The Clown Car Senate taketh away, and the Clown Car Senate taketh away again...

The Senate wasn't design> to function this way

ed

Why doesn't Harry Reid get rid of Senate Rule 22 (which permits the minority to just say that they are filibustering) and make the Republicans really filibuster (keep speaking continuously). Let's see who cares more on this issue. Let the press cover some real theatrics. Let's see the Republicans' real obstructionism brought to the fore.

Look to California to see where this is headed.

When Republicans threatened the nuclear option for judicial appointees back under the Bush Presidency, we should have just let them. If I remember right, you foresaw this at the time.

The Senate just plain wasn't designed to function. It becomes more and more obvious with every passing day that the founding fathers were likely idiots. That, or too involved with their own petty desires to make a worthwhile country.

I think the problem is the Senate wasn't designed to function.

It would really help if we had a democratic leadership in the Senate with the courage and conviction to create new organizing rules for the body that either eliminate the filibuster altogether, or severely limit its use. With a straight democratic party majority, it could be done.

But, would someone like Reid ever do it?

You want majority rule in the Senate? The answer is obvious: Make Republicans the majority again. Then all this crap will become history until Democrats are in the majority again - which at this point, may as well never happen.

I don't agree with use of a simple majority process. It may sound attractive for this election cycle, but if future elections give Republicans a 51 to 49 advantage, the legislative results of passing bills by simple majority could lead to some very undesirable outcomes.

Instead, I like the 60-vote concept which, in most election cycles, would require some level of multiparty support of bills. That should allow for various compromises that would factor in the interests of the minority/minorities, and not simply exclude them.

As long as Harry Reid lets the Republicans run the senate, they will.

Nuclear option, nuclear option, nuclear option. Changing undemocratic rules in defense of America is no vice.

Pencarrow, your view has merit if you assume the Republicans are acting in good faith. They aren't.

By the way, LBJ was never re-elected. He was elected, then decided not to run for re-election.

pencarrow understands that it is our dysfunctional two party system that is at the heart of the problem and that the public has to punish the GOP by making it a completely minority problem. I do think the Senate rules encourage this sort of unpartiotic partisanship and I do believe that at some point in the future the GOP or some similarily odious political party will have a robust majority so I do not think doing away completely with the filibuster makes sense. I think we could learn something from the NFL challenge rule in this regard. Some things should not be reviewable--like whether to bring a bill to the floor for debate. A simple majority should suffice. Second each Senator should only have the opportunity to vote against cloture a limited number of times in each session of Congress. If cloture is defeated maybe you get to retain that filibuster, but the idea would be if you want to filibuster three judicial candidates that is fine, but then you have to vote for cloture on health care reform, cap and trade etc. If Lieberman wants to filibuster health care, he may not be able to filibuster cutting off aid to Israel or a bill calling for us to lift sanctions against Iran or whatever. Will there be situations where you want more than the allotted number of filibusters? Probably, but that is true of football teams too. The other rule which needs to be changed is to limit the number of holds a Senator can invoke and all holds have to be made public.

Let's see who cares more on this issue. Let the press cover some real theatrics. Let's see the Republicans' real obstructionism brought to the fore.

I believe the main reason is that a "real" filibuster of the type you are envisioning is actually harder on the majority then it is on the minority. In that scenario it only takes one Senator to filibuster but it takes 51 to establish a quorum. That is to say, its the majority that will have to keep more members on the floor to suffer through the filibuster so that they have the 51 votes necessary to officially "end" it.

In my opinion, the Democrats need to force the Republicans into actual filibusters.

When the business of the country grinds to a halt, they need to make it personal: the farm bill has not been passed because Senator (Name) is filibustering health care. The defense appropriation has not been passed because Senator (Name) is filibustering health care. Etc, etc.

When a filibuster is happening, no Democrat should talk to the media without beating on the dead horse. Make sure the people of the country realize that Senator (Name) is the problem.

The corporatists and monarchists have achieved what they've always wanted, a way to render government dysfunctional, a way to ensure minority control of 'the beast' (those pesky, ordinary people).

Reversing changes that have allowed this tyranny, however difficult in the future (another Republican senate majority?), should be foremost on the Democrat's agenda. The situation will only get worse if they remain inactive.

