NRSC Chairman John Cornyn says that the Republicans will not be able to take over the Senate tomorrow, and that is hopefully true. But it doesn’t mean what you might think. Unlike every other democratic body known to man, the U.S. Senate doesn’t operate by majority rule. On every issue not directly related to passing the budget, it requires 60% of the sitting members to agree, or consent, for the Senate to move to a new piece of business. That is why dozens of Obama’s nominees have not received a confirmation vote. That is why we couldn’t pass the health care bill that the president campaigned on. That is why the Wall Street reforms were weaker than they should have been. That is why the stimulus bill was smaller than it needed to be to fix the economy and significantly bring down the unemployment rate. That is why we couldn’t get a vote on climate legislation or immigration reform. That is why we couldn’t pass a Defense Appropriations bill that contained the DREAM Act and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. On a whole host of issues that have been upsetting to both progressives and the electorate at large, the Republicans thwarted the majority in the Senate and demonstrated that they had effective veto power over the president’s agenda. And this was in spite of the fact that for most of the last two years the Democrats had 58%-59% of the votes in the Senate. If it had not been for a brief period between late September and mid-January when the Democrats actually had the 60 votes required to move from one issue to the next without the consent of the Republicans, there would have been no health care reform at all.
It’s still important to have the majority because the majority gets to chair the committees that mark up legislation, and the majority gets to set the agenda. But having the majority doesn’t mean that you can actually do anything if you don’t have 60 seats. The Democrats currently have fifty-nine. Most experts predict that come next January the Democrats will have between 52 and 55 seats. There hasn’t been a contentious bill that passed through the Senate over the past two years that had more than three Republican votes. What this means is that we should not expect anything to pass that isn’t basically crafted by the Republicans. We should not expect anyone to be confirmed unless they are pre-approved by the Republicans.
So, when John Cornyn says that the GOP will not be able to win a majority of seats in the Senate, he is probably right. But it doesn’t mean that they won’t have won control of the Senate. They had near-control of the Senate for most of the past two years. They will now have near-total control of the Senate.
And that means that regardless of what happens in the House, our country is going into a prolonged holding pattern. We will fight each other, but solutions to our problems will have to wait.
Step 1: Reform Senate rules to eliminate filibuster and holds.
Step 2. Recess Appointments to every single outstanding vacancy come.
Step 3. Pressure on the Fed to do everything possible to improve economy.
Step 4. Use executive rule making/enforcement authority aggressively on things like climate change, immigration, wall street reform.
Step 5. Netroots should ignore congress, focus on ways to deploy the executive branch powers to advance progressive causes.
Step 6. Support progressive candidates in 2012 so if dems come back in power behind Obama’s coattails, we won’t have the same problem of blue dogs stopping the agenda.
The Fed cannot do anything remotely helpful right now, and Stiglitz argues that QE could possibly make things worse without anything from the fiscal side:
Economist Stiglitz: We need stimulus, not quantitative easing
stimulus isn’t happening. we’ll be luck to get a budget passed in the next two years. time to start thinking outside the box.
So you’re saying the president’s endorsement of reforming the filibuster means nothing?
Moreover, I’ve argued in the past that “making them filibuster” would not help things. In the scenario you’ve painted, I see no negatives in making them do it. Not that it will work to get things through, but it could help to show what we’re up against. In the past I thought it was bad because it was pointless — and I still think it would be, in general — because of how easy it is to filibuster and to keep one up.
But, nothing to lose, so now fine: make them do it.
It means nothing.
Unlike every other democratic body known to man, the U.S. Senate doesn’t operate by majority rule. On every issue not directly related to passing the budget, it requires 60% of the sitting members to agree, or consent, for the Senate to move to a new piece of business.
This is only true when Democrats have power. How often(before 2006) was cloture invoked? Not that much. Lets face it, things are heading towards a parlimentary Democracy, voting wise. Those in D.C.(like Ben Nelson) better switch parties unless he wants to behave himself.
People talk about false equivalence when they mention Obama, and typically they’re right. If so, why is there always false equivalence between the two parties? One party is strictly ideologically conservative, and one has conservatives, moderates and liberals. The liberals aren’t even the majority of the party.
So, how does one gather that because the Republicans didn’t need to invoke cloture nearly as much that this means it’s not necessary when the Democrats are in power?
You can say that it’s “oh just so convenient,” and I saw many commenters on FDL doing that on one of dday’s posts with regard to the filibuster. Or, you know, you can use Occam’s Razor properly and go “Oh, a lot of Democrats agree with Republicans on issues, so they vote with them on some things.”
I didn’t say what kind of filibuster I’d support, did I? I just don’t support it in its current form. Why not reverse it? Why not make 60 people vote against(meaning Lisa M.’s sulking in Alaska wouldn’t help the Pukes)? Or lower the thresold to 55(so Ben Nelson can still vote with the Pukes and we don’t have to worry about him)?
William Buckley was much enamored of the British parliamentary system because of its supposed ideological clarity. And wished the American Congress could be like that. So conservative purges for 50 years have driven the party in exactly that direction. Why is it a big surprise to Democrats that they are at a disadvantage with every Senator going off on his own agenda?
There is another change over the years as well. As the money vested interests have contributed to campaigns has grown, there has been a shift from the bulk of contributions coming through the parties to the bulk of contributions coming through individual candidate efforts and networks of PAC alliances. This has reduced party unity until in the Bush years, the GOP found some way to enforce party unity. And in the last two years found some way to keep even Olympia Snowe in line. With minor (approved) lapses.
