Dick Durbin: Time to change the filibuster

[Swede]

“If the Republicans are willing to interrupt the business of the Senate and bring it to a halt, they should be willing to interrupt their dinner plans,” said Mr. Durbin, the Senate majority whip.

Mr. Durbin said the latest vote on President Obama’s American Jobs Act proposal, which failed to muster the necessary 60 votes, was the latest sign that the U.S. Senate must change its current process.

“The filibuster kept us from passing the entire bill,” the Illinois Democrat said. “There is opposition to certain parts. We will have to create a bill that can pass so we can have some parts .”



Read more: http://www.thestatecolumn.com/articles/dick-durbin-time-to-change-the-filibuster/#ixzz1bcJWjbex

[LonePirate]

1. Shame on Durbin for not doing something about this back in January when he had the chance.

The old guard thwarted the will of the younger senators who perceive the filibuster to be the monstrosity that it is.

[Firebrand Gary]

2. Fuck Durbin! That filibuster better remain exactly where it is when the GOP takes over.

[LonePirate]

4. Don't kid yourself, the filibuster is history as soon as the Rs control Congress and the WH again

They will not tolerate the bullshit obstructionism they have perpetrated the past few years.

[Firebrand Gary]

7. You might be right.

It would send this country into an all out WAR.

[rhett o rick]

17. Oh yeah, like they wont take it away because the Dem's didnt. Fuzzy Logic. nm

[bullimiami]

3. how about just making them actually fillibuster instead of taking a vote and going home?

make them work for every minute they want to delay it. keep them sitting in the chamber and shut everything else down.

[LonePirate]

5. That works for the obstructionist Rethugs as they don't want anything to get done.

If everything shuts down and nothing is passed, they still win, so they think.

[Drale]

10. You really think they got into politics to work?

If they actually had to do work, it would probably kill them right there on the chamber floor.

[Romulox]

6. A mere 51 Senators can change the rule. nt

[Firebrand Gary]

8. No way, I am not for it.

[Romulox]

11. "democracy" or any semblance thereof, you mean?

The Senate is already massively unrepresentative. The current rules allow representatives of a tiny minority of Americans to block the will of the majority in every instance.

It's not what the founders envisioned, even for own version of the House of Lords.

[Ed Suspicious]

12. Actually I would say it is exactly what the founders had intended.

I believe the wanted a slow moving, contentious, deliberative body who moved slowly in fits and starts as a means of ensuring the majority couldn't completely railroad and disregard minority interests. This yearning for expediency is what gets us bad policy like the patriot act, the Iraq war, etc.

[Romulox]

13. Nonsense. The filibuster doesn't exist in any form in the US Constitution. It's a Senate Rule.

The only Constitutional basis for the filibuster is that the Constitution allows the Senate to make its own rules, on a majority vote.

[Ed Suspicious]

15. I guess I was saying the filibuster was in keeping with the spirit

of the ideal of slow moving government expressed earlier.

[Romulox]

16. It's a bad argument, invoking the Founders' intent for a provision they didn't write, and that

was last changed on October 6, 2011. Did the Founders' intent change on that day? :shrug: :hi:

Reid triggers ‘nuclear option’ to change Senate rules, end repeat filibusters

By Alexander Bolton - 10/06/11 09:10 PM ET

In a shocking development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely used procedural option informally called the “nuclear option” to change the Senate rules.

Reid and 50 members of his caucus voted to change Senate rules unilaterally to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on uncomfortable amendments after the chamber has voted to move to final passage of a bill.

Reid’s coup passed by a vote of 51-48, leaving Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fuming.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/186133-reid-triggers-nuclear-option-to-change-senate-rules-and-prohibit-post-cloture-filibusters

[rhett o rick]

20. Agree the founders wanted a delibritive process, but what we have is a STOPPED process.

that isnt what the founders wanted.

[rhett o rick]

19. What? The rule is being misused to STOP the process altogether.

And our founders didnt add this rule it is relatively new. And besides it didnt stop us from bad policy like the Iraq War and Patriot Act.

Dump the filibuster now.

[rhett o rick]

18. You left out the why. nm

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Words this should have been changed the first day this senate met

And he knows it

[nineteen50]

14. If

25 states with 15% of the population hold 50% of the seats in
the Senate.

If you don't like how it went in the senate maybe you should
do something about this:

“The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math.
In the 1960s, she finds, "extended-debate-related
problems" - threatened or actual filibusters - affected
only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had
risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of
Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the
minority, it soared to 70 percent.” 
 The 60-vote cloture was never part of the constitution.
Unfortunately the disproportional power of small states was.
Add a couple of corporate pandering dems to a republican party
more interested in failure not solving problems and the
corporations get anything they want. This amounts to the
minority perpetrating tyranny on the majority and holding the
will of the people hostage. This dysfunctional political body
needs reform to align it with 21st century reality.