Pretty much everything about the how disappointing the Senate Democrats have been seems right to me, but though I can't claim any originality for this point, surely part of the problem is that the press didn't make the Republicans pay any price for this really rather major change, but seems obligingly to have switched to treating the 60 vote requirement as thought it were a hallowed practice whose origins were as old as the Republic.

There's something to be said for requiring more than a simple majority on legislation that brings sweeping changes such as health care reform. Fifty-five sounds reasonable. But as I and others have said before, the current problem is not with the system but the players.

Republicans are simply refusing to participate in a democracy led by Democrats. It's their way or nothing, which is, of course, precisely how they behaved when they held the reins of power.

Given this, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Republicans are not interested in representative democracy. Remember the 'permanent Republican majority?' They were serious.

One of the two major parties -- the one that hides behind the flag, traditional values and the 'real America' -- has dedicated itself to one-party rule.

How much more anti-American can you get?

I still don't know why we even need a Senate. It's repulsively undemocratic.

Would it take a supermajority to get rid of the supermajority rule?

That is an incredible document. Simple head counting without the theatrics. And just 45 years ago! Imagine another 45 years if this republic can hold it together.

"Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member."

Anything else is up to the Democrats with their 60 seat majority. Just because Reid et al. don't have the guts to change the rules, we as a people will endure needless pain and suffering - by the millions each year. Shame on them.

It only takes a 60 vote super majority for democrats, republicans have dominated the Senate with just 51 votes. Anyone care to tell me who's fault that is?

DUH!

The senate has become a body detrimental to a democracy and refusing to change their rules is leading to a majority thinking they really would be better off abandoning this legislative body all together.

What they are becoming best known for in recent years (due entirely to republicans) is holding the nation hostage to blackmail via the filibuster. They don't represent the population yet can stop the majority from legislating. Consider how much progress has been prevented due sole to the senate obstructionism.

Get rid of the senate filibuster rule or get rid of the senate...it has become a real threat to our democracy.

For those who don't know...changing senate rules must be done on the first day the senate begins sessions. However there must surely be ways around this...anyone know how it could be done?

It only takes a 60 vote super majority for democrats, republicans have dominated the Senate with just 51 votes. Anyone care to tell me who's fault that is?

It's because Democrats care about having a functioning government, and Republicans don't. Personally, I don't think I'd be happier if the Democrats betrayed all of their principles to be just as big dicks as the Republicans, and produced a government that never functions no matter who's in power.

Nuclear option, nuclear option, nuclear option. Changing undemocratic rules in defense of America is no vice.

Just to be clear, voting to weaken or eliminate the filibuster wouldn't be the "nuclear option," just a change in procedure, and one that has been done several times before. The "nuclear option" was so called because it involved deliberately breaking the Senate rules and using a majority (including Cheney as a tie-breaker) willing to vote to overrule a parliamentarian ruling that they were well aware was correct, so that they could eliminate the filibuster without having a 60-vote majority. The "nuclear option" was cheating, plain and simple, and to refer to anything else by that name disguises the lengths they were willing to go to (all of them) to illegitimately seize more power.

I hate to be the first Democrat to say this, but I believe we must use the nuclear option and get rid of filibusters, at least for now. The republicans will surely do it if they regain the majority. I know this because they have proved they are not honest partners and they have raped the filibuster. They are using every dirty trick they can come up with and wreacking havock in the Senate with procedural tricks I didn't even know existed. They always do this. They always screw us over and use every advantage they possibly can and even some that they can't. We must be Fighting Dems if we want to have any prayer of passing our agenda or maintaining our majorities. Come on Dems, let's kick those anti American, fake christian republican asses.

Republics collapse when various factions or interests refuse or are unable to cross the aisle, compromise and work with one another despite their passionate differences. That was the wisdom that the Founding Fathers brought to the work of writing the Constitutition.

At times like these when our system seems on the verge of deadlocked collapse it is important to revisit that wisdom and capture again the spirit behind the Constitution. And it is in that spirit that the filibuster stands as a mortal danger to our Republic.

The key to the Constitution and its intricate system of checks and balances and divided powers is to understand that the Great Charter was designed to achieve via somewhat mechanical means a harmonizing of political and social differences. The system would not work without compromise. It was designed to force various factions to check their ideology at the door and deliberate -- "deliberate" is the key word here -- on behalf of the larger public good.

