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 Frazzled wrote:

NO. Once you get rid of the filibuster for one thing, the other things only survive until the next election. To think otherwise is the height of stupidity. The Senate as a "deliberative body" is no more.

Meh, whatever.

I mean, that's a possibility, but hardly an inevitability. It is possible to distinguish between one kind of filibuster and another. Sure, it's not unreasonable to be cynical about the political system, but we're not far enough removed from the action to be able to separate the Republican's grand-standing rhetoric from what they actually will do.

They're whining now, but that's just them throwing a tantrum in the face of having to reap what they've sown. When they get back in there, filibuster a few pieces of legislation, and try force another government shutdown, maybe even filibuster a Supreme Court nominee if they're lucky, they'll probably settle down, and think about the long term consequences of knocking down the other two dominoes of the filibuster.

After all, sure, if they knock down the filibuster, they can say "they did it first" and then do wacky things, but the moment the pendulum swings the other way, BAM, Obamacare Two - Communist Boogaloo, and as big of a boner McConnell gets over being majority leader in a filibuster-less Senate, I think that thought is enough to scare him into thinking twice.

Yes it is inevitable. The genie is never ever put back into the bottle.

 Frazzled wrote:
Yes it is inevitable. The genie is never ever put back into the bottle.

This, x1000.

 Frazzled wrote:
Yes it is inevitable. The genie is never ever put back into the bottle.

this x 100million....

what some people dont seem to get, is that the senate was the LAST place you needed a super majority to pass through...

IE now constitutional amendments will be on the table to go through all the "houses" senate congres ect with just a simple majority.

that SC is the last on the chopping block matters not, it will get chopped, pandoras box is now opened, and you cant undo it.

They still need to be ratified by 2/3 of the states. Thats what matters.

in the sense that this article is talking about is what I mean frazz.

The main reason why a majority of the Senate needs to be able to change the filibuster rule is that otherwise a simple majority of the Senate could effectively amend the Constitution. If a majority of the Senate said that the Senate could not pass a law that increased (or decreased) taxes without a 2/3 vote, and that this rule could not be changed except with a ¾ vote, then – if valid and enforceable – this rule would function like a constitutional amendment. It would give the Senate the power to change the fundamental law of the nation. Neither the structure nor the history of the Constitution supports this conclusion. But it is not because the Framers so strongly embraced simply majority rule. Instead, it is because they favored entrenched limitations on the legislative process to be enacted through the supermajoritarian constitutional amendment process.

keep in mind this is from the LAST time they wanted to do away with fillibuster

http://www.libertylawsite.org/2013/01/03/why-a-majority-of-the-senate-change-the-filibuster-rule/

So the party that complained about the changing of the rules when the minority is now the majority and changes the rules to suit themselves? Colour me surprised

And Frazzz is absolutely correct. This type of power once appropriated is not given back easily, if at all. We've seen the expansion of the powers of the POTUS in recent decades with no real effort to rein those in. This will be no different.

I expect each party to have a 180 change of position when their roles are reversed.

 Frazzled wrote:
The Senate as a "deliberative body" is no more.

It's not like there was much of that going on, at least since the repubs have had their knickers in a twist for the past 5 years.

 Breotan wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Changing the Senate Rules requires a super-majority.
President of the Senate going "I think this is how it works" only require a simple majority to uphold.

At least I think so. That place is a cluster-feth, so who really knows...

Some news sites are claiming it's more serious than that. One is even claiming that if a Republican is elected President in 2017 and they get even 50 votes in the Senate (the Vice President breaks ties) then they can vote Obamacare out of existence with a simple majority. I don't know if this is true or not, and would doubt it would happen even if it were, but it shows how serious this precedent is that Reid just set.

That's my biggest concern... from this point forward, the political calculus need to be recalibrated.

It's just makes it easier now to make serious changes... think about things like Roe vs Wade, tax reform, immigration reform, and so on...

I'm still convinced that the Senate's SOP is now changed forever... and not in a good way.

To me, I think it's almost imperative that neither party holds both houses at the same time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Yes it is inevitable. The genie is never ever put back into the bottle.

This, x1000.

This, xInfinity to the powah of infinity.

If the system is so broken that changing one aspect of the filibuster rules to counter obstructionism will doom the legislative body to a race to the bottom, then it was beyond saving to begin with and this does nothing that wouldn't have eventually happened anyway.

They put the "genie" back in the bottle in 1975 when they invented the virtual filibuster, if by "genie in the bottle" you mean a tool to obstruct Senate business.

