In his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, President Obama is supposed to talk about ways to change the way business is done in Washington.
Here’s one idea: get rid of the filibuster. It’s undemocratic, and it invites gross, mindless partisanship.
As designed, the filibuster was to be reserved for extreme cases. It was the exception, not the rule. The Senator exercising it had to actually speak from the podium the entire time of the filibuster, until he ran out of gas. And the Senate could conduct no other business while the filibuster was underway.
No wonder it was so rarely used. Only 35 times in the last 70 years.
Until last year. Under Mitch McConnell. Taking advantage of a change in rules which no longer shut down the Senate while a filibuster was underway, and no longer required Senators to speak the whole time, Republicans made the filibuster the rule, not the exception. They demanded a filibuster on every vote, invoking it a total of 111 times in just one year.
This is clearly an abuse of Senate rules, which says passage of legislation requires 51 votes, not 60.
Obama wants to change the way Washington works? Support legislation to end the filibuster.
That’s my parting shot for today.
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Yes get rid of it, then when the republicans get in this fall they can get thier agenda passed without any liberal input. Great idea…dumbaass
I agree it should go back to the old rules… but not gotten rid of altogether.
The Senate was designed to be the way it is… to be a steadying influence over the House which, because of the short terms and low constituency per Representative, would be too heavily influenced by public opinion.
I find it interesting that some people are complaining about how “slow” the Senate is moving… The Founding Fathers designed it to be that way. It’s also amazing that people are complaining about how difficult it is to pass major legislation through the Senate… Again, the Founding Fathers designed it that way. If you thought that getting legislation that even the Democrats admit will have the biggest influence over the “American Way of Life” since prohibition passed through the Senate in a couple of weeks or months, sorry to disappoint you… The Senate is designed specifically to keep that from happening.
Besides, the two Bills that people are mostly complaining about being obstructed (Energy Bill and Healthcare Bill) were both pretty lousy pieces of legislation anyway and SHOULD have been defeated. I am not a follower of the “A lousy Bill is better than no Bill at all” school of thought.
So the House and Senate will have to go back and fix these two Bills… Maybe they’ll get it right this time.
***FILIBUSTER NEWS FLASH*** The Senators are the ones who make the rules for the Senate. The Democrats.. as the majority party, are free to make any changes to the rules…
The Dems have ruled congress for a year..HOUSE, SENATE AND PRESIDENCY… They had their chance to pass all the nutty bills they could create !