Leahy: Dems can cripple congress by witholding unanimous consent. True??

[jdj]

Vermont's Leahy said this today on NPR. It is in response to the repuke threat of changing the cloture rules and preventing filibusters of the judicial nominees. He said that 95% of the work of congress is done by unanimous consent, and he said something to the nature of "if they want to take six months just to pass one piece of legislation then fine", meaning they won't get unanimous consent on anything and nothing will get done this session if repukes really want to go through with changing the cloture laws.

I like the sound of this threat, but is it feasible? Can it backfire? I hope people will weigh in on this, I have not heard a viable response to the threat against filibusters of the freak judge nominees until today.

Please weigh in.

[Cocoa]

1. lol at "freak judge nominees"

that's about right. :-)

But I don't know the answer to your question, I hope someone knows...

[Lefty48197]

8. He forgot "freak AG nominees"

.

[fob]

2. Why the hell haven't they been doing this since January 2001?

Other than that, more power to them. Fight DeLay without Delay!!

And yes I know DeLay is a Rep and not in the Senate, but it's his tactics that have infected DC everywhere.

[jdj]

3. I don't know, maybe they are pissed enough now.

I think they are going to let Delay off the hook, change that lil 'ol rule about ethics. It's the new House Gop motto: "Ethics, Schmethics!"

[Yupster]

4. The way I understand it,

there are rules about how and when senate bills need to be read.

As some of the bills can be thousands of pages long, this is never done. It's just passed over as long as there's not an objection.

If someone wants to object then the senate would have to take three days to read a bill out loud before it could be voted on. I guess this could be done over and over again with the place pretty much shut down.

[jdj]

5. this is the first ray of hope I have had about this

I really hate for them to have to do this but it's nice to know that we have at least one weapon in our arsenal.

Leahy said 95% of the work of congress...I mean that could paralyze the repukes and make them look incredibly ineffective. Then they will have to come up with a way around THIS too.

[Deb]

6. This may help

"Unanimous Consent -
From its beginning, the Senate has transacted much of its business by unanimous consent. The Senate's small size, few rules, and informality encouraged the rise of this practice. A single objection ("I object") blocks a unanimous consent request. Even several of the Senate's early rules incorporated unanimous consent provisions to speed the Senate's routine business.

Two types of unanimous consent are prevalent in today's Senate. Simple unanimous consent requests deal with noncontroversial matters, such as Senators asking unanimous consent to dispense with the reading of amendments. Complex unanimous consent agreements establish a tailor-made procedure for considering virtually any kind of business that the Senate takes up. They are commonly brokered by the parties' floor leaders and managers. Two fundamental objectives of these accords are to limit debate and to structure the amendment process. As two Senate parliamentarians wrote in the Senate's volume of precedents: "Whereas Senate Rules permit virtually unlimited debate, and very few restrictions on the right to offer amendments, these agreements usually limit debate and the right of Senators to offer amendments."

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Senate_legislative_process.htm

Oh, wow. I can't recall a time, while watching CSPAN, when anything was offered into the record w/o unanimous consent. bwhahahaha :evilgrin:

[jdj]

7. thank you so much.

I hope Leahy is serious and this is agreed upon by all dems.

Fuck with us, ey, repukes?

BRING

IT

ON!!!!

:nuke:

[sendero]

9. Sounds good..

.... but is it just another Senate rule (like cloture) that can be changed arbitrarily (like cloture)?

[jdj]

10. I hope that is the point Leahy was making.

you take-a my cloture
I take-a your unanimous consent-a

or something...

how far you wanna go wid this, repuke-a-zoids?

(I hope).

[Gothmog]

11. Nuclear winter if change filibuster rules

Much of what happens in the Seante requires cooperation. If the gop try the nuclear option, then the gop is going to see the entire senate shut down in a nuclear winter of Democrat response. I do not think that the moderate senators want to risk this result.

[jdj]

12. I was hoping for a very strong response like that

Thanks, I need something to hold onto.

Leahy said they also need abortion as an issue, and to overturn it would leave them empty-handed. He also said they could draw up a law put it to a vote have the legislatures vote on it if they really wanted to overturn Roe.

I honestly wish they would. Because I would love to see our state legislatures on the national scene again, and I think it would be really good for people to see how our democracy is reall supposed to work. It was such a battle over the ERA, and I would like to do this with either gay marriage or abortion either one. They won't do it of course, because they know they will lose, but I would love for that to happen.

[annabanana]

13. HEY!... If they do away with "unanimous consent"...

And all the bills have to be read out loud... Maybe someone will introduce some bills that are sufficiently free of riders for the Senators to actually ..um... know what they're voting about?

(I'd be an interesting change, anyway)

[Mist]

14. Yay! Sounds double-good!

They actually have to read, out loud, the bills (pending bills can then be televised on C-SPAN), AND the evil-doing of the Rethugs is slowed down to a glacial pace. GO LEAHY!

[shance]

15. TERRIFIC. Stall this Administration until the clock runs out.

The less action, the BETTER!!!

[Pushed To The Left]

16. I like the sound of it

I hope Democrats won't need it, but it would certainly make a strong statement! Supreme Court nominations are the most critical domestic issue right now in my opinion. Democrats need to stop the right-wing judicial takeover by any means necessary!

[Gloria]

17. I hope so...and I hope they follow through on it!

eom