Seriously, the whole sky is falling rhetoric is silly at this point. The filibuster as it existed AND STILL EXISTS FOR EVERYTHING BUT NON-SC APPOINTEES (some people seem to have missed that part) needed to be changed. It's purpose had been altered by the Republican minority in the Senate, first in '92-93, and again in '07-'08, from a tool of minority protection against the majority to an abusive tool that shut down Senate functions.

Moreover, there are THREE genies, not one.
1. Non-Supreme Court Nominees
2. Supreme Court Nominees
3. Legislation

Genie 1 was let out, the other two are still in their bottles. And frankly the upside of letting genie 1 out, in the form of efficiency gained for the Federal government, may well outweigh the negative effects.

Republicans have to let genies 2 and 3 out. Sure, they might cite letting out genie 1 as a reason, but unless Democrats do that before they lose power, Republicans still have to actively pop the cork on those two themselves.

And if you're saying they let out a PROCEDURAL genie, no, that's not accurate either, since this process existed already. The Republicans threatened to use it in 2005.

Basically, if this "screws" up the system, then the system was already screwed (which may be very accurate). The best solution might actually be to do away with the filibuster altogether, let everyone freak out a bit for a couple years, then reinstate the pre-1975 rules.

 juraigamer wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The Senate as a "deliberative body" is no more.

It's not like there was much of that going on, at least since the repubs have had their knickers in a twist for the past 5 years.

Democrats are now floating the idea of using the no filibuster idea to pass "needed legislation" like gun control. Dream large Dems, dream large.

 Frazzled wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The Senate as a "deliberative body" is no more.

It's not like there was much of that going on, at least since the repubs have had their knickers in a twist for the past 5 years.

Democrats are now floating the idea of using the no filibuster idea to pass "needed legislation" like gun control. Dream large Dems, dream large.

So once the mechanism to prevent the tyranny of the majority was removed it seems that there is a race to establish the tyranny of the majority. What a surprise......


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DogofWar1 wrote:
And if you're saying they let out a PROCEDURAL genie, no, that's not accurate either, since this process existed already. The Republicans threatened to use it in 2005.

We're past the point of threats. This has actually happened. If you want to equate threats with actions though that it a false equivalence

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The Senate as a "deliberative body" is no more.

It's not like there was much of that going on, at least since the repubs have had their knickers in a twist for the past 5 years.

Democrats are now floating the idea of using the no filibuster idea to pass "needed legislation" like gun control. Dream large Dems, dream large.

So once the mechanism to prevent the tyranny of the majority was removed it seems that there is a race to establish the tyranny of the majority. What a surprise......

Please say unconstitutional (if that's what you believe) not tyranny. Just a pet peeve, but I hate it when people use that work wrong.

Marian Webster Dictionary: tyr·an·ny noun \ˈtir-ə-nē\

: cruel and unfair treatment by people with power over others

: a government in which all power belongs to one person : the rule or authority of a tyrant

Tyranny of the majority is a pretty common phrase in political philosophy, and its use is not incorrect.

 Polonius wrote:
Tyranny of the majority is a pretty common phrase in political philosophy, and its use is not incorrect.

Yes but it's not actually tyranny. Just because elected officials use it wrong, doesn't mean you should.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Tyranny of the majority is a pretty common phrase in political philosophy, and its use is not incorrect.

Yes but it's not actually tyranny. Just because elected officials use it wrong, doesn't mean you should.

Well, sometimes words in the English language have meaning behind their literal meaning, often in cases of idioms. The phrase dates back hundreds of years, and has been used be serious political philosophers. I'm not sure if there is a more concise description for the concept.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

So once the mechanism to prevent the tyranny of the majority was removed it seems that there is a race to establish the tyranny of the majority. What a surprise......

We're past the point of threats. This has actually happened. If you want to equate threats with actions though that it a false equivalence

I didn't realize the US was a tyrannical dictatorship prior to 1975! Well, you learn something new every day!

Sure, the Democrats took action (narrow, arguably much needed action), but I'm not necessarily equating threats with actions, I'm arguing against the people saying this is some brand new thing that magically appeared out of Harry Reid rear end yesterday.

The funny thing about this whole situation is that the reasoning being advanced by the Democrats is the same reasoning the Republicans were using in 2005 when they threatened to do this. The difference between then and now? Well, there are about twice as many filibusters now as there were then.

