http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/filibuster-reform-2013_n_2526392.html How is he maintaining the ability to do this "first day" magic in another day or two? By not adjourning the Senate such that the "first day" doesn't end. I'm vaguely excited to see what this bold new world will look like. On CSPAN, CSPAN2, or CSPAN8 ("The Ocho").
Good god. Harry Reid is trying to do my bidding at last. Maybe Krugman kidnapped him and replaced him with a double or something.
Dear Senator Reid, If you destroy the filibuster forever, it will make up for every single thing. Love, extarbags
How is "making the other side actually stand up and physically do the filibuster" a reform? (The suggestion painted as having the most support in the article) To me that seems like ignoring the actual issue...
Words and actions are a form of political capital - the "cost" of a talking filibuster is substantially higher than a procedural one that is extremely easy to ignore. For a recent example, could you imagine McConnell perform a live talking filibuster to block off of his own bullshit debt ceiling proposal bluff during the height of the fiscal cliff? I mean, seriously, the media has everyone in a huff about how Congress has to act immediately and you think this guy is going to be the one on TV debating against his own damn bill for hours?
It won't prevent filibusters of major stuff, but the routine filibusters the GOP mount on everything these days will likely stop if there's an actual cost.
To expand on this: Those last three bars are the number of filibusters we've had per session from this Republican minority. It's obscenely high; in case you can't quite make it out, they're basically just shy of 140. That's roughly one every two days that the Senate is in session. Really absurd. But if they had to do this "talking filibuster" business, it would at least cut down on that, because there's just no way these assholes would have enough time or energy to keep up that insane pace. I don't think it's the ideal solution, mind you, but if that's the most that can get done it'll still be a huge help.
An actual filibuster will cause everything going before congress to grind to a halt while everyone hears a stirring rendition of the D.C. phone book. Which means those lobbyists who funded your election campaign aren't getting their pet projects greenlighted, your fellow senators and congressmen aren't bringing home the bacon, and you're making your party look like a clownshow on national stage. Even odds the first to try it without full support of their party gets lynched; I leave it to you to decide whether I mean that figuratively or literally.
It doesn't work that way. Everything in Congress already grinds to a halt. A filibuster is threatened, so it doesn't make it onto the agenda, or is tabled for later discussion. The only effect of the "talking" change would be that one guy would need to be speaking as long the Senate is usually in session (something like 10-3 Monday - Thursday) if there's a quorum present, from what I gather. It'll only mildly help, but it's better than nothing I guess.
I personally would love to see it happen. This way if someone threatens to filibuster they actually have to do it or look like a fool (chances are they will look like a fool if they actually go through with it but this way we will know who they are).
Ah, but, assuming Reid succeeds, he'll have established that a simple majority can change the Senate rules. Not a bad fringe benefit.
According to Mr. Smith (see above) they have to stay on their feet and talking or they lose the floor. I realize I'm getting my political news from a Frank Capra movie, but damn, that filibuster meant something.
Mr. Smith is wrong, basically. Half the support for the stupid institution can be laid at the feet of that movie. Recycling bits:
No, it's pretty huge. They're senators, they're not going to talk themselves to death, much as we all probably wish it. The fact that they could shelve the discussion on a contentious thing means they can move onto other, more productive things. Without the ability to threaten a vote for cloture, they can't move onto things that the rest of the senate would pass uncontested. Which means that in order for you to successfully filibuster a new gun law under the new rule, you would have to hold up hurricane relief for New York, and that would kill you. Possibly literally; the teamsters might bury you next to Hoffa for holding up the hurricane relief payday.
Is there an actual full text of this proposal somewhere? Does it chance the roll call or quorum rules?
The entire purpose is to keep filibusters from being a quiet thing nobody reports on, and attempt to elevate them to the point of public attention and thus ridicule. Same thing they did with the secret hold nonsense by reforming it to release the holding senator's name after X time elapsed (which just caused another rotating hold issue IIRC, but hey) because we publicly named and shamed the asshole who had put a hold on every single nomination in order to extort money for his district. The idea isn't to kill the filibuster. It's to make the filibuster actually cost political capital to use. That said: Senator Reid, I'm so not fond of playing games with not closing the day out in order to skirt the rules. It strikes me as the same level of stupidity as the pro forma sessions to prevent recess appointments. edit: I haven't seen the full text, I think they're still debating it. But it's basically not filibuster reform as much as a change to the quorum rules to move to debate. Also: AND THEN GOD SMOTE A MOTHERFUCKER FOR THAT BULLSHIT, RIGHT?
