Who Needs Republicans When We Have Harry Reid?

So, rather than push through sensible reforms which would put the onus on filibustering minorities to maintain the filibuster (rather than the current burden on the majority to break it), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accepted a bipartisan deal with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that would basically rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic- allow the opposition to submit amendments to any bill, regardless of topic, speed up votes for Senate-House conference committees on bills... but do absolutely nothing to stop Republican abuse of the filibuster.

How big a victory was this for Republicans, and how big a defeat for liberals? McConnell's already fund-raising on it:

"Mitch McConnell saved the ability of Republicans to filibuster any bill at 60 votes. Period. … We all owe Leader McConnell a debt of gratitude today."

But wait- it turns out the victory is even bigger than that.

A federal appeals court today ruled not only that Obama's three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were invalid not only because the Senate was not recessed (it was in a pro forma session with no business and only one or two Senators in attendance)... but because the president, the conservative justices ruled, does not have power to recess-appoint anybody unless the vacancy first occurs while the Senate is in recess.

"Allowing the President to define the scope of his own appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution's separation of powers," wrote Judge David Sentelle for the court majority. "An interpretation of 'the Recess' that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction. This cannot be the law."

This is a big issue because Republicans have pledged to never again allow ANYONE to be approved to the National Labor Relations Board- or, for that matter, to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Republicans want to effectively repeal the laws establishing these agencies by preventing them from being able to function- so they're going to stonewall any nominees Obama, or anyone, puts forward.

And Harry Reid is just fine with that, because he wants to preserve the requirement that sixty Senators agree on anything before it can become a law.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why Democrats continually lose even when they win.

The Gander Serves His Own Sauce

Well, for once here's a senator who deserves to win this year's election.

Using a scheduled midmorning speech on the Senate floor, Bennet will propose a package of bills that would cut a broad swath across a set of practices and procedures that have become notorious symbols of a gridlocked Capitol.

He will propose eliminating anonymous holds, banning private-sector earmarks, freezing pay and budgets for members of Congress, and barring lawmakers from lobbying for life.

Michael Bennet was appointed to the Senate to fill a vacancy left as part of Obama's cabinet selections. He's facing a very tough race come November- in fact the smart money shows him losing, rather handily, to pretty much any Republican.

But Bennet deserves better- and he's working hard to solidify the Democratic base in a battleground state. He's the senator who drafted the letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid demanding that a government-run public insurance option be added to the health care reform bill through reconciliation- an effort which, as of today, picked up its 33rd supporter, not counting Harry Reid himself.

And now he's proposing changes to move the Senate away from its current state of dysfunction.

* Bennet proposes a time limit on filibusters, after which the threshhold for cutting off debate drops to 55 instead of 60.
* Bennet proposes eliminating the current practice of allowing a single Senator to anonymously place a hold on the confirmation of people nominated by the President for office.
* He'd also ban lawmakers of any sort from lobbying for life- and prohibit Congressional staffers from lobbying for at least six years.
* In addition to all that, he proposes curtailing earmarks for the private sector, freezing Congressional salaries and staff budgets, and imposing strict ethics regulations on the use of private charter jets for Congressional travel.

Every last one of these things is a good idea. Bennet doesn't get rid of the filibuster entirely- and considering the Democrats are currently on the frog-march for minorities in both houses, that might be a good thing- but he does pull its teeth quite a bit.

Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely that any of these reforms will actually pass. Senate rules require 67 votes, not 51 or 60, to be changed. The "nuclear option" threatened by Republicans in 2005 and murmured about now by Democrats would require a simple majority, but couldn't be used to reform filibusters- only to destroy the practice altogether. This is really a shame, because every one of Bennet's reforms needs doing- and badly- if we want a functional federal government.

I'm going to think long and hard about sending a check to Bennet for his election campaign. This is the sort of thing that needs to be encouraged- bucking against the system when it fails, rather than upholding the system over the people it was designed to serve. People who tilt at windmills deserve a reward.

Jim Bunning Gives In... For Now

Last night Jim Bunning gave up his filibuster- which, contrary to the mainstream media pundits, was NOT unsupported by the rest of the Republican Party- and allowed a resolution to extend certain benefits and projects through the end of March to pass. It's worth noting that eighteen Republicans voted against that resolution when it finally came to a vote- which means eighteen Republicans voted against:

* Avoiding a 21% cut in Medicare payments to doctors
* Extension of unemployment benefits
* Extension of COBRA health insurance subsidies, without which COBRA becomes immediately unaffordable to anyone not employed
* Various transportation projects, including road construction and public safety activities

But Bunning didn't just surrender. The Democrats cut him a deal:

In the end, the Democrats ended the standoff by promising Bunning votes they say he knows he will lose: first came his amendment to the unemployment bill, which failed last night. There's more coming, say Democratic sources -- the party agreed to allow more of his legislation to reach the floor, even though everyone knows the bills are doomed to fail.

The aforementioned amendment was to use Reconciliation Act funds- the 2009 stimulus package- to pay for the thirty-day extension.

But the important thing isn't that Bunning let the bill come to a vote, or that his amendment failed: it's that this could happen all over again in four weeks.

