Republicans needed 51 votes and Democrats need 60 votes to get things passed in the Senate

[Better Believe It]

Well, just don't make the Republicans filibuster!

Under the new and improved Senate rules proposed and adopted by the Democratic majority in this session of Congress, it appears that 60 votes are needed to get anything passed.

Remember not so long ago when Republicans only needed 51 votes to get their crap legislation and Supreme Court appointments passed?

So who won the election in 2008?

I'm really, really getting tired of this bull shit.

The credit card bill only got 33 Democratic votes in the Senate.

So perhaps we can get stuff passed if we elect 100 Democrats to the Senate .... or maybe that won't be enough.

After all, many of those Democratic Senators would be from the south, the plains states and other states where in order to win they would have to be "conservative moderates" so the story goes.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Participatory democracy in two simple steps.

A. Elect who you think are the best people.

B. After election day, don't lay back, work the system, participate, make calls and write letters and take action.

AND, as your post indicates, CONGRESS is now the body that needs to be worked by its constituents.

Half the Obama Hates America threads fail to see the hand that Congress has in all of this.

:patriot:

[Better Believe It]

3. But, I can't afford to buy Senators like corporate tycoons and Wall Street banksters can

"CONGRESS is now the body that needs to be worked by its constituents."

But we don't have the big corporate bucks and the labor movement which gave hundreds of millions to Democrats in 2008 have been pretty much shoved aside by the corporate Democrats and their Republican allies.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Right. So we out the whores.

And make sure they get voted out.

The alternatives are what? Revolution or Surrender?

[Better Believe It]

16. We can and should hit the streets and build mass movements promoting our issues.

That's a realistic alternative to just voting every two years or so or sitting on our hands.

That's how we won civil rights, women's rights, labor rights, gay rights, etc., That's what we've done during every economic and social crisis in our history.

And mass movements are the thing politicians .... even conservatives .... fear and pay attention to.

[NYC_SKP]

22. Works for me. These, too, are actions of participatory democracy. nt

[rhett o rick]

25. What system are you describing? You make it sound like the people have a say in who

they elect. By the time you vote the choices are corporate candidate 1 or corporate candidate 2. Explain how we unseat Democratic incumbents. They have the money and the party will back them all the way. CT tried to unelect Lieberman and failed.

[DJ13]

2. Our esteemed Senate Democratic leaders have the perfect excuse

Honestly, when they claim they want to avoid a filibuster I wish they were just honest enough to admit they are beholden to the same interest groups as the GOP so they dont really want to vote on the bill in the first place instead of coming across as wimps afraid of the GOP Boogeyman.

[Thrill]

4. Weak Leader in the Senate

[Better Believe It]

5. Do we have a strong national leader of the Democratic Party?

That's all we really need. Everything else will fall in place.

That's IMNSHO .... in my not so humble opinion.

[Thrill]

7. I like Kaine. The biggest problem is the leader in the Senate

[rhett o rick]

23. Reid isn't the problem. You have about 20 Democratic Senators that are corporatists.

Nothing we can do. They run the party. They helped Lieberman defeat Lamont. If more republiCons defect they will become part of this new party the Blue Dog Traitors.

[Thrill]

38. Why has Dawn Johnson's nomination not been voted on?

[rhett o rick]

40. Why do I think you already know the answer? Reid wouldn't be there

without the support of his colleagues.

[depakid]

8. Pretty pathetic state of afffairs, isn't it

On one hand, a good 1/3 of the Democrats are cowardly and complicit- and on the other corrupt an inept Republicans.

At some point down the line, there'll be a third party to take up the slack-

[onetwo]

9. Who's the idiot who introduced an interest rate cap?

It was never going to pass with a cap on all rates. The correct strategy is to legislate the assessment of penalties ONLY. The bill should have 1) governed how banks can change rates after account activation (there should be NO cap on the initial APR) and 2) placed a cap on penalty fees (fees should only cover the bank's costs). Practices like universal default and flat $39 late fees should have been the target of this bill.