The actions the Democrats took are pretty much exactly what Republicans would have done in 2005 if the Democrats hadn't backed down on the nominees. And if the shoe was on the other foot, I know all of you would be saying how this was necessary to stop Democratic obstructionism, and how it was actually a narrow change because it didn't do away with the filibuster altogether, but only the part dealing with non-SC nominees, etc. etc.

Let's wait until they use this change to actually force through gun legislation, or more healthcare reform, or something, before we all start waving the tyranny flags.

 DogofWar1 wrote:


Let's wait until they use this change to actually force through gun legislation, or more healthcare reform, or something, before we all start waving the tyranny flags.

right, why prevent a travesty, when we can suffer one and go "look what a travesty we are in"

and them find someone else to blame for it....

ahhh the democratic way!

maybe, just maybe, there are more filibusters now, because they are needed to stop all this political diarrhea that they keep trying to push through.

Fair point.

No, we must be hysterical!

Obviously this will only further the problem, if they're going to be called terrorists for this, they'll drag us into a pointless decade long conflict. I mean have you seen how effective we are with the actual War on Terror?!

 easysauce wrote:

right, why prevent a travesty, when we can suffer one and go "look what a travesty we are in"
....
....
maybe, just maybe, there are more filibusters now, because they are needed to stop all this political diarrhea that they keep trying to push through.

The filibuster as it is used today is a travesty. The founders did not invent the virtual filibuster, a bunch of Senators in the '70s did. The system prior to that was imperfect, and was often saddled by racial and gender prejudices, but in its general function travesty is a stretch.

And your second point is the crux of the problem. Everything Democrats want to do is political diarrhea in the eyes of Republicans. They've convinced themselves of that, and therefore, they see themselves as having some sort of God given mandate to abuse the filibuster. Never-mind that many of the judicial nominees they threaten to filibuster or do filibuster made it through committees with unanimous votes from both parties in said committee. They're bad people, and must be stopped. Clearly.

 DogofWar1 wrote:
I didn't realize the US was a tyrannical dictatorship prior to 1975! Well, you learn something new every day!

Sure, the Democrats took action (narrow, arguably much needed action), but I'm not necessarily equating threats with actions, I'm arguing against the people saying this is some brand new thing that magically appeared out of Harry Reid rear end yesterday.

The funny thing about this whole situation is that the reasoning being advanced by the Democrats is the same reasoning the Republicans were using in 2005 when they threatened to do this. The difference between then and now? Well, there are about twice as many filibusters now as there were then.

The actions the Democrats took are pretty much exactly what Republicans would have done in 2005 if the Democrats hadn't backed down on the nominees. And if the shoe was on the other foot, I know all of you would be saying how this was necessary to stop Democratic obstructionism, and how it was actually a narrow change because it didn't do away with the filibuster altogether, but only the part dealing with non-SC nominees, etc. etc.

Let's wait until they use this change to actually force through gun legislation, or more healthcare reform, or something, before we all start waving the tyranny flags.

I didn't realise that I had claimed that the US was a tyrannical dictatorship prior to 1975! Oh wait, I didn't.

It may not have magically appeared out of Reid yesterday, but if you actually look at his prior position as the minority this is quite a role reversal. He is on record saying that any effort to do away with the fillibuster is illegal. That is not a partisan statement. That is a factual statement.

You keep trying to make the argument that the Republicans might have done something 8 years ago. Fact is that they did not. The Democrats, however, have. You're trying hard to make this a partisan issue when for some of us it isn't.

 DogofWar1 wrote:

 easysauce wrote:

right, why prevent a travesty, when we can suffer one and go "look what a travesty we are in"
....
....
maybe, just maybe, there are more filibusters now, because they are needed to stop all this political diarrhea that they keep trying to push through.

And your second point is the crux of the problem. Everything Democrats want to do is political diarrhea in the eyes of Republicans. They've convinced themselves of that, and therefore, they see themselves as having some sort of God given mandate to abuse the filibuster.

That's normal partisan politics. Where were you during the Clinton and Bush years?

Never-mind that many of the judicial nominees they threaten to filibuster or do filibuster made it through committees with unanimous votes from both parties in said committee. They're bad people, and must be stopped. Clearly.

Republican = Bad... got it.

Democrat obstructing Bush's nominee = good. Right?

 whembly wrote:

That's normal partisan politics. Where were you during the Clinton and Bush years?

Democrat obstructing Bush's nominee = good. Right?

That is an excellent question!

Let's go ask some people from that era!!

1. Mitch McConnell (KY)

"Any President's judicial nominees should receive careful consideration. But after that debate, they deserve a simple up-or-down vote" (5/19/05).