If we are moving to a parliamentary system, then multi-party alliances with ideological focus are not long behind. Within the next decade, we might see Democrats fragment ideologically into three parties if this trend continues. A progressive/liberal party, a a moderate/economically conservative party, and a moderate social conservative party. Who will get to keep the name Democrat is anybody’s guess. Then there will be some realignment in the Republican Party as corporate/social conservative, with a few either being purged or crossing over to one of the Democratic fragments. Then at the beginning of each Congress, there will be jockeying to put together a majority coalition of seats to control each House.
But that is only if the trend to an ideologically-based parliamentary system continues to its logical conclusion.
It means nothing because of the members of the Democratic caucus who can reliably be expected to vote with the Republicans. Lieberman, Nelson, Nelson, Baucus, Conrad, Landrieu, and company were not up for re-election this year.
Not to mention what happens when every procedural vote is “99 to Angle…the nays have it”
If fiscal remedies are not put forward in the economy and a frozen Congress pretty much guarantees that, there will be no increase in demand unless it comes from exports (oh so likely).
If the Congress extends the Bush tax cuts, instead of having $1 trillion sitting on the sidelines waiting for demand, we will have $2 trillion sitting on the sidelines waiting for demand. Which will allow restructuring of the entire national debt to 3% or 4%, reducing the interest on the national debt, a major item in the spending column. Obama will have reduced the deficit.
But with 51 or 52 votes, it is theoretically possible to reform the filibuster. But with the House in Republican hands, the incentive to do that is lowered.
Gridlock for two more years with possibly a circus in the House.
Well, there may be a glimmer of hope that Reid may lose yet the Dems cling to a 51 or even 52 seat majority (NOT counting the unreliable Lieberman, who is likely to caucus with the GOP if they get 50 seats).
In that scenario, depending on who succeeds Reid, there may be the chance of serious reform of the Senate rules. Even if they don’t deal with the filibuster they can get rid of “holds” and “unanimous consent”, greatly broaden the scope of “reconciliation”, and even make a major change such as creating a “nomination approval” track that bypasses the filibuster.
The first key is that the Reid successor has to be someone in a very safe seat. The Dems made major mistakes in electing their last two Senate leaders from Red (S. Dakota) and Purple (Nevada) states. In doing so they made both leaders unwilling to take risks. The second key is that their slimmed down majority has to contain enough Senators from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party” to be able to make this kind of stand. That is, the Feingolds and Murrays have to hold on to their seats while the Lincolns and Reids are the ones who lose. Give us a Senator with courage, from a safe seat, who can whip his party into shape on key votes, and it could happen.
It certainly will help this scenario, I’m sad to say, that Robert Byrd is no longer in the Senate. Byrd was the meister of Senate history and the man who authored in the 1960s the current set two-track set up, in which a filibuster of one issue no longer forced the minority party to actually set up cots in the Senate and occupy the podium indefinitely. Byrd would have resisted these kind of changes and would have been able to influence enough Dems.
Of course, even in this situation if the Dems lose the House we won’t see any useful legislation in the next two years. But the nominations will get through, and that’s critically important. Especially if one of the RATS (Roberts Alito Thomas Scalia) unexpectedly leaves the SCOTUS.
Are you kidding? What makes you think that nominations will be likely to get through with a reduced Senate Democratic majority? Especially Supreme Court nominations? If any SC justice steps down – doesn’t matter who – we are going to have an 8-person court until Jan. 2013 at least. If there’s one thing I’m certain of about the next two years, it’s that.
Sorry, I didn’t read your comment closely enough and I realize now that you were talking about nominations in the event of filibuster reform. Even so, though, if Dems have, say 52 in the Senate, the GOP will only have to pull away a couple to block SC nominations. And they will fight harder on that than on any other single thing.
Nelson, Nelson, Baucus, Conrad, Landrieu, Webb, Warner, Tester, Hagen — that’s why there will be no reform of the Senate rules.
I grant you that you are probably correct. That’s why I characterized it as “may be a glimmer of hope”. The key is having a leader with guts instead of Reid — one who is willing to challenge committee assignments during the organizing conference in order to get some real reforms through.
Also keep in mind that while the list of Vichy Democrats you provided tend to bail on progressive legislation in order to appease their major campaign contributors, they may not be under such pressure for a simple revision of Senate rules. I’m not counting on this, but it’s not an impossibility.
Thanks for including the DREAM Act in this rant, BooMan. The filibuster needs to end. I don’t care if it gives more power to Republicans when they’re in charge. The filibuster is the enemy of progress.
But, but, bullypulpitFDRcommitteechairmanshipsLBJarmtwistingOvertonexecutiveorder
LakoffsigningstatementsRahmprimarychallenge!
That’s what!
Fight each other? 90% of what I see is Dems capitulating.
Well maybe there will be a brightside–maybe Obama will actually start recess appointing people.
Well, soon it seems, the Democrats in the Senate will be able to use the super-majority rule to our advantage, and the Bush taxcuts will just fade away, expire, and we will go back to Clinton levels of taxation, on the wealthy and everyone else.
What’s not to like. I personally thought that Obama made a gesture to the wealthy, by offering to maintain a 20% tax rate on capital gains and dividends, a lesser gift but a gift nonetheless. By 2000 estimates, the top 10% of families owned 85% of the stock market.