The same way people are riveted by C-SPAN speeches? I predict televised mandatory speaking will have exactly zero effect on the level of public pressure put on minority senators.
To force things to vote, not the speeches. The reason it's not covered in the media is that a real vote is never taken and the bill isn't really struck down, it's just paused forever. If you force things to a vote, even if it fails and dies, you get shit like TDS spending a day shaming the fuck out of people for voting no on wildly popular things for bullshit reasons. It's a sad truth that we as a nation need to trick our media to actually covering news.
Like I said, this isn't going to stop filibusters on big stuff. Obamacare still gets a filibuster, at least a marginally more visible one. What this does stop is the filibusters on routine stuff that ends up passing 98-0. People focus so much on the big bills that they don't realize how much time was eaten up by that bullshit.
One, as mentioned above, unless there's something in that bill about changing quorum and roll call rules it won't force anything to a vote; it just makes it somewhat harder to do the subset of non-quorum and non-roll call time-wasting. Two, votes to cut off debate regularly happen under the current system and get no coverage 99% of the time. How would it be any different in this new system?
They don't even need to speak much, they can play amendment vote trading all day if that's the game. End result is still that if the bill can't be clotured away until it dies of apathy, and it can't be voted on, that the senate will do nothing for weeks. Then the lobbyists will start to get upset and have talks with party leaders because they have things they want passed, and people like Christie will throw a fit very publicly about still not having hurricane relief, and that will lead to the Republican party eating their young.
The optics are different, unless the media begins behaving different. For whatever reason they don't cover cloture votes, but they do cover floor votes. Functionally right now there is little to no difference, and I get that. But optically, there is a huge public opinion difference.
Ok, I think the optics are different is wishful thinking; won't matter. Go ahead and grant the point. Now - who are these Republican Senators who are suddenly going to be embarassed into not opposing things due to public outrage? What are the bills they're going to cave on? What are these bills "like hurricane relief" that are getting blocked right now? Also note "northeastern GOP governors really want something" is not a filibuster test case.
The GOP routinely filibusters stuff that ends up passing 98-0. The point isn't to block the bill in these cases, the point is to gum the Senate up as much as possible because every filibuster necessarily entails a couple of days of delay to break it, and you can filibuster a bill multiple times along the way. High profile super-partisan stuff like Obamacare will still get filibustered; this won't change that. What it will change is the constant filibusters that are mounted purely to waste Senate floor time.
They do, but so? Unless it's the We Love Moms And Apple Pie bill, what GOP senators are going to be threatened politically into passing it?
I'm not sure what you're referring to. For controversial stuff that the GOP genuinely doesn't like - e.g., Obamacare - it still gets a filibuster. For the non-controversial stuff that the GOP filibusters just because why not waste a day of Senate time, introducing a cost to the filibuster (get up and talk) might stop it. Right now routine stuff gets filibustered because it's free.
I take it back; if it ends dual-tracking I can see the resulting grind to a halt in the Senate doing what you say.
Didn't know they had special terminology for consequences-free dickishness. The lower house is still going to be... interesting. The Senate Republicans were already playing it pretty close holding off the hurricane relief bill until it was clear they were either going to have to pass it or own their dickishness. I can only assume that Boehner's decision was a deliberate sabotage attempt.
From what I understand, currently all the burden is on the majority to overcome a threatened filibuster. They are the ones who have to maintain a quorum, for instance. The changes are designed to shift at least some of that burden onto the party blocking stuff. Maybe it won't change anything but my guess is that Republican senators are not going to want to spend actual time and energy blocking things they don't care about and will end up voting for anyway.
For fuck's sake, you goddamn cowards. How useless does your institution need to become before you do anything?
Are they that afraid of becoming the minority again? Christ, the next two years of gridlock is the fault of the Democratic party, not the Republicans.
Let's not go that far. The House still exists after all, but even in the Senate I'm not sure I'd say that missing an opportunity to take the knife out of a maniac's hands makes it solely (or primarily) your fault when people start getting stabbed.
Heh, if you know the psycho stabs people every time he gets a knife, and then you give him one: that is your fault when he stabs people with the knife you gave him. Its not like the Republicans have said they're going to go back on their goal to block all of Obama's policy initiatives.
