Sen. Jeff Merkley: 'This isn't a question of filibuster or no filibuster'

Filibuster Reform: Building for Speed
Ezra Klein did an interview with Jeff Merkley about the Filibuster, where he asked him how creating a process where the minority has to actually filibuster will actually solve the issue of needless obstruction and delay. EK: …even if Reid had the powers and the rules that you would like to see him have, he would not force the minority to hold the floor, because to him, if he can’t get the bill through and he gives them three days to argue about it so the American People can see tha...

Will Senate rules reform "come back to bite Dems?"
Another of the favorite arguments made against Senate rules reform proposals is that one day the majority will change hands, and rules reform will "come back to bite" the Democrats who are now considering passing it. Will it? Absolutely. That's what rules do. They bite. That's what they're there for. But then again, that's why Democrats are considering reforms specifically with an eye toward adopting only those that they feel they could live with in the minority. Now, typically I have answered ...

MAY DAY! Harry Reid Changes Senate Rules to Stifle GOP in New Congress
Sen. Reid salutes the GOP Senate and American voting public Understanding the business of politics is roughly equivalent to memorizing the text of ‘War and Peace’.  It’s a highly sophisticated business with every move mired in legal terminology specifically designed to prevent even legal scholars to fully understand its intent, say nothing of its meaning.  If you don’t believe me, just try reading a political definition that was authored by a handful of lawyers....

Quote of the Day: On Barack Obamas Comeback and its Impact on GOP Power
Our political Quote of the Day comes from columnist Charles Kraiuthammer who looks at Barack Obama’s stringo of victories in the Lame Duck Congress and writes: The great liberal ascendancy of 2008, destined to last 40 years (predicted James Carville), lasted less than two. Yet, the great Republican ascendancy of 2010 lasted less than two months. Republicans will enter the 112th Congress with larger numbers but no longer with the wind - the overwhelming Nov. 2 repudiation of Obama...

Reid: My job will be 'easier' next year
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says his job will be “easier” in the 112th Congress, despite a slimmer Democratic majority and a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. “It’s going to be much easier than it was,” Reid told the Las Vegas Sun. He seemed to be referring, if indirectly, to the vastly lower expectations that many political observers have for the divided Congress that takes power in January, compared with the grand hopes that Democrats had enteri

Senate Democrats Call for Filibuster Reform (The Atlantic Wire)
WASHINGTON, DC – Returning Democratic senators unanimously support changing the rules for the Filibuster after two years of gridlock. Though the senators, who all signed a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid calling for reform, don't have a specific plan in mind, a key change they'll put forward would mean the minority would have to work harder to sustain a Filibuster and the majority would have to work less hard to overcome it. National Journal's Dan Friedman explains the proposal thus...

If Senate Dems had been this productive before lame duck session...
Let's see ... DADT was repealed, tax deal was passed, New START was ratified, the 9/11 responder bill has had GOP on the defensive, the DREAM vote reminded Latinos which party stands by them, and big Food Safety bill was passed. What did I forget? While not all of this was ideal (particularly the tax bill), it's amazing what even the broken Senate can accomplish in less than three weeks once Democrats and the White House decided to tighten the screws. Rather than look lost and ineffective, Demo...

Smiling Dems will soon cry 'Washington is broken'
"Washington, right now, is broken," said Vice President Biden in February. "I've never seen it this dysfunctional." Back then, Biden was just one of many who complained that partisan rancor and gamesmanship had brought the functioning of the Federal Government virtually to a halt, making it impossible for the president and lawmakers to get anything done. "Washington is broken" became the political world's conventional wisdom. Fast-forward to Wednesday. Celebrating the passage of a new law allow...

Dem Senators Push Common Sense Filibuster Reform
Claire McCaskill and other Centrist Dems appear to be pushing hard next year for some pretty straightforward steps that create more transparency and accountability when the opposition tries to Filibuster. And remember…Dems are they’re likely to lose more seats in 2012…so it’s not like this really helps them if they’re in the minority. Here’s more from National Journal: All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader...

Filibuster Reform
Does anyone know what exactly is being proposed? I oppose getting rid of the Filibuster altogether, and I opposed it when the Republicans wanted to use the “Nuclear Option” to get rid of it. There are just too many crazies out there and we need some sort of fail-safe like the filibuster. If I were to reform it, the reform would be simple. When someone filibusters, the Senate shuts down. Period. No committee meetings, nothing. And it stays shut down until the Filibuster is defeated....

Christmas, Congress and the Times That Try Men's Souls
It would appear that several conservative Republican senators missed the reading from the Book of Matthew that goes: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated... Plans to hold Cheney to account for a Nigerian Bribery Scandal have been scrapped, following the payment of $35 million to Nigerian authorities by the company that the former vice president used to head: Halliburton. In a ...

For Harry Reid, it's been the best of times, worst of times
Washington — When you’re in Congress, you mark time in two-year chunks. For Harry Reid, this last chunk was about as two-sided as it gets. On the personal front, it’s been a time of existential trial. Reid watched his own fate as a career politician hinge on the outcome of a brutal re-election campaign, that of his wife rest in the hands of a surgeon after a collision with an eighteen-wheeler, and that of his fellow Nevadans sink under the pressure of a protracted Recession that has put...