Consider: this extension runs out at the end of the month. The Senate might, or might not, have the final legislation to fund all of this for the full year done by the end of the month. If not, ANOTHER extension measure will be brought forward...

... and Bunning, who has never played nice and seldom held up his side of agreements with other Senators, will still be there, and he'll still be demanding that the stimulus funds be whittled down to pay for the extensions.

Don't take the "Unemployment Held Hostage" signs down just yet.

Bunning's Filibuster Creates 20% Cut in Medicare

Remember when I mentioned Jim Bunning's filibuster against unemployment and health aid for over a million people- and how Republicans are moving towards supporting him?

Well, he's still blocking the same resolutions... and it turns out it's had a vastly more important effect- a 21% cut to Medicare payments to doctors.

The American Medical Association warned of this last week: "A Medicare meltdown now seems certain, as the U.S. Senate has left early for the weekend, abandoning seniors, military families and baby boomers," reads an AMA statement from Friday. "The Senate failed to repeal the Medicare physician payment formula that will cause a drastic 21 percent payment cut to physicians who care for Medicare and TRICARE patients. On Monday, the 21 percent cut goes into effect, forcing many physicians to limit the number of Medicare and TRICARE patients they see in order to keep their practice doors open."

On a conference call with reporters this afternoon Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) put it this way: "By his actions, Bunning has prevented people from receiving Unemployment, health care access, transportation projects from going forward, and Doctors who provide Medicare services from getting paid."

Bunning, of course, claims he's only filibustering because the measure isn't paid for. Democrats have pointed out- quite accurately- that Bunning never worried about paying for Bush's tax cuts, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Medicare Part D. The former star pitcher apparently only cares about budget deficits if he can blame them on the other party.

And, of course, the true chutzpah of all this is: Republicans oppose the Senate version of health insurance reform because it would cut $500 billion of wasted and unnecessary medical practices ordered by overcautions or profit-seeking doctors and hospitals. Yet they are apparently quite prepared to let the "doc-fix" falter, and to filibuster the upcoming jobs bill that makes permanent the thirty-day unanimous-consent measure Bunning is doing his damndest to kill.

Of course, the Republicans also want to convert Medicare from a government-run insurance company to a voucher plan which gives seniors fixed amounts of money to buy corporate insurance with... if they can.

If the Democrats lose both the House and Senate in November, with the Republicans pulling shenanigans like this, they will have proven themselves useless not only as government officials but as an entire political movement.

But I'm predicting exactly that outcome... because these are the Democrats.

One Man Two Men v. 1.2 Million People.

Last night Jim Bunning, soon-to-be-retired Republican Senator from Kentucky, single-handedly filibustered to death a bill that would extend federal aid for unemployment insurance and COBRA medical coverage for another month.

As Democratic senators asked again and again for unanimous consent for a vote on a 30-day extension Thursday night, Bunning refused to go along.

And when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection, Politico reports, Bunning replied: "Tough shit."

Bunning says he doesn't oppose extending benefits -- he just doesn't want the money that's required added to the deficit. He proposes paying for the 30-day extension with stimulus funds.

. . .

And at one point during the debate, which dragged on till nearly midnight, Bunning complained of missing a basketball game.

"I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00," he said,
"and it's the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they're the only team that has beat Kentucky this year."

Politico has more:

Reid has asked for unanimous consent to approve the package of provisions that expire Sunday, which also include 30-day extensions of flood insurance, highway funding and small business loans. But Bunning continues to object to the unanimous consent requests.

. . .

On the floor Thursday, Bunning complained about how the measures aren’t adequately paid for. And he criticized Reid for killing a bipartisan Finance Committee bill to address the unemployment rate and for “jamming” through other bills that he said would amount to a frivolous increase in spending.

. . .

“All the spending portions of that compromise of those programs that you’re talking about were paid for in that bill,” Bunning said. “Now explain that to the American people.”

. . .

"Remember now, this all could’ve been changed had not the leader of the Senate decided that a bipartisan compromise jobs bill was not as important as his partisan jobs bill that just passed just before all of this debate," he said in his final remarks.

Note: the "bipartisan" bill was in fact essentially a Republican bill, extending and expanding tax cuts for the mega-wealthy and corporations- while raising taxes on the middle class.

Now, up to this point Bunning was on his own. The renegade former baseball pitcher has been persona non grata in the Republican Senate Caucus for months now due to his often embarrassing conduct- and abysmal popularity in his home state, where his seat comes up on this year's ballot. It took some heavy arm-twisting, a total shutoff of campaign funds, and months of polls showing him going down to defeat to any Democrat you cared to name before Bunning finally announced he would not seek re-election.

But this morning, when Harry Reid made one last effort to get unanimous consent to pass the bill, Bunning found unexpected support- and the bill was killed until at least late next week:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took the floor after Reid to stick up for Bunning. He noted that there is broad bipartisan support for extending benefits, but said Bunning was right to take a stand against adding $10 billion to the deficit. He also pointed out that the jobs bill that Reid scrapped two weeks ago, crafted by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.), contained an extension of UI and COBRA.

