About Damn Time! Senate Organizing Resolution Finalized, To Be Voted On Today

Something which should have been done with little fanfare the day the Senate races were declared in Georgia, but for the evil GOP bastard Mitch McConnell wanting to keep his “precious,” the Senate filibuster, is now finalized and scheduled for a vote today.

The Hill reports, Schumer, McConnell reach deal on Senate organizing resolution:

Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have reached a deal on the organizing resolution for running a 50-50 Senate.

“I am happy to report … that the leadership of both parties have finalized the organizing resolution for the Senate,” Schumer announced from the Senate floor.

“We will pass the resolution through the Senate today, which means that committees can promptly set up and get to work with Democrats holding the gavels,” Schumer added.

The deal is expected to largely mirror a 2001 agreement, the last time the Senate was evenly split, when bills and nominations were sent to the floor even when there were tie votes at the committee level.

The new agreement comes after the Senate has been stuck in limbo since Jan. 20, the day Democrats took over the chamber’s majority.

Though Democrats have controlled the floor, Republicans still wielded power in Senate committees because the chamber hadn’t passed a new organizing resolution for the 117th Congress.

That resulted in some awkward dynamics over the past two weeks, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, publicly asking Sen. Lindsey “Stonewall” Graham (R-S.C.), who was still chairman because the Senate was functioning under last year’s organizing resolution, to hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, President Biden’s attorney general nominee. Graham denied that request, blaming the upcoming impeachment trial of former President Trump.

Steve Benen reminds us all:

Five years ago this month, then-Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly, creating a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Then-President Barack Obama, with eight months remaining in his term, chose a compromise nominee — Judge Merrick Garland — after some Senate Republicans touted him as a consensus choice.

GOP senators nevertheless imposed an unprecedented blockade on his nomination. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), naturally, joined the partisan crusade, refusing to even give Garland the courtesy of a meeting.

The South Carolinian publicly committed at the time to treat a Republican president’s nominee the same way, though Graham broke his word in 2020.

Now, the GOP senator is managing to mishandle a Garland nomination for the second time.

Thank you, Georgia voters, for making sure that this Trump Fluffer isn’t chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now Georgia needs to prosecute him for election interference. Trump Fluffer Sen. Lindsey Graham is a coconspirator in Trump’s election theft  scheme, The Georgia Secretary of State Says Lindsey Graham Suggested He Find a Way to Toss Out Select Ballots, and Lindsey Graham’s Alleged Attempt to Toss Georgia Ballots Is Felony Election Fraud, and Former U.S. Attorney Asks Georgia to Investigate Lindsey Graham for Potential Election Crimes.

“They could [have] set the hearing and, unfortunately, I’m not officially the chairman of the committee. You know, we are in the majority because of the vote with the vice president, so I had to contact the chairman from the previous Congress, Sen. Graham, who’s to be succeeded by Sen. [Chuck] Grassley, another Republican. It’s a very complicated situation,” Durbin told reporters.

Sen. Durbin should ram through Merrick Garland’s confirmation. This country needs a highly respected Attorney General to clean up the seditious mess that traitor Trump left behind.

Senators had speculated since late last week that Schumer and McConnell were close to an agreement, but a final deal remained elusive among last-minute hang ups.

“Look, it was set back when Leader McConnell made an extraneous demand trying to tell our caucus how to run things when we’re in the majority. But we’re making progress and we’re getting close,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday when asked about the organizing resolution.

The power-sharing deal was up in the air for days after McConnell demanded that the resolution include protections against nixing the 60-vote legislative filibuster, as progressive activists and a growing number of senators support going “nuclear.”

McConnell’s effort frustrated Democrats, who viewed it as an attempt to box them in and believed that the GOP leader wouldn’t have agreed to the same restriction if he was still in the majority.

Oh, we’re still going “nuclear” when the civl rights/voting rights bills, and statehood bills come up for a vote. Let’s see if Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) really want to step into the shoes of the Dixiecrat segregationists who used the Senate filibuster to kill civil rights and voting rights bills during the Jim Crow era. I doubt they will want to defend the filibuster against the public outrage that will be brought to bear on them if they try.