I’ve already written about the fact that the Founding Fathers were not in favor of the filibuster, so maybe Judd Gregg can just go read that. What’s more amazing than former Senator Judd Gregg’s interpretation of history is his assignment of blame for Senate dysfunction. He blames it on Harry Reid’s decision to “fill the tree.”
If you don’t know what that means, go here.
It was healthy for a nation with the size and complexity of ours to be assured that at one place in the process of governance, either a lone voice could make a point he or she deemed important, or an entire party representing the minority in the nation could make such a point.
This all ended recently when the Democratic membership of the Senate decided to exercise the single worst abuse of power in more than two hundred years of our constitutional democracy by changing the rules of the Senate so that 51 members of the Senate can now control the body in a unilateral and dictatorial manner.
The process had been building over the last few years. The Democratic Party’s leadership in the Senate had exploded the use of a procedure known as “filling the tree,” which, as a practical matter, cut off the historic rights of individual senators to offer whatever amendment they deemed appropriate to bills brought to the floor of the Senate and ended the power of the minority to offer amendments that would be seen as improving legislation.
“Filling the Tree” has the practical effect of turning the debate and amendment process of the Senate into a carbon copy of the House, where the minority has no rights except for those granted it by the majority.
Its excessive use by the majority leader in the Senate over the last few years was the result of the newer Democratic members not wanting to take the “tough” votes that were being brought forward by the minority.
Harry Reid wouldn’t fill the tree if the Republicans would agree to offer a reasonable amount of amendments that are germane to the underlying bill. But Republicans refuse to legislate in anything but troll-mode.