Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Senators who have been in the Senate for far too long and cherish their antiquated, and anti-democratic parliamentary rules of debate are going wobbly in the knees for any effective filibuster reforms. Watered-down filibuster reforms, far less effective and satisfactory, are emerging. Sigh. Filibuster Reformers Settle On Modest Plan:
Reformers are closing ranks behind a more modest proposal by Majority
Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that they believe could pass with a 51-vote
threshold when the Senate returns next week and chip away at the
minority party’s power to obstruct. It represents a concession that the
full “talking filibuster” they want may not happen. But accepting the emerging Reid proposal would ward off a competing plan that they consider weaker than Reid’s.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) says he’s still fighting for the talking
filibuster and believes it can pass. His aide said he isn’t convinced
the Reid plan would take on the core problems of the Senate, but Merkley didn’t rule it out.
“I believe that when Majority Leader Reid says, ‘Here is my package
and I need you all to back it,’ he will have 51 votes behind him,”
Merkley told TPMPrime members during a live chat Wednesday.
Leaders of Fix The Senate Now, an outside pro-reform coalition, also
prefer a more robust talking filibuster, but have signaled openness to
embracing the Reid plan, wary of seeing the whole effort to reform the
filibuster collapse.
* * *
Reid’s emerging package would require a filibustering minority of
senators to occupy the floor and speak after the debate has begun. But
they would retain the ability to force a 60-vote threshold for the first
motion to begin debate (which reformers would prefer to also get rid
of). After that, the plan would shift the burden from the majority
seeking to advance legislation or nominations to the minority seeking to
block them.
* * *
“Right now I have it set up so it’d be done post-cloture, but still,
that creates a little talking on the floor that we don’t have now,” Reid
recently told a Nevada TV station. “If somebody wants to stall things let them stand and stall, not hide back in some office someplace.”
His plan
would also eliminate a rule requiring a 30-hour gap between cloture and
a final vote on a measure and would make it easier for the Senate to go
to conference with the House.
The heart of the proposal by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Tom Udall
(D-NM) is what they call the “full talking filibuster,” which would
require a minority trying to filibuster any Senate business to occupy
the floor and speak ceaselessly until one side gives in. As badly as
proponents want this, they don’t want to demand it at the expense of
losing critical Democratic votes and seeing Reid’s partial talking
filibuster plan collapse.
* * *
Merkley said that among 55 Democratic senators, some are still
studying the proposal, but there’s only one clear opponent of using the
constitutional option to change the rules.
“As of this point, the only person who has said that he will
definitely oppose Reid’s package if it is to be done with 51 votes is
Senator Levin,” he told TPMPrime.
Only in America, "the world's greatest democracy," would we invent an extra-constitutional Senate rule that is anti-democratic. Sigh.