Watch for Democrat 'Washington is broken' theme to return soon
Image via Wikipedia Byron York: "Washington, right now, is broken," said Vice President Biden in February. "I've never seen it this dysfunctional." Back then, Biden was just one of many who complained that partisan rancor and gamesmanship had brought the functioning of the Federal Government virtually to a halt, making it impossible for the president and lawmakers to get anything done. "Washington is broken" became the political world's conventional wisdom. Fast-forward to Wednesday. Celebrati...

The Pathologies of Presidential Victory
Kevin Drum on why so many things had to wait for the Lame Duck: This year that dynamic turned pathological. There were, it turned out, quite a few issues that both sides really did want to address, but party discipline simply trumped everything. It wasn’t just one thing that got held up, it was nearly everything. Republicans didn’t want to hand Democrats a victory on DADT or New START or even a Food Safety bill, and Democrats were too cowardly to press for progressive tax legislati...

'We the people' to open next Congress
The Constitution frequently gets lip service in Congress, but House Republicans next year will make sure it gets a lot more than that - the new rules the incoming majority party proposed this week call for a full reading of the country's founding document on the floor of the House on Jan. 6. The goal, backers said, is to underscore the limited-government rules the Founders imposed on Congress - and to try to bring some of those principles back into everyday legislating. "It stems from the debate...

Chastened, unpopular Congress rallies in lame duck
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., poses for a picture as he... WASHINGTON (AP) - In the middle of a House debate, Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky handed the woman in charge of the rules a paper bag. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., peered inside, saw the bottle of Maker's Mark bourbon and laughed. Indeed, a shot of something strong might help make sense of a prolific Congress that seemed to break the rules of political physics. Democrats were punished by voters for a long l...

Top 5 Lame Duck Winners For 2010
Republicans attacked it as a perversion of Democracy, and used it as an excuse to continue to vote against Dem priorities. Democrats recognized it as their last chance to accomplish much of anything for the next two years. People in the media mistook it for a Barack Obama renaissance. Certainly Democrats accomplished more than most people expected they would these last several weeks. But between the victories and the Compromises and the defeats, it's hard to keep track of who came out on top. ...

Take a bow, Nancy and Harry
With dozens of defeated and retiring members clearing out their offices, the 111th Congress finished work this week. Few are sad to see it go. According to a recent Gallup Poll, only thirteen percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is doing its job; fully 83% disapprove, the most intense scorn for the national legislature in three decades. The Congressional leadership has fared little better: Promising to "fire" Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican Insurgents seized control of the House las...

Christmas Eve Prediction: Obama Easily Re-Elected
It came to me as if in a dream. A year from now, President Obama's re-election will be assured. The GOP primary battle will be amusing, but -- like the GOP primaries in 1996 -- it will be clear that they are not nominating a President. None of their potential Candidates is remotely electable. Mitch McConnell says his #1 goal is defeating Obama. Not true. In 20 years on the Hill, it was always clear that legislators (in both parties) cared infinitely less about who becomes President than about...

Senate Democrats Poised for Power Grab
Senate Democrats are going to be working over the Christmas break to deliver a lump of coal to the American People in the form of a radical changing of the Senate's rules. This is a naked power grab by liberals in the Senate pure and simple. The National Journal reports that Senate Democrats are laying the groundwork to chip away at the Filibuster on January 5, 2011. They are going to push the idea that a simple majority of the Senate can abolish the Filibuster rules, or radically change the rul...

The Great Success of Partisan Overreach
This recent fight over extending the George W. Bush Tax Cuts is a reminder that, from a long-term policy perspective, hyper-partisan legislative overreach is extremely effective. Instead of trying to create a great Bipartisan concession before doing something, you are often more likely to get broad consensus post facto once you force the system to accept a changed reality. The part of the Bush Tax Cuts passed in 2003-the “Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003″...

New Congress may open with reading of Constitution
When newly-elected Representative Raul Labrador takes his seat at the House of Representatives next year, he - along will all the other members of the House - may be treated to a reading of the Constitution of the United States. Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reports the House will get a full reading of the document on January 6 if the new rules proposed this week are adopted. Robert Goodlatte, the Republican from Virginia who proposed the rule said, "It stems from the debate that we've h...

Is Senate rules reform a "power grab?"
That's the charge opponents level. And the one some Senate Democrats are said to fear most. But to restate the case against that position, I'll borrow from a Congress Matters post from July: What troubles, specifically, do we think Democrats might face if the rules changed when Dems had a smaller majority, but still a majority? Would Democrats' political opponents claim their power was somehow illegitimate? That they ought to be thrown out of office on some imagined technicality? That they wer...

Recent Accomplishments for your Dinner Table
Posted by JM Ashby The festivities begin for me tonight at 6 p.m. with a bottle of Saki and a roll of Eel, but before the debauchery is kicked off, I would just like to take a moment to remind everyone of what has been accomplished by this administration in just the last two weeks. If you encounter family members over the holidays who are unsure about President Obama, Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi, you can point out to them that during this Lame Duck session of Congress, they have accomplished m...

Gullible media falls for Obama comeback meme
Obama fluffers in the media call it a comeback. Obama extended Tax Cuts for the rich, sold America’s nuclear deterrent to Russia, and almost thwarted the push to end homophobic Discrimination by the Military. Most Americans still do not approve of Obama’s job performance, but inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom has it that Obama - incompetent and wounded a month ago - has emerged hunky-dory historic once more. The media loves an underdog narrative, so once d...