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April 28, 2005
The Filibuster - I'm against it in its current form...
This entry in Powerline Blog says in 1995 when President Clinton (Democrat) had some key legislation held up by a Republican minority in the Senate, the New York Times proclaimed
- The U.S. Senate likes to call itself the world's greatest deliberative body. The greatest obstructive body is more like it. In the last season of Congress, the Republican minority invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the will of the majority. This relentless abuse of a time-honored Senate tradition so disgusted Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, that he is now willing to forgo easy retribution and drastically limit the filibuster. Hooray for him.
Yes. The New York Times was, a mere decade ago, strongly in favor of changing the Senate rules so that filibusters could be blocked after 8 days, with a simple majority.
But now, when the shoe is on the other foot, the idea of changing the Senate rules is unthinkable. What has changed in 10 years? Surely if it was a good idea in 1995, it is still a good idea in 2005?
Bottom line: The current rules in the Senate make it trivially easy to filibuster a bill. A modern filibuster now requires a 60 vote majority to end. The net result is: the Senate now operates as though 60 votes are required to pass legislation, instead of a simple majority. This is not historically the way the Senate used to operate and I see no reason why this change should have occured.
The current rules on filibuster in the Senate should be changed.
Posted by rakhier at April 28, 2005 11:10 AM