Democrats Blame Senate GOP for Failure to Govern; Voters Still Blame Democrats

[Better Believe It]

Democrats Blame Senate GOP for Failure to Govern; Voters Still Blame Democrats
by Jon Walker
July 15, 2010

Democrats have failed to govern, despite occupying large majorities in Congress and the Presidency. Their failure is not just in situations where external factors limit their control, such as the economy and foreign affairs. They are failures by their own standards. They have repeatedly failed to fulfill promises when they are capable of delivering.

Democrats now place the blame for their failure on Republican Senate obstructionism. No doubt, Senate Republicans have done everything they can to make life difficult for Democrats. They have used the filibuster as much as possible to stop Democrats from fulfilling their promises. As the opposition party, the GOP really has no reason to help Democrats achieve success.

Inside the Washington bubble, Democrats are throwing their hands up, saying, "What can we do, there are 41 Republican Senators and they have the filibuster." Somehow, that's considered a perfectly acceptable excuse. Allowing this bizarre use of an arcane rule about the amount of debate needed to shut down the federal government is weirdly accepted as a fact of life in Washington. It is so completely accepted that most of the media report it as hard fact without ever mentioning that it's pure nonsense.

Nothing is stopping 51 Senate Democrats from taking to the floor and in 20 minutes using Senate procedure to eliminate the filibuster. Republicans even threatened to do just that back in 2005. This excuse of the filibuster and Republican obstructionism is merely a self-constructed fantasy that the Senate has impressively convinced the rest of Washington to believe. A political tooth fairy, if you will. But this means Democrats are 100 percent to blame for not passing the laws they promised to and for failing to govern. They actually are fully capable of passing any law if they really want to.

Now that Democrats have failed, they have only two choices going into the November election. They can try to get all of America to buy into their filibuster fantasy, as they've succeeded in doing with the Washington media. This would require persuading regular people that because some Senators in the early part of the 19th century were a bit sloppy on how they drafted a few Senate rules changes, the huge Democratic majority is utterly powerless if all 41 Republicans don't play nice.

Good luck with that. The other option is to end the stupidity, kill the filibuster and start governing the country as they promised. Use their simple majority in the Senate to pass a bunch of smart policies, and hope voters like what they've done and reward them by voting to keep them in office.

Update - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims Republicans are "betting on failure" when it comes to the economy because it will help them win in November. Amazingly despite believing Republicans want the economy to fail he still doesn't think it is necessary to quickly take away their filibuster based veto power over any legislation that might help turn the economy around. The Republicans are betting on failure and Reid is still insisting on allowing them to keep the power to make sure that happens.

Read the full article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/15-13

[mrcheerful]

1. Whats new? Been like that every since Reagan first said "well there they go again"

like Reagan really had a plan that benefited the middle class and not the rich. But when the middle class started realizing they got screwed it wasn't Reagans fault it was those damn liberal Democrats fault.

[IntravenousDemilo]

2. Total agreement. K&R.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. But they do have the driest powder in all of history.

[Change has come]

4. K&R

Somehow I have to muster the will to vote for Reid in the fall. I will, because Sharron Angle is completely unacceptable.

[SpartanDem]

5. Find me 67 votes to end the filibuster

[Better Believe It]

6. 67 votes? Don't you mean 60 votes to end "pretend" procedural filibusters and

an end to Reid's "two track" rule which permits Senate debate and work to continue on other legislation during the Republican "phantom" filibusters?

[Zorra]

7. "Nuclear Option" wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option

[NJmaverick]

8. Posting Pro-GOP talking points

:puke:

[DCBob]

9. "The other option is to end the stupidity, kill the filibuster" .. sounds so easy..

maybe Jon should have included a few sentences to explain exactly how that works.. ??

[Better Believe It]

10. It's very easy.

[Better Believe It]

11. Joe Biden, acting as President of the Senate, can rule that 51 Senate votes can end filibusters

If Democrats really want to run the Senate they can get a ruling from the Senate President that only a majority of votes is required to end debate on any legislative proposal and/or that Senate rules can be changed at anytime by a simple majority of Senators using the "Constitutional Option.

It's likely the Republicans will utilize the above options whenever they regain control of the Senate. Meanwhile it seems the Democrats would rather let the Republicans continue their obstruction of the Senate by not utilizing these options. By BBI.


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During the filibuster, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, acting as President of the Senate, ruled that the debate over a rule change could be ended with a simple majority. Mansfield opposed Rockefeller's ruling and introduced a motion that was quickly tabled, 51-42, thus endorsing the majoritarian decision of Rockefeller. Conservatives were outraged and Mansfield, Byrd, and Minority Leader Robert Griffin attempted to overturn the precedent. Ultimately a proposal by Sen. Russell Long to change the cloture limit to 3/5 for two years and then revert back to the original 2/3 limit led to a compromise between the two factions to overcome Rockefeller's ruling.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Filibuster


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The Case for Busting the Filibuster
By Thomas Geoghegan
This article appeared in the August 31, 2009 edition of The Nation.

In 1975 Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, in his role as president of the Senate, ruled that just fifty-one senators could vote to get rid of the filibuster entirely. A simple majority of liberals could now force change on a frightened old guard. But instead of dumping the filibuster once and for all, the liberals, unsure of their support, agreed to a "reformed" Rule 22. It was this reform that, by accident, turned the once-in-a-blue-moon filibuster into something that happens all the time. The idea was to reduce the votes needed to cut off debate from sixty-seven, which on the Hill is a big hill to climb, to just sixty. Liberals like Walter Mondale wanted to make it easier to push through civil rights and other progressive legislation. What's the harm in that?

The only problem is that, because the filibuster had rendered the chamber so laughable, with renegade members pulling all-nighters and blocking all the Senate's business, the "reformers" came up with a new procedural filibuster--the polite filibuster, the Bob Dole filibuster--to replace the cruder old-fashioned filibuster of Senate pirates like Strom Thurmond ("filibuster" comes from the Dutch word for freebooter, or pirate). The liberals of 1975 thought they could banish the dark Furies of American history, but they wound up spawning more demons than we'd ever seen before. Because the senators did not want to be laughed at by stand-up comedians, they ended their own stand-up acts with a rule that says, essentially:

"We aren't going to let the Senate pirates hold up business anymore. From now on, if those people want to filibuster, they can do it offstage. They can just file a motion that they want debate to continue on this measure indefinitely. We will then put the measure aside, and go back to it only if we get the sixty votes to cut off this not-really-happening debate."

In other words, the opposing senators don't have the stomach to stand up and read the chicken soup recipes. We call it the "procedural" filibuster, but what we really mean is the "pretend" filibuster.

http://www.thenation.com/issue/august-31-2009

[Greyhound]

12. Thank you. This endless whining and pretended helplessness doesn't play in Peoria.

Even if it were true (though it is easily disproved) is not and never will be acceptable to Americans. Fortunately, as long as the Republiks keep nominating the bat-shit crazy and tragically stupid, enough people will hold their noses and vote Dem.

[Better Believe It]

13. For weekend DU'ers