Moderating differences, in other words, in order to preserve a Republic that would govern a continent-wide country of many interests, was the whole point of the Constitution. As James Madison said in the most important line from the Federalist Papers (the opening of Federalist 10): "Among the numerous advantages of a well constructed Union none deserves to be more accurately developed that its tendency to BREAK and CONTROL the violence of FACTION."

The filibuster does exactly the reverse. It promotes and encourages faction by giving the losing minority in any election the incentive and ability to strangle and frustrate the will of the national majority, to prevent it from governing, and to essentially institutionalize by extra-constitutional means Minority Rule.

Granted, it is minority rule by deadlock and stalemate and veto. But if you are the leaders of a right wing movement -- a Party of No -- that may actually desire to destroy the national government in order to allocate political power to local warlords at the state level, or the clerics who rule your religions, or the financial oligarchy who controls our corporations and capital-forming institutions, then you may not care whether the larger public turns away in disappointment and disgust from a national government that is unable to translate the mandate it earned by victory in a national election into an effective governing program.

All of this is why the filibuster was not built into the Constitution itself by the founders, but is instead a rule of the Senate. As such, the filubuster may reflect a legislating and governing culture which is no longer with us -- one in which loyalty to the Senate as a functioning and governing institution, responsive to the American People -- the whole people -- outweighed commitments to ones party or ideological faction or even religion.

The filibuster has a limited place in our system. It is a device by which a minority party is able to protect itself against the encroachments of a temporary majority upon the minority's established rights. But the indiscriminate and promiscuous use of the filibuster by the defeated Right Wing of what remains of the Republican Party is not an attempt to protect minority rights. It is an attempt to impose minority rule by a conservative populist faction that refuses to accept the verdict of the past two elections and will never accept the legitimacy of any government that it does not affirmatively control.

The closest thing we have had in our history to the destructive use of the filibuster we see today are the "concurrent majority" theories of John C. Calhoun that were promoted to give the Southern plantation elite during the ebb tide of their power an absolute veto over changes in the nation that were hostile to its system of chattle slavery in the years before the character and control of the country was finally decided by Civil War.

The question is "Why doesn't Harry Reid get rid of Senate Rule 22 (which permits the minority to just say that they are filibustering) and make the Republicans really filibuster (keep speaking continuously)."

Well the answer is VERY simple, it was the DEMOCRATS that created this rule so THEY could have some influence back the Rs controlled the house! Amazing how the dirty politics are coming back to haunt them, eh?

I still don't see why we're blaming Republicans when we have sixty Democrats in the Senate. If the Democratic leadership had even a SHRED of ability, it'd be doing something besides begging four of its members to support a vote for cloture on what is perhaps the defining party issue of the last century. Every Republican could vote en masse in support of a filibuster on ANY issue -- it wouldn't matter if the Dems voted as a united block. Which I think would happen reliably if people were threatened with punishments on things like this. The can say what they want, but I think the Lieberman/Nelson crowd would be much hesitant to give us the middle finger if their little castles were threatened in the process.

And I'm still absolutely amazed at people's selective memory on this issue -- when it came to the nuclear option several years back, the liberal blogosphere couldn't stop talking about "minority rights" and the importance of the filibuster. Unfortunately, Senate Dems didn't have the balls to use it back then (morons), and now that SOMEONE has proven political competence on the issue (let's face it, the Dems are usually nowhere near as politically astute as the Rethugs), we suddenly can't stop talking about the importance of "majority rule" -- just like the Republicans back in Bush's administration. Which does nothing for our credibility in the public sphere.

Let's get our own house in order before we start coming off as hypocritical.

Don 't count on it.

I have my reasons for believing the filibuster is not only tolerated by Democrats, but encouraged.

Further, they will not use it if ever they are placed in the minority again. When they inevitably sink to 49 someday, the GOP shall lay waste to the land.

And that's precisely what they have in mind.
Machiavelli would be stunned and impressed.

The cavalier use of the filibuster by Republican Senators makes a mockery of democracy.

The US Senate, by design, is not representative. The use of a filibuster makes it even less so.

GOP Senators currently represent only 35% of the population, crediting each Senator with one half of the population of their state.

How is it that representatives only 35% of the population can block passage of legislation that is overwhelmingly supported by the general public?