"Let's get back to the way the Senate operated for over 200 years, up or down votes on the president's nominee, no matter who the president is, no matter who's in control of the Senate" (5/22/05).

2. John Cornyn (TX)

"[F]ilibusters of judicial nominations are uniquely offensive to our nation's constitutional design" (6/4/03).

"[M]embers of this distinguished body have long and consistently obeyed an unwritten rule not to block the confirmation of judicial nominees by filibuster. But, this Senate tradition, this unwritten rule has now been broken and it is crucial that we find a way to ensure the rule won't be broken in the future" (6/5/03).

3. Lamar Alexander (TN)

"If there is a Democratic President and I am in this body, and if he nominates a judge, I will never vote to deny a vote on that judge" (3/11/03).

"I would never filibuster any President's judicial nominee. Period" (6/9/05).

4. John McCain (AZ)

"I've always believed that [judicial nominees deserve yes-or-no votes]. There has to be extraordinary circumstances to vote against them. Elections have consequences" (6/18/13).

5. Chuck Grassley (IA)

"It would be a real constitutional crisis if we up the confirmation of judges from 51 to 60" (2/11/03).

"[W]e can't find anywhere in the Constitution that says a supermajority is needed for confirmation" (5/8/05).

6. Saxby Chambliss (GA)

"I believe [filibustering judicial nominees] is in violation of the Constitution" (4/13/05).

7. Lindsey Graham (SC)

"I think filibustering judges will destroy the judiciary over time. I think it's unconstitutional" (5/23/05).

8. Johnny Isakson (GA)

"I will vote to support a vote, up or down, on every nominee. Understanding that, were I in the minority party and the issues reversed, I would take exactly the same position because this document, our Constitution, does not equivocate" (5/19/05).

9. James Inhofe (OK)

"This outrageous grab for power by the Senate minority is wrong and contrary to our oath to support and defend the Constitution" (3/11/03).

10. Mike Crapo (ID)

"[T]he Constitution requires the Senate to hold up-or-down votes on all nominees" (5/25/05).

11 . Richard Shelby (AL)

"Why not allow the President to do his job of selecting judicial nominees and let us do our job in confirming or denying them? Principles of fairness call for it and the Constitution requires it" (11/12/03).

12. Orrin Hatch (UT)*

Filibustering judicial nominees is "unfair, dangerous, partisan, and unconstitutional" (1/12/05).

Glad to see so much agreement from serious, intelligent and constitutionally minded politicians!

I wonder what the pundits had to say?

Bill Kristol: "Congress' role in approving executive-branch nominees is to have an up or down vote. There's no rationale for a filibuster in that case. That's why it's historically unprecedented. That's the constitutional underpinning of our history, which is not to filibuster presidential nominees. The president has the duty to fill those jobs."

Sean Hannity: "I believe it's unconstitutional to filibuster. It is not about advice and consent now to ask for a supermajority on judicial nominations. I believe that is not constitutional."

Karl Rove: "We believe that fairness means (nominees) deserve an up-or-down vote. The Senate can debate, the Senate has a right to oppose, it has a right to support, but it has an obligation under the Constitution to offer its advice and consent by a vote. And it's only fair."

Pat Robertson: "There's nothing in the Constitution that says you have to have a 60-vote majority in the Senate in order to get confirmation of judges. And these filibusters that have been used recently against some very fine judges, these filibusters have been unconstitutional."

Rish Limbaugh: "This filibuster, as you know, they're filibustering these nominations which requires essentially 60 votes for a judge to be confirmed. The Constitution says nothing about this. The Constitution says simple majority, 51 votes. ...when it affects a presidential power, which takes us into a separation of powers issue, like the appointment of judges, that is unconstitutional, in my layman's view. It's up to the Senate Republicans to stop them."

Wall Street Journal: "Barring a surprise last-minute deal, this week Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will ask for a ruling from the chair -- Vice President Dick Cheney presiding -- that ending debate on a judicial nominee requires a vote of a simple majority of 51 Senators, not a super-majority of 60. The nuclear option -- aka the "constitutional option" -- will have been detonated. Judicial filibusters, R.I.P. ...It's a shame it has come to this. But at this point it would be worse if Republicans let a willful minority deny the President's nominees a vote on the Senate floor."

National Review: "The judicial filibuster isn't a tradition, but an innovation; not a function of checks and balances, but a perversion of them; not an outgrowth of the Constitution, but at best irrelevant to it. ...Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist should take away their ability to mount unprecedented judicial filibusters through the so-called nuclear option, then sleep the sleep of an utterly justified defender of Senate tradition."