Not to mention that 15% as a CEILING is quite low and will result in millions of instant account closures.

[Better Believe It]

17. Bet your proposal would have gotten perhaps as many as 36 or even 37 votes!

[onetwo]

18. It would have passed.

You'll see if and when they strip away the cap from the final legislation.

[onetwo]

44. HEY, BETTER BELIEVE IT!!! I hate to say I told you so...

...but, I told you so.

[Hippo_Tron]

29. Anybody who is so risky that they MUST charge 30% interest to shouldn't have a credit card

But I'm not convinced that everybody they charge a 30% rate to is such a credit risk that they must charge that 30% rate. I think in some marginal cases they charge a 30% rate simply because they can get away with it since there is no competition.

However I agree that without a cap this would've easily passed.

[onetwo]

42. The people who "earn" a 30% APR could easily pay 0% by paying off every month.

Meaning, credit cards are free to the consumer if used responsibly (your basic usage is already sufficiently subsidized by the merchants).

But, it's a free country. If an American considers a 30% APR an OK deal (and legislation is in place that allows for easy apples-to-apples cross-shopping of the competition), the customer and bank should be free to do business with one another. After all, many argue that completely unsecured revolving credit is NOT a luxury but a necessity in today's world (tell that to anyone who has had to file for bankruptcy in the past 10 years and has undergone the resulting blacklisting from practically all of the banks).

The bank steps over the line at the point where they change terms from that agreed upon at account activation. Jacking rates without warning and charging exorbitant fees for relatively minor offenses is just plain WRONG.

If I were writing the bill, here's what I would put in it:

1) Any rate change can only apply to NEW balances. So, if you have an existing $5000 balance at 5.9% and they move your APR to 24.99%, you retain the 5.9% rate on the existing debt with only new charges being subject to the new rate.

2) Late/over the limit fees are limited to a small to-be-determined percentage of the balance and CAPPED at $19. (The exact numbers can be changed only if an independent party determines that the banking industry's actual costs to cover late payments and over the limit charges typically exceed these numbers). Penalties should NOT be considered a source of extra profits.

Simple. It is fair to both borrowers and lenders. It provides much needed relief for the consumer from the issuers' currently draconian way of doling out adverse action. This is something that would pass.

[DrToast]

10. The credit card bill was awful

You should be embarrassed that 33 democrats thought it was a good idea.

Interest rate caps are ridiculous.

[iamthebandfanman]

12. yikes, 700 posts since october?

someones been a busy beaver.

[DrToast]

13. Oh right...I forgot...I must be a troll for recognizing shitty policy.

[iamthebandfanman]

30. yikes, assume things much there jumpy?

someones feelin' froggy.

i never said anything of the sort.

[sandyd921]

14. Dr Toast something tells me you will soon be toast

No credit card cap? So it's OK by you if credit card companies raise interest rates to 300%? Buh-bye you RW nutball. Nice knowin ya'

[DrToast]

19. Pathetic...

Way to handle someone who disagrees with you. Clearly they're a right wing nutball.

I guess that Obama guy must be a right wing nutball, huh?

[sandyd921]

26. Hey buddy it's called regulation.

In case you haven't noticed lack of it leads to the insanity that today's robber barons have foisted on the rest of us.

You join a group in which close to 100% of the membership believes in at least reasonable regulation of financial activity and you expect us to just go along with your perspective? Sorry but you should expect at least some negative reaction to your ideas here.

[Better Believe It]

20. Right. That's why all of the Republicans voted against it. They only vote for good bills!

Your opinion has been noted.

[DrToast]

21. The credit card bill didn't even get 51 votes...

Why would you bring it up in your post?

[brentspeak]

34. Do you care to explain why "interest rate caps are ridiculous"?

[leftofthedial]

11. at least they have a friend in the White House...

and many friends in the House.

