The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Barth's picture

    Filibusters (a special midweek post)

    By Barth on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 6:15pm |
    The link here is to the Official Explanation of why, in the current view, the mere threat of a filibuster, is the same as an actual filibuster and why it takes sixty votes to pass a bill in the Senate and not just a simple majority. The link does not explain how, in that event, major legislation has been passed with fewer than the votes needed for cloture nor why advocates for, say, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, stayed with the bill until they got the votes for cloture, rather than just mark it off calendar.


    It's an interesting exercise in the pusillanimous to explain why one has to give up the fight because of a threat of a fight. I will accept that modern practice has made the "cots"-type filibusterdramatized so well on the West Wing to be either passe or fictitious altogether (though I am not convinced that is so). 

    But accepting this memo as correct, what of it? If Republicans want to keep suggesting the absence of a quorum, to prevent the Senate from voting on a good health care insurance reform bill (preferably a medicaid for all bill, but one with at least some government agency which will provide competitive insurance for those unwilling to accept the gouging of a private money making company with a ballpark named after it) then let them do it. No, it will not be covered on live tv except C-SPAN (the cable nets have flying balloons to cover and would not have time to show quorum call after quorum call, but the fact that the Senate is unable to do any business for this reason will be reported, and, from time to time in this ordeal, perhaps over 50 some odd Democratic Senators could sit in the chamber so that the absurdity of the suggestion of the absence of a quorum was illustrated in a way the fools we live with could understand and the American people would see why they are being denied what a majority of them want.

    Senator Reid: why not just try it for a week or so instead of letting Senators Snowe (R-Maine) and Conrad (D-Insurance Companies) write the bill?