Senate 2010 in one chart: product of 30 hour cloture motions, constant procedural delays, and a portrait of a broken confirmation system. Why does anybody below Secretary level and lifetime-bench-appointment need confirmation anyway?
Up or down vote. Remember when that was all the rage? Oh, to be young and fancy-free again.
Today the Republican’s defeated a Democratic effort to bring a defense authorization bill to the floor that included a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Now both sides can use it as an election issue.
This did not remove the repeal from the defense authorization bill. […]
[It] is a critical bit of legislation. It will make it to the floor before the end of the year. Somebody will introduce an amendment to get the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell out of the bill. The amendment will fail. The bill will pass. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be repealed.
It’s not so much about whether the package will squeak through (with DADT and DREAM intact), it’s about deflating the effect of said (inevitable) passage. Now it will pass post-midterms, and nobody but nobody will even know it happened.
This was never about the policy, it was about denying The Democrat a win, no matter how incremental, that might give the base even the least bit of wind in its sails. And, once again, rather than fight or force the GOP to eat a massive shit sandwich while winning the day (see: Troops, why does John McCain want them to die?), the GOP is handed this victory entirely without cost, while the democratic base sees yet more fecklessness and one more reason not to bother come November.
It is better to be strong and wrong than weak and right. This is why they fail.
Obama administration: Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s tax plan […] to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for America’s millionaires and billionaires would nearly double the projected deficit by adding $4 trillion to it over the next decade. And [the GOP is] pretending that they would pay for it through a projected spending freeze, that fails to mention what they would freeze or cut, and that would only save $300 billion over that same period of time…
Senior GOP adviser’s response: It must be tough to have to work in [the administration’s] press shop and explain that letting people keep their own money is bad, and having to explain why you think the Bush administration economic policy is bad, but you want to make it permanent. Though I’m still curious: how much does their plan add to the deficit? Is it three trillion or 3.3 trillion?
Kate Dickens, aid to Mike Castle: [Christine O’Donnell] is a con artist who won by lying about Castle’s positions and her own life. Out of state support was enough to pull her through yesterday so she can rely on it through November.
Mitt Romney: Now is the time for Republicans to rally behind their nominee, Christine O’Donnell. She ran an impressive campaign. I believe it is important we support her so we can win back the U.S. Senate this fall.
A spokesman for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that every Senate Republican has pledged to oppose President Barack Obama’s tax-cutting plan.
I am shocked beyond words. It’s almost as if the GOP is planning to oppose every measure or action before the Senate, no matter how popular, trivial, or necessary to basic function of government said measure or action may be. But we know that can’t be so. At any rate: Bad for the Democrat.
Steve Benen hears Boehner say this:
If the only option I have is to vote for some of those tax reductions, I’ll vote for them.
and, like seemingly everyone with a mountaintop large or small, inexplicably takes this away:
Boehner, in other words, appears to be on board with the Obama proposal
Can we just not think in this country anymore?
There is no second thing. If the answer to Question 1 is “No,” then his opinion matters fuck-all. He said this to put a patina of reasonableness on the GOP’s entirely unreasonable and indefensible position that billionaires desperately need an extra $100k come tax-time. They know this meaningless statement will get wide play, much wider (read: vastly wider) than their ultimate actions to bottle this thing up in the Senate (and even that’s assuming the feckless Democrat bothers to bring it to the floor, itself a gigantic and likely foolhardy assumption).
If and when that all happens, the GOP will simply point to (meaningless) statements like this one as examples of their genteel nature and broad willingness to “work across the aisle.” The MSM will report the whole thing as “a Democrat failure to achieve 60 votes needed in the Senate” and Broder will pronounce himself suitably delighted that the GOP tried so very hard. Truly, they are the serious adults up to DC.
Is this so very hard to understand? Apparently it is.
It’s up to Republicans to decide if they agree with this strategy. Do they want an issue or do they want us to get it done quickly?
Anthony Gottleib reports on the electoral process of the Venetian Republic:
Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.
And yet I feel like that would still work better than today’s Senate.
I think there’s only one way to fight this trend: you force the issue by recess appointing everyone on the docket at the first available opportunity. Only when the system is shown as unalterably broken will anything be done to fix it, and that moment only comes when President(s) throw up their hands and don’t even bother submitting nominees anymore.
The solution, I think, is either:
A) No confirmation process below the Secretary level (and, of course lifetime appointments to the various benches); the President gets whoever he/she wants
–or–
B) Confirmation hearings at Secretary level, everybody else into one big bolus that’s up-or-down voted and can’t be filibustered
Let’s be real, the whole nominations process is simply political theater, and that’s when it’s working. Now it’s not even theater: it’s a weapon with which the gears of the Senate are daily sanded. It guarantees bad governance and bad policy outcomes and it’s got to stop.
“I think we should retain the same [filibuster] policies that we have instead of lowering it…. I think it has been working.”
—
Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Better Democrats™ please. (via lemkin)Well don’t get rid of the fucking thing now. the Democrats are going to be a c-hair away from losing the senate this fall, and will most certainly lose it in 2012 (I think republicans only have to defend something like 9 seats that election).
They’d just be beating the rush. The first thing the Republicans will do upon retaking the Senate is eliminate the filibuster. To add insult to injury, they’ll point to their own obstructionism as evidence of the system’s failure. And won’t be challenged by the media in any way shape or form; quite the contrary, any Democrats making a complaint will be painted as “sore losers” who, as usual, want to ignore clear mandates from the American people.
Lemkin 