[CARTOON] New Filibuster Rules

Via: California Political Review

New Senate rules won’t cure all the delay and disharmony BY MICHAEL DOYLE

 

WASHINGTON — Two Californians proposed for the federal bench and two Texans offered as U.S. marshals are collateral damage, at least for now, in the suddenly escalated Senate confirmation wars.

Expect more of the same.

Senate rules provide other ways beyond the now-curtailed filibuster to obstruct nominees. Hearings can be boycotted. Routine procedural approvals can be withheld. New Capitol Hill ambushes can be plotted, perhaps with tactics not yet seen. For a truly motivated minority, losing one weapon means it’s time to pick up another.

“My sense is the Republicans are going to be putting up whatever roadblocks they can, though they don’t have the main roadblock they used to have,” Russell Wheeler, a judiciary expert at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview Friday.

Republicans already flexed their muscles Thursday, the same day Senate Democrats weakened the filibuster by a 52-48 vote. Under the new rules, executive branch and most judicial nominations will require only 51 votes to proceed rather than the 60 required for legislation and Supreme Court nominations.

Using the prior filibuster rules, Republican lawmakers thwarted nominees, including Goodwin Liu, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor nominated to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. After falling short on a 52-43 Senate vote, Liu withdrew his nomination and now serves on the California Supreme Court. More recently, Republicans used the 60-vote margin to block three nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Vis: McClatchyDC

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/22/209495/new-senate-rules-wont-cure-all.html#storylink=cpy

FLASHBACK: IN THE LOUP: MAY 2001 A toast to the filibuster, R.I.P.

Editor's Note: Obamacare trudges on and Harry Reid has detonated the nuclear option. What better time for a drink? Pull up a bar stool and listen as the late Christopher Hitchens explains -- as he did in our May 2001 issue, using his favorite New York City establishment -- just the kind of place required to properly enjoy one. 

What does one seek in a place of refreshment? Or what qualities, once found, make one think of a bar as in some way one's own? I would list in no special order the following features. The place should be open early and late and in between. In line with this, it should be a setting of moods: a slow start in the mid-morning, a bit of a bulge around lunchtime, a languorous afternoon and then a gradual quickening of pace after 6 p.m., culminating in a commitment to some sort of late-night or after-dinner or post-theater crowd. (It's not absolutely necessary to experience all of these things in the same 24-hour cycle, but you should be able to say that you have experienced them all and can in some way count on them.)

Those who staff the place should by all means recognize a faithful patron, and pull the trick of pouring the favorite bracer as soon as he shuffles in, but they should also recognize those times when he wants to read, or write, or brood, or recuperate. There should be music--not a television--and the customer should be able to have some say in its nature, also its wattage.

The clientele should be various, but not atomized. One wants the certainty of a few familiar faces, but not too many of them or not except at predictable phases of the day. In other words, my true bar should have an element of cafe-society to it; a place for newspapers and espresso as well as cocktails and basic food, and a place where you could bring your mother, if you had a mother, for a light lunch as well as your mistress or male lover, if you had a mistress or male lover, for a late-ish nightcap.

Via: The American Spectator

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Transcript: President Obama’s Nov. 21 remarks on Senate filibuster changes

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Alrighty. Good afternoon, everybody.

It's no secret that the American people have probably never been more frustrated with Washington, and one of the reasons why that is is that over the past five years, we've seen an unprecedented pattern of obstruction in Congress that's prevented too much of the American people's business from getting done.

All too often we've seen a single senator or a handful of senators choose to abuse arcane procedural tactics to unilaterally block bipartisan compromises or to prevent well-qualified, patriotic Americans from filling critical positions of public service in our system of government.

Now, at a time when millions of Americans have desperately searched for work, repeated abuse of these tactics have blocked legislation that might create jobs. They've defeated actions that would help women fighting for equal pay. They prevented more progress than we would have liked for striving young immigrants trying to earn their citizenship, or it's blocked efforts to end tax breaks for companies that are shipping jobs overseas. They've even been used to block common-sense and widely supported steps to protect more Americans from gun violence, even as families of victims sat in the Senate chamber and watched. And they've prevented far too many talented Americans from serving their country at a time when their country needs their talents the most.

Via: Washington Post

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Harry Reid Called 2005 GOP Filibuster Reform Attempts “Un-American” And “Illegal”

Via: Buzz Feed

Sen. Harry Reid Gets Ready to Go Nuclear

"The American people believe Congress is broken," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the floor Thursday morning. "The American people believe that the Senate is broken. And I believe that the American people are right."

With that, the Nevada Democrat set in motion a fight over changing the Senate's filibuster rules that has been years in the making. There were roughly 67 senators on the floor for Reid's remarks, which is very rare for the Senate.

The move for a rule change comes after a series of Republican filibusters on Obama nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Reid said on the floor that he would like to see an up-or-down vote on nominations, not including the Supreme Court. Currently, those nominees need to receive 60 votes in order to cut off debate and move to the up-or-down vote.

The Senate, Reid said, has "wasted hours and wasted days between filibusters." The need for change, he said, "is so, so very obvious." He added, "It's time to change the Senate before the institution becomes obsolete."

