Republican to muster the 60 votes required to defeat the GOP filibuster.

Wednesday's vote to break a GOP filibuster came after Democratic leaders made final tweaks to the measure in hopes of winning over Snowe and Collins. The duo also provided the key votes last month to pass a six-month extension of jobless assistance for the long-term unemployed.

A vote scheduled for Monday was postponed after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office showed the measure would add to the deficit. Snowe and Collins also had been concerned about cuts to Navy shipbuilding accounts since the Bath Iron Works in Maine is so essential to the state's economy. Majority Leader Harry Reid got rid of the proposed cuts Monday night.

Reid orchestrated other changes to close an almost $5 billion deficit gap, including new reforms to a tax credit claimed by the working poor.

Collins has been a past supporter of giving states help with their budgets and was the driving force behind an aid package enacted in 2003 that added $20 billion to the deficit.

Both provisions are heavily backed by unions for teachers and public employees, key allies of the Democratic Party. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees ran ads Wednesday in four Maine newspapers urging Collins and Snowe to vote to break the filibuster.

"It's important to be able to provide this support to the states at a very critical time," Snowe said afterward. "I think it also should be done with the understanding that the states are going to have to begin to make some tough decisions."

Obama requested an extension of additional aid for the Medicaid program in his budget and has belatedly rallied behind the money for teachers as well.

Senate To Vote Tuesday On Unemployment Benefits After Byrd's Replacement Is Sworn In

By Susie Madrak Thursday Jul 15, 2010



Some good news for the people who were left hanging this month (but no new benefits tier to help those who ran out entirely). But at least this will help some people, and hopefully it will pass uneventfully:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday that the Senate would vote move forward with reauthorizing unemployment benefits on Tuesday morning, after the replacement for the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) has been sworn in.

Republicans and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson have been preventing a final vote on the bill because of its $33 billion cost. Reid said the GOP filibuster, which has prevented more than 2.1 million people from receiving checks, is designed to crater the economy. "They're betting on failure. They think the worse the economy is come November, the better they're going to do election wise," said Reid. "Almost two million people who are long-term unemployed. These are not numbers. They are people."

Congress allowed extended benefits for people who've been out of work for longer than six months to lapse at the beginning of June. Since then Senate Democrats have repeatedly failed to muster 60 votes to overcome the deficit reduction demands of the Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and the Republican party. In the final vote just after Byrd's death at the end of June, Democrats came up just one yea short.

And in other news, all the Republican senators have embraced the formerly-deplored position of Jim "Tough Shit" Bunning. I think I will start referring to them as "T.S. Republicans."

However, most voters are on the side of those without work:

Two national polls released Tuesday revealed that registered voters think it's more important to help the unemployed than to reduce the deficit.

Voters are generally wary of government spending to boost the economy, but they nevertheless told ABC News and CBS News that the deficit is no reason not to help the unemployed.

Fifty-two percent of voters told CBS that Congress should extend unemployment benefits "even if it means increasing the budget deficit," including 35 percent of Republicans. Sixty-two percent of registered voters told ABC Congress should extend benefits despite concerns that doing so "adds too much to the federal budget deficit."

In a Bloomberg survey, 70 percent of voters said reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the deficit. But only 47 percent said Congress should reauthorize extended benefits, which in some states provided the unemployed with up to 99 weeks of checks.

A poll commissioned by the National Employment Law Project in June found that 74 percent of voters think helping the unemployed is more important than reducing the deficit.

Forcing Real Filibusters, not just "intents"

So, they don't even have to filibuster anymore. The have an "intent to filibuster" , and that's it? They don't even have to filibuster, just threaten to? Our lawmakers is comprised (compromised, maybe?) of intellectual pussies...



Fixing the Senate by Forcing Real Filibusters

By Karen Tumulty / Washington

We've been hearing a lot lately about the evils of the filibuster, particularly in the weeks since the Massachusetts Senate election in January deprived the Democrats of the 60th vote that it takes to block one. "The Republicans' indiscriminate use of the filibuster has made it all but impossible to conduct everyday business in the Senate. On an almost daily basis, the Republican minority — just 41 Senators — stops bills from even coming to the floor for debate and amendment," Democratic Senator Tom Harkin wrote recently in the Huffington Post. "In the 1950s, an average of one bill was filibustered in each two-year Congress. In the last Congress, 139 bills were filibustered. The Republican abuse of the filibuster is unprecedented, routine, and increasingly reckless." (See 10 embarrassing things that didn't stop Americans from getting elected.)

So it is no surprise that there are calls from Harkin and others to reform the procedures of the Senate — changing the rules to lower the number of votes it would take to invoke cloture and bring a filibuster to an end. 

That's not going to happen. Democrats are well aware that control of the Senate has changed hands six times in the past 30 years; knowing that they are likely to be in the minority again someday, Democrats themselves are loath to give up the power to gum up the works. (Watch TIME's video "The Filibuster and You: An Odd Todd Cartoon.")

But there is an answer here. It's not fewer filibusters; it's more of them. And by that I mean real filibusters — something we haven't seen for quite a while in the Senate. 

Anyone expecting the classic scene from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which Jimmy Stewart talks until he collapses, should drop by the Senate Chamber during what passes for a filibuster these days. The place is usually all but empty. The only sound is the voice of a clerk droning through a slow roll call of the names of absent Senators. More often than not, even the filibusterer himself is nowhere to be seen. (See the top 10 unfortunate political one-liners.)

 

It has been more than two decades since the last time we saw the majority actually make the minority put up or shut up on a filibuster. In 1988, while attempting to shut down a Republican filibuster of campaign finance reform legislation, then majority leader Robert Byrd even went so far as to invoke a power that hadn't been used since 1942: he dispatched the Senate sergeant-at-arms to arrest missing Senators and escort them to the floor. Oregon's Bob Packwood was carried onto the floor at 1:19 a.m., after a scuffle in which he attempted to jam his office door and ended up reinjuring a broken finger. Byrd didn't give up until a record-setting eighth cloture vote failed to end the debate. (See 10 GOP congressional contenders.)

That we don't see these kinds of episodes nowadays has more to do with convenience than anything else. As congressional scholar Norman Ornstein once told me, "You have a different Senate now. Frankly, they're soft. If they had the backbone and the discipline to do it, it would work." 

To force a filibuster, the majority has to keep a quorum of 51 at the ready. That means telling its members: Sorry, guys, you won't be making it to that fundraiser tonight. And a real filibuster also uses up a lot of time, which can be a problem at the end of a session when there is a lot of must-pass legislation, like spending bills, needed to keep the government operating. (See the top 10 outrageous earmarks.)

But early in the year — which is where we are now — forcing a real filibuster could be a useful exercise, one that makes a point far more effectively than all the whining we are hearing about Republican abuse of the rules. If what the majority is offering is a bill that the public really wants, there will be a price to pay for talking it to death. There will be a reason to actually try to work out the differences between the two sides. Even if the Democrats ultimately lose, the voters will at least understand what the fight was all about. And maybe, just maybe, the minority will think twice before they launch the next filibuster. (See the TIME/CNN series Broken Government.)

As retiring Senator Evan Bayh wrote in an Op-Ed in this past Sunday's New York Times, "Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters." Sadly, such clarity of vision about the institution seems to come only to Senators when they are on their way out the door.