[salguine]

15. News flash...THE DEMOCRATS ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU,

ANY MORE THAN THE REPUBLICANS ARE. that's why they just fucked us on the credit card bill, just like they fucked us again on health care.

[rhett o rick]

24. As Cheney would say, "So, what are you going to do about it?" nm

[salguine]

27. I probably won't vote Democratic again, for starters. I'm thinking third party.

[rhett o rick]

31. well I certainly don't have any better ideas right now. nm

[leftofthedial]

28. It's kind of like the way the Washington Generals would need to score 1000 points

to ever actually beat the Globetrotters.

[Better Believe It]

32. A much weaker bill acceptable to Republicans might be passed

The Republicans apparently won the last election so they'll have the final say on what is passed.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[sofa king]

35. Nope, apples and oranges there.

51 votes is what is needed to get something passed. 60 votes is what is needed to invoke cloture in the Senate, stop debate, and bring the issue to a yay-or-nay vote.

The reason why we still have a United States of America is because Democratic Senators talked shit, every day, for eight years. Senator Byrd personally took over a good percentage of the Senate's floor-time, speaking for at least an hour every single damned day. Harry Reid read an entire local history of his home town in Nevada into the Congressional Record.

Doing so killed the very worst of the Republican legislative agenda. Now they're going to do the same to us. And then Al Franken is going to come to town, and if they don't knock off Al or someone else, the Republicans will be done talking for the foreseeable future.

[Sebastian Doyle]

36. Cat Butcher Frist wasn't a spineless coward like Reid

Granted, he was a sickening fascist kitteh murdering bastard, but at least he stood up for his party.

Why won't Reid do that, and since he won't, why hasn't his invertebrate ass been replaced?

[cwcwmack]

37. well I guess

the banks write big fat contribution checks to the Pol's... so it's up to Obama. Let's see what he'll do. My guess is that he'll shuffle it off and say "If it were presented to me as a bill, I'd sign it... but since the Congress has rejected it...

sos...

[onenote]

39. how did the repubs lose on anwr drilling, immigration legislation, same sex marriage amendment,

if they only needed 51 votes on everything?

The fact is that the Democrats successfully used a cloture strategy to block a number of bills and nominations for which the repubs had 51 votes. In addition to those mentioned above, I should add the estate tax bill. Also, several judicial nominations were blocked (yes, the deal cut by the gang of 14 allowed some of those nominees to be confirmed, but some, like Estrada and Pickering, never were confirmed). There were more than a dozen cloture votes defeated in 2002 and, in 2003, the Democrats blocked cloture 21 out of 22 times. Notably -- and something people sometimes overlook -- even after the Democrats were in the majority they used the filibuster/cloture strategy to block repub initiatives: four times in 2007 and a couple of times in 2008.

[JNelson6563]

41. Good point.

:toast:

[TheKentuckian]

43. Imagine if 40% of your brain was zombie-fied

There are at most 60-65 rational Senators, 70 on the outside. That 60-65 don't have the same ideology they just happen to be among the generally sane.

Unfortunately, we have a power sharing arrangement with the zombie portion of our brain both hard-wired and imagined. We don't have 60 Democrats, we have 60 for order and 40 for chaos. Our party is burdened with having to contain virtually the full political spectrum, basically cutting off the extremes on both sides and up and down. The Republicans represent the unconstitutional and/or fascist sympathetic and the "far left" is represented by a few nominal parties with little combined impact and virtually none individually.

The balance leads to near impossible governance. It is fairly impressive that we could get 50 votes the way the Senate is currently working. The locksteppers only need a few to bend, some just from a good faith procedural perspective. You know letting bills come to a vote whether you support it or not. Meanwhile we have to fight like hell to just heard up our on guys.

We have folks who are ranging from Socialist to Global Corporatist and/or neocon and people don't see why we have a tougher time passing what we want?