Ezra: "The chairman of the Budget Committee explains the reconciliation process."

[Clio the Leo]

(Ezra's questions/comments are in italics.)

The chairman of the Budget Committee explains the reconciliation process

<snip>

What about the threats to delay the reconciliation process by offering endless amendments?

Here’s what you can do. Reconciliation is limited in time to 20 hours of consideration. At the end of that time, you can continue to offer amendments. You could offer 10,000. But if the parliamentarian judges someone as being dilatory, that can be stopped. If he says they’re just offering amendments to delay final action, he can rule to shut that down

One of the elements here that I don’t think gets enough attention is the cost imposed by running the Senate according to different loopholes. Only about a quarter of the population knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. And I’d guess virtually none of them realize that it also requires two days to let the motion to break a filibuster ripen, and then another 30 hours of post-cloture debate. So there’s this massive time cost, which some senators are using to make their holds more effective.

Then, with reconciliation, the process is limited, so bills get written to conform more tightly to the budget. That may not be the best or cheapest way, however, to achieve that bill’s goals. So it’s not just that we have a fight over 51 votes or 60 votes, but that in using these processes and loopholes, we’re imposing all sorts of other costs on the process. It would be better if we just decided that legislation will require 51 votes or 60 and did away with these complicating rules.

Republicans are forcing 60 votes even on things that then get overwhelming majority votes, that tells you they’re just being dilatory. These aren’t highly controversial nominations or bills. They’re just doing it to slow walk the Senate of the United States of America. They do this to deny the majority accomplishment.

But I think you touch on something there that’s important to understand. In the beginning days of the U.S. Senate, there was no filibuster. There was not a requirement for a supermajority vote. America was founded on majority rule, not supermajority rule. Somehow, over the years, this has morphed into supermajority rule, and that changes things.

(more more...)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/the_chairman_of_the_budget_com.html

Will someone please get me a teabagger so I can point to them that the filibuster is, indeed, "unpatriotic" as it is NOT something the Great White Fathers invented?

[bbinacan]

1. The "Great White Fathers" neither

invented it nor did they forbid it. Does not the Constituition allow the Senate to make their own rules?

[Clio the Leo]

2. Only if the rules are about guns, God or "the gays."

Otherwise, you gotta stick to the letter of the law!

:sarcasm:

[bbinacan]

3. ?

I don't get your point re Senate rules.

[Clio the Leo]

5. They make their own rules....

... if the matter at hand involves guns, abortion, religion or "the protection of marriage." Things THEY care about ... otherwise, we must adhere EXACTLY to what "The Great White Men" "wanted."

[Clio the Leo]

4. *

[Cha]

6. THank you for the information~Clio~