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, second in command in the Republican Senate leadership, has already tweeted to call Reid's floor speech a "temper tantrum." Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke for about three minutes before Reid spoke.

McConnell came to the floor following Reid's speech, calling the rules debate a failed distraction from Obamacare. "This strategy of distract, distract, distract is getting old," he said. The filibuster challenge reminds Americans, McConnell said, of the Democrats "power grab" on Obamacare. Democrats, McConnell said, have attempted to "cook up a fake fight over judges."

The Kentucky Republican managed to squeeze in a joke at the expense of President Obama: "If you like the rules of the Senate, you can keep them!"

Via: National Journal

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House this week will highlight Obamacare flaws while Senate clashes over the filibuster rule

NO AMOUNT OF TIME COULD IDENTIFY FLAWS IN OBAMACARE. TO MANY TO COUNT

While the House spotlights the flawed health care law rollout this week, Senate lawmakers are set to clash over confirming two new judges, with Democrats threatening Republicans with a major change that would weaken the filibuster if the GOP votes them down.

And while the Senate Democratic majority has refused to take up legislation altering the new health care law in the wake of a significantly flawed roll out, Republicans who run the House will pass their own bill to tweak the law, and likely with Democratic support.

"For the next several weeks we intend to focus our communications, legislative and oversight activities around Obamacare on the millions of Americans who are having their health insurance policies cancelled and the broken promise that 'if you like what you have, you can keep it,'" House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., outlined in a Nov. 7 memo to the House Republican conference.

The Senate fireworks could start as early as Tuesday, when the Congress returns from Veterans Day to vote on two nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Nina Pillar, a lawyer, and U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins are likely to be filibustered, according Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Republicans don't want anymore of President Obama's picks seated on the powerful court and last week blocked Obama pick Patricia Millet to fill a third vacancy.

Republicans argue that the Obama administration is stacking the court in order to expand the president's ability to legislate through the executive branch. The court's caseload, Republicans argue, does not require more judges.

But Democrats argue that there are three vacancies to fill and say Republicans are playing partisan politics, backing down on a deal cut earlier this year in which they promised not to block judicial picks.

If they stand in the way this time, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, there would be "almost an overwhelming effort to change the rules."

Via: Washington Examiner

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Cruz Kicks Off Filibuster

UPDATE: 3:32 p.m. Cruz asserted that if senators would only listen to their constituents, including Democrats, the vote to defund Obamacare would be 100-0. He openly called on all 46 Republicans, along with a few Democrats, would join in voting against cloture and continuing debate.

UPDATE: 3:30 p.m. A technicality: as cloture has already been filed, Cruz will be speaking for a maximum of fifteen hours. Senate rules dictate that the body must adjourn by noon on Wednesday. This will likely be a long speech, but it cannot block legislation.

UPDATE: 2:48 p.m. “I intend to speak until I can no longer stand,” Cruz said in his opening remarks of his filibuster, in an effort delay a cloture vote on the continuing resolution to defund Obamacare. Cruz was joined by his partner in his effort to defund Obamacare, Utah senator Mike Lee. Cruz has already played on the theme to “make DC listen” early on in his remarks and his Twitter account has started using the #MakeDCListen hashtag.

Via: National Review Online

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Report: Wendy Davis has raised over $1 million since filibuster

JUST ANOTHER LIBERAL ONE TRICK PONY!!!

Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D), who made national news in June for her 13-hour filibuster to block a strict abortion bill, has raised more than a $1 million since then, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Davis has been urged to run for Texas governor in 2014. In early August, she suggested she might do so.

“I can say with absolute certainty that I will run for one of two offices: either my state Senate seat or the governor,” she said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Between her June 25 filibuster and July, Davis raised nearly $470,000 from outside of Texas, the report said. She also received $793,800 from her home state. 

Most of the money was raised in July, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) opened another special session to push the abortion bill forward. Lawmakers passed the legislation to ban abortions after 20 weeks, and Perry signed it into law.

Of the $470,000 in outside funds, Davis raised the most, $103,694, in California. She also raised $68,764 from New York and $59,000 from Washington, D.C.

Via: The Hill

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Obama Signs Bill Which Exempts Presidential Appointees From Congressional Confirmation

President Barack Obama signed a bill Friday evening that would exempt some senior-level presidential appointees from Senate confirmation.

Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats, the bill, now law, weakens the power of the legislature and strengthens the executive branch, critics have warned. The bill skated through the Senate three months after being introduced in 2011 and was passed by the Republican-controlled House 261-116 in July.

The law now allows Obama and future presidents to name appointees to senior positions in every branch of the administration, from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security.

Conservative critics worried that the bill restricts congressional authority to monitor executive branch decisions, but the measure received bipartisan support because of the gridlocked, slow-moving Senate, which is known for being the more deliberative of the two bodies of Congress.

Whereas the House is a more populist body, the Senate grants more power to its fewer members. It only takes one senator to filibuster an appointee, forcing the majority party to find a “super majority” of 60 votes to end the filibuster and move ahead with an up-or-down vote.

Via: The Daily Caller

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