Washington Times: "But applying the filibuster rule to prevent the Senate from carrying out its constitutionally granted authority to approve or disapprove each judicial nominee clearly violates our nation's governing document."

Seems pretty cut and dry.

Edit: shamelessly stolen from another form.

See what I mean?

Filibuster was being used when BOTH parties were the minority party.

Logical eh?

I'm sure we've all heard how two wrongs don't make a right...

Unless it's a right wing policy. Those are generally at least 2 wrongs in one place, often 3 if the Holy Trifecta of abortion, gays and muslims are involved.

BAM.

 easysauce wrote:

 DogofWar1 wrote:

maybe, just maybe, there are more filibusters now, because they are needed to stop all this political diarrhea that they keep trying to push through.

Speaking of diarrhea, you have to have your head crammed pretty far up your ass to seriously believe that, given the part that comes before the filibuster, of the nominees having to make it through bipartisan committee before being voted on, is still completely unchanged since that time before 2008. If what you were trying to say was true, they should've been getting snarled up long before the filibustering could occur.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

I didn't realise that I had claimed that the US was a tyrannical dictatorship prior to 1975! Oh wait, I didn't.

You said that this move was going to lead to tyranny.

The filibuster as it exists today did not exist prior to 1975, indeed, prior to that, once the Senator stopped speaking, votes proceeded based on majority votes. Cloture only needed to be invoked during the filibuster itself. If changing the rules is tyranny, and the changing of the rules reverts us to a pre-1975 situation, then the pre-1975 situation was tyranny.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

It may not have magically appeared out of Reid yesterday, but if you actually look at his prior position as the minority this is quite a role reversal. He is on record saying that any effort to do away with the fillibuster is illegal. That is not a partisan statement. That is a factual statement.

And it is also a factual statement that his statement was made in 2005, when filibusters were used less than half as often as they are used now. It is less a reversal and more a shift in position based on changed circumstances. If you can't see that the doubling of the filibuster use between the '05-'06 congress and '07-'08 Congress, when Republicans became the minority, changed the game, then I can't help you.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
You keep trying to make the argument that the Republicans might have done something 8 years ago. Fact is that they did not. The Democrats, however, have. You're trying hard to make this a partisan issue when for some of us it isn't.

Democrats backed down 8 years ago. Republicans have not done the same. They've actually increased the use of the filibuster.

And it IS a partisan issue. Republicans have been behind every major expansion in filibuster use!



The filibuster was a non-partisan tool designed for a non-specified minority. Republicans turned it into a cudgel for their own private use.

 whembly wrote:


That's normal partisan politics. Where were you during the Clinton and Bush years?
...
...
Republican = Bad... got it.

Democrat obstructing Bush's nominee = good. Right?

I've been opposed to the filibuster in its current form since I was old enough to understand the concept of the virtual filibuster. However, from a practical standpoint, the present use is unprecedented, and beyond how it was used during Bush and Clinton. Democratic use of the filibuster may not have been entirely pure in motivation, they rarely if ever are, but it is unarguably true that Democrats showed far more restraint.



Across 8 years of Bush, 38 nominees were filibustered, an average of about 5 per year. Across 5 years of Obama, 81 nominees have been filibustered, an average of about 16 per year. Without this change in the rules, we were likely going to see approximately 128 filibusters, nearly DOUBLE the previous 28 years' total, and that is post-1975 changes to the rule.

The filibuster isn't evil when Republicans are using it and not evil when Democrats are using it by virtue simply of Republicans or Democrats using it. It's broken in its current form because of how it's been used, in that it is being used an unprecedented number of times, and by a WIDE margin. If the Democrats were using it three times as often as any previous administration, their use would be "bad" too, but they're not the party tripling the number of judge filibusters, are they?

My point in bringing up the committees was to explain that many times nominees would receive unanimous, bi-partisan votes from the committee, and then face a filibuster in the open Senate. These Republicans in the committees apparently had no major problem with these nominees, but not even five Republicans on the open floor could be found in favor of these same judges? If you can't smell something fishy there, then you might have a head cold.

 DogofWar1 wrote:
You said that this move was going to lead to tyranny.

Maybe you should just go back and read what I actually said. The whole thing. Not just the bits you want to take out of context to strawman

Or actually don't bother. Reading your posts I get the feeling that trying to explain to you that a sudden change in position to critically weaken your opponents, and in part undermine the checks and balances, is not necessarily a good thing as it has long term consequences is a waste of time because you can only see this as a partisan "us and them".