Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) penned an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday calling for the Senate filibuster to be abolished.
Yep. For good or bad, liberalism — the majority rules.
Delay, the latency of the Senate, contributes to the growth of corruption. There’s plenty of time to lie and buy media for any purpose.
Witness Trump colluding with Russia.
You don’t necessarily need to get RID of the thing. Right now all a Senator has to do is raise a finger and say ‘I filibuster.’ What SHOULD happen is go back to the good ol’ days when Senators read from the phone book, pissed in wine bottles, slept in the cloakroom and shit in trash bags.
You bring THAT back and put it on television and the GOP (ten letter description that has the narcs on TPM clutching their pearls in horror) wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) penned an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday calling for the Senate filibuster to be abolished.”
Timing is everything.
(“Tie-MING…TIE-ming…tymun’…”)
#MaybeAtLeastWaitUntilDemsControlTheSenateAgain?
There’s no question Republicans have abused the filibuster -as they have any maneuver or procedure put in place by our forefathers to strengthen good governance in their unquenchable quest for power. The Senate was supposed to be the body to cool things down, to engage in deeper thinking than the rather impulsive nature of the House. But that has changed dramatically under McConnell - into a wall of obstruction where nothing meaningful gets done for the American people.
The dilemma in abolishing the filibuster is that there are more red states than blue, so Republicans have an unfair, but inherent advantage in the Senate.
The Democrats will likely be forced into doing this whenever they take the Senate back (hopefully in 2020), as the Republicans will block everything, no matter how trivial, as they were before they took the Senate in 2014. It’s been way beyond the norm how they have behaved, and the only way to stop it is to take it away as a tool. Sure, let the talking filibuster remain, as they will be unable to keep it up, and will make themselves look foolish as they try to block things that will help Americans. But if it remains, it will be impossible to push any legislation through the system…it’s already that way with McConnell in charge, so the contrast when Democrats finally toss it overboard and start passing legislation will be very clear.
I’ve said this to you before (I know that I still have the ‘cast iron bumps’ from ‘you know who’), but killing the FB ait an issue with me.
It’s defending whatever gains that we get from the act.
That’s just one.
The other is that Senators are easier to buy. It’s just one race instead of 4 or 13, and it’s only once every 6 years.
Even Trump could keep track of 3 or 4 TODOs over a 6-year cycle.
Get rid of the filibuster once DC, Puerto Rico and Guam have statehood.
Reid is right, not for the first time.
Do you have a real expectation that will happen anytime soon, if ever?
Had a friend who grew up in PR and moved back there for a while. Over beers (1, 2… many) one night the subject of statehood came up. At the time, his view was that the majority population of PR was not for it, it had been pushed over the years. He thought they liked the citizenship without statehood benefits.
This was a decade ago… not sure how the feeling is now after all the “love” they received from trump and the gop.
“Then-Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) slammed the move as a “sad day in the history of the Senate” at the time.”
Moscow Mitch doesn’t like it? All the more reason to get rid of it. Funny how he only opposed it when he was in the minority. Hypocrite.
Sure, now that you’re no longer in any position to do it, you’re in favor? All those years of Repub obstruction you were waiting for what?
Well, it’s not as though Democrats are planning on using it any time soon.
In the 2017 referendum, voter turnout was historically low. However, those who did vote favored statehood, with the final tally in favor running at 97.18%.
97.18%
More people (1.5%) favored independence than keeping the status quo (1.32%). That ain’t just hot air.
In June 2018, the Republican member of Congress from PR filed a bill to get the process started. Shockingly, Speaker Ryan didn’t bring the bill to the floor.
It’s time to give the people what they’ve asked for, dammit, and shut down all of the fucked-up laws that say ‘abusing the system and taking advantage of tax and contracting laws to screw over local residents and municipal governments via [X] is illegal in the United States… except Puerto Rico.’
Harry, we miss you. As Charlie Pierce put it, Chuck Schumer is not a wartime consigliere.
All of the above except for reading from the phone book. The biggest improvement would be actually spending a day and a half debating the issue in good faith for real.
We need to get rid of the shadowy, virtual filibuster. Bills just die without a vote if one Senator is very concerned there might not be enough votes. There are votes and hot air in the Senate, and without votes, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” is really just a huge balloon.