In The End, Few Bills Break Through Senate Gridlock

[Raggz]

Source: NPR

"Sen. McConnell came to Sen. Reid several months ago and said, 'If you haven't noticed, it's over. You can stay as long as you want, but nothing's going to happen,' " Durbin said. "And so, anything we've had has been nothing short of a political miracle."

With 59 in the Democratic caucus, making political miracles happen comes down to finding one or two Republicans for the 60 votes needed to thwart GOP filibusters. And there have been plenty of those.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129034363

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Time to learn from Ronald Reagan who always had a majority of Democrats in both houses - and still got his agenda through.

[BumRushDaShow]

1. Ironically, when the Dems had 60 votes

that emboldened the attention-craving Conservadems to embrace extortion to get their vote.

[No Elephants]

5. Ponder this: Why did the DNC, Obama and every Party star leave Coakley

to her own devices in a run for that highly critical 60th seat?

Clinton came to help her defeat Rep. Capuano in the primary and that was it, until Obama finally came the Sunday night before a Tuesday election. Only two days earlier, Gibbs was still saying Obama had no plans to go to Massachusetts. Even Vickie Kennedy was here campaigning before that--and the Kennedy family was furious that Coakley had started her campaign before Kennedy died.

Coakley's campaign claimed she hadn't begun campaigning right away because she had to raise money for things like tv ads. Where was DNC money? The DNC claimed Coakley had said she was ok. Even if she did why did no one question any further? She'd never run for federal office before.

If you believe everything you're told, no one on the Democratic side had their eye on this highly critical race as Coakley rapidly blew threw a 40 point lead while Republicans from all over the country supported Brown, from Romney, who gave Brown his campaign organization and campaigned for him, to McCain to Giuliani, to people coming from as far away as Washington State to attend his rallies. (I'm guessing someone was organizing that "grass roots effort.)

Why? Food for thought.

[Lasher]

2. Republicans controlled the Senate for all but the last two years of Reagan's presidency.

Myth: Democrats dominated Congress all through Reagan's terms, and called all his budgets Dead On Arrival

That's numerically and historically false. Reagan's people shoved his program through the Congress during the early Reagan years. James A. Baker, David Stockman and other Reaganites ran roughshod over Tip O'Neill and the divided Democrats in the House and Senate, and won every critical vote. This is because of the GOP majority in the Senate and the GOP-"Boll Weevil" (or "Dixiecrat") coalition in the House. Phil Gramm was a House Democrat at the time, and he even sponsored the most important Reagan budgets.

Only after the huge Reagan recession -- made worse by utterly failed Reagan "Voodoo Economics" - did Democrats regain some control in Congress. They halted some Reagan initiatives, but couldn't do much on their own. That was a time of gridlock.

Six years into Reagan's presidency, Democrats retook the Senate, and began to reverse some of Reagan's horrendous policies. By that time, Reaganomics had "accomplished" quite a bit: doubled the national debt, caused the S&L crisis, and nearly wrecked the financial system.

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020319Hersh.html

[No Elephants]

4. How big was that Republican majority? Democrats have had a majority since 2006.

I also love how the author tries to pretend blue dog types are actually Republicans, too. Let's all remember that whenever a Blue Dog is up for election or re-election.

BTW, Democrats were a lot more deeply divided in the Johnson years than they were in the Reagan years or since then.

[Lasher]

7. Reagan didn't always have a majority of Democrats in both houses.

That is the point I was trying to make. Extrapolation does not change this truth into a lie.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Also required reading...

"The Empty Chamber Just how broken is the Senate?"
by George Packer

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all

[No Elephants]

6. Is it possible one or both caucuses prefer it broken?

If it weren't broken, how would a member of a Party with a 59% majority be able to claim, "And so, anything we've had has been nothing short of a political miracle."

The conventional wisdom is that no member of Congress (either House) ever lost his or her seat because of legislation that failed to pass. Of course, simultaneously having 60 members in your Senate caucus, a majority in the House and the Oval Office might conceivably test the limits of that particular piece of conventional wisdom, but when does THAT ever happen?

In any event, if Senators of both parties held hands to adopt the rules that allow either Party to break the Senate.

Do you have any idea how much it costs us to maintain the House and the Senate and their support staffs, interns, consultants, etc.? Yet, we sit back and content ourselves with muttering about the opposite Party when we don't like gridlock.

We're Suckas, we are.

[bemildred]

8. You bet your ass it is. nt

[Jefferson23]

9. Suckas is right I'm afraid. n/t

[TreasonousBastard]

10. Yes. The reason it isn't fixed is because there are always those who...

as much as they hate it when the other guys play a trick, wait patiently for their own chance to use the same trick.