"I admire the courage of the junior senator from Kentucky," he said. "Somebody has to stand up finally and say, 'No more inter-generational theft!'"

Yes, friends, that is the junior senator from Texas, the #2 man in the Republican Senate Caucus, the man responsible for getting Republicans in that body, John Cornyn, standing up and saying people should starve now so that their children won't pay higher taxes down the line. The fact that their children will go hungry, as children, RIGHT NOW cuts no ice with the Republicans... because, of course, they and their children are all well taken care of.

Before Cornyn opened his mouth, the Republicans could have written Bunning off as a renegade, and the extension of benefits could have passed next week after a simple (for a change) cloture vote. Cornyn, though, has made it more than one man: he's made it a campaign issue.

If Reid tries to pass this bill next week, expect a more intense filibuster, and a hard-fought cloture vote.

(Interesting: today Politico had an article on Republican threats to bring Senate business to a complete stop with amendments and procedural delays. My response: you mean, more of a halt than you're ALREADY bringing it to?)

What's sad is, these days he IS an intellectual in the GOP.

You want to know how bankrupt the Republican argument is about evading a Senate filibuster to pass health care reform?

They brought out Dan Quayle to oppose budget reconciliation as a tactic for passing it.

"They're gonna go to budget reconciliation, which I believe would set a very bad precedent, because essentially -- if they could do it, and I don't know if they can do it, but if they could do it -- what you have done, effectively, is to take away the filibuster in the United States Senate," Quayle said. "So, therefore, you have 51 votes in the House and 51 votes in the Senate. That is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind. That is not the constitutional process."

... oh, WHERE to begin with this? The fact that there are more than 51 votes in a House majority, the fact that the Constitution says nothing about a supermajority for the Senate to pass most bills, the fact that the Senate was originally appointed by state legislatures instead of by popular election and therefore we don't have anything like the Senate the Founders originally intended, or the simple fact that the Senate filibuster was not even invented as such until 1837, and the modern form not created until 1917...

... nah. How about I begin, and end, with the fact that the best expert on the Constitution they could find is Dan "Potatoe" Quayle?

Thanks for playing, FOX News and the Republican Party. I'm sure there's some wonderful parting gifts waiting for you just behind the curtain somewhere...

Filibuster: Protector of Liberty, or GOP Warhammer?

Have a read of this item from Talking Points Memo.

It's true that there has been a decades-long uptick in the use of cloture filings -- often to overcome filibuster threats -- by whichever party is in the majority, but the best measurement of that trend shows an explosion since Republicans were consigned to minority status after the 2006 election.

. . .

What's particularly striking here is the GOP's use of filibuster threats, and the correlated increase in Democratic cloture motions. Take, for instance, the huge spike in cloture motions filed from the Republican-led 109th Congress in 2005-2006 to the Democratic-majority 110th in 2007-2008.

. . .

When Republicans were a Senate minority in 1991-1992, there were 59 cloture filings. When President Clinton took office, with Republicans remaining the minority in the Senate, that number shot up to 80 in 1993-1994.

When Democrats reclaimed the Senate majority in the 2006 midterm elections, cloture filings shot up from 68 in 2005-2006 to a record 139 in 2007-2008.

And, most notably, the Democrats do NOT show a similar spike when they go into the minority under a Republican president. The numbers stay fairly static.

The lesson to be taken from this: the Democrats seek to follow the rules, but the Republicans seek to make the rules.

The filibuster, far from being the last defense of the people against the powerful, has become the weapon of the powerful to stop the people from acting against them. Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith is not merely fiction, but outright fairy-tale.

And yes, at one point I defended the filibuster. It took the absolute, iron-clad obstructionism of 2009 to open my eyes and realize that not only were the Republicans shameless in their politically driven opposition to everything including serving corned beef in the Congressional cafeteria on Fridays, but that they had set up the rules and traditions to reward that shamelessness.

And, as one of the commentators almost but not quite pointed out, this shamelessness stems in part from the fact that the Republican Party, as a unit, regards itself at war with everyone who disagrees with them- no holds barred, no quarter, no prisoners:

The (Republicans) were not being cute in referring to the "Reagan Revolution." They were seriously waging a long, silent revolution against the underpinnings of that "We The People" government of ours.

They've been waging war all along and it's just now becoming clear how serious they are about their revolution now that the middle and left are attempting to reassert control over the country once more.

There is zero serendipity, nada coincidence that there has been such rabid hate talk from the Right, urging their authoritarian followers to stock up on guns and ammo and labeling anyone who doesn't conform to their radical vision of a corporatocracy ruling subservient masses as Hitler, Nazi, Socialist, Stalinist, Terrorists' Pal or any other title that begs the response "and we know what Hitler deserved... !"

So far, because we fail to recognize they are conducting war on us, we have been bringing knives to a gun fight.

And, as I mentioned on LJ just before reviving this blog, there are some Republicans openly calling for the armed overthrow of the government if they don't control it.

It's time for someone to go to war right back at the Republicans. And if the Democrats don't have the balls to do it (and most likely they don't), then it's time for a third way- long past time, in fact.