I once harbored hope that due to self-interest, the Stupid Party, Republikeynesians, may just tackle the 17th amendment (as in repeal it), a 1913 abomination that sundered the republican scheme of governance put in place by the Founding Fathers, whereby senators were to be elected by the respective state legislatures. But I was operating under the naive assumption that Republikeynesians may have had a stake in the Constitution’s original intent.
Since they don’t, it is understandable that Republican senators would align themselves with Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats in furtherance of Senate “reform.”
A group of liberal Democrats had been pushing Reid to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” on Thursday, the first day of the 113th Congress, to make it more difficult for the minority to stall legislation and nominees.
Say bye-bye to the legislation-stalling filibuster.
The filibuster is a powerful parliamentary device in the United States Senate, which in recent years has meant that most major legislation (apart from budgets and confirmations) requires a 60% majority to head off a filibuster. In recent years the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened …
Efforts to retard legislation are a good thing, unless the legislation being sabotaged is legislation to repeal and nullify other legislation.
“Junior Democrats, including Sens. Tom Udall (N.M.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.),” have been successful in recruiting to their nefarious cause some familiar sickos such as the too-decrepit-to-filibuster (as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)”Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as well as Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).”
This lot “favor[s] using the nuclear option, which they call the ‘constitutional option,’ to effect this change through a simple majority vote. But they need 51 of the 55 members of the Senate Democratic Conference to back them.”
“You need a two-thirds vote in the Senate to change any of the chamber’s rules,” laments sympathetic statist Ezra Klein of the WaPo. Like the politicians, Klein dislikes any minor obstacles still extant to mob rule.
Other vile leftists like Klein complain bitterly that, “The Senate is in a prolonged, self-induced coma. It does not produce creative legislation.”
It is a well-known fact that US Senators are comatose. But we’d like their legislative efforts to be as still as their comatose minds.
Indeed, both Americas deliberative bodies are in a comma, but that’s not because of a deficit in democracy driven, legislative Brownian Motion (besides which the Founders were no fans of democracy).
The news reports are as muddled as ever on this issue. Some reports claim that the colluding quislings wish to force senators who filibuster to actually speak on the floor. That sounds good. However, can “the majority leader call for a simple majority vote on the pending business once the debate stops”? That I do not know.
