Why do we allow the people who choose to vote against even debating a bill participate in the debate and offer amendments later on in the process? Didn’t they already decide they didn’t want to debate the bill? Can’t we take them at their word and ignore them?
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Anya
I would like to add another question, John, why is Robert Byrd still in the Senate? He is clearly in very fragile health, so why doesn’t he resign? What is the process in WV of replacing a Senator?
Elizabelle
Anya: think Byrd’s there mainly because Dems fear the seat will go GOP after he leaves (by whatever means). Agree with you that his fragile health is worrying for all of us.
John: well reasoned! Although our “public servants” will say they’re just trying to mitigate the damage.
Anya
@Elizabelle: That is sad! Thanks for clarifying.
JenJen
America is awesome because it’s awesome and it is, John.
Dustin
Why? Because the rules of the Senate are a classic example of “you pat my back, I pat yours” gone wrong. It worked when we had two sane parties, now we’re getting to witness what happens when one went off the deep end. It’s not pretty, and of all the crap we’ve gone through the state of the Senate (and the near impossibility of fixing it) is one of the few things that legitimately makes me fear for our republic.
Because, really, what sane voting system requires 60 votes of start voting, but then only 51 to pass? That’s fucked up…
PsiFighter37
That’s actually a pretty damn good point. Never thought about it that way before.
dmsilev
Let’s add to that list the insane idea of the “anonymous hold”. Where one Senator, without even having the guts to publicly identify themselves, can hold up an appointment for months.
My understanding of the procedure is that the hold is an informal thing, arising out of a sort of Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine based on the ability of one sufficiently assholish Senator to cause the Senate to largely grind to a halt. Fix the procedures allowing that root cause to occur, and thus fix the hold.
-dms
Incertus
@Dustin:
If I recall correctly, that number used to be higher–it was a 2/3 majority required to kill a filibuster in the longlongago. Can you imagine how shitty the Senate would be today if that were the requirement? That said, I still hate the gang of 14 for not forcing the Republicans to put up or shut up on blowing up the filibuster. It would have seriously sucked for a while, but now, we’d be finished with this health care debate.
dmsilev
Steve Benen made a related point earlier this morning, that the Republicans are (a) calling for six weeks of debate on the bill and (b) have already declared that they’re going to vote against it. If you’ve already made up your mind, and have decided that there’s nothing that can change your vote, why do we need a debate?
(the obvious answer, as Steve points out, is that they don’t care about the debate per se, but just want another delay.)
-dms
Pococurante
On the other hand it keeps a lot of stuff that is even more tedious and calculated to waste time from going through the entire process.
Be careful what you wish for. ;-)
jcricket
So does anyone know what Roberts Rules of Order are? And that’s the simplified version of Parlimentary rules.
The whole “parlimentarian” thing is what makes the Senate (and the House, to a degree) so ridiculous if you actually watch it for any length of time.
While I don’t think, generally speaking, the government should work more like a corporation, there is a serious case to made for scrapping about 50% of the rules in the House and the Senate – all they do is help employ an army of aides, staffers and make Congress look like it can’t get anything done.
And I’m not even talking about the filibuster.
geg6
@Incertus:
That is correct.
Personally, I’d like to see the Senate become the equivalent of the House of Lords. It is ridiculously anachronistic and inherently un-democratic. I get why the Founders felt forced to include it (those whiny pissant small states!), but it hurts the country more than it helps. We’d all be better off without it or, at least, with the House of Lords equivalent where these idiots could expound on whatever stupid shit they want but none of us have to know about it or care.
sparky
@geg6: agreed. sometimes i wonder if the best thing people who seek change could do is introduce an amendment to abolish the Senate. of course it would be pretty damn difficult to pass even via convention but if nothing else it would illuminate how awful the current system is.
JenJen
Via the NYT, I think it’s this, in a nutshell:
Bill H
Chris Matthews et all cannot understand the “downside” to voting to allow debate even if you are against the bill itself and will in due course vote against it later when it comes to a vote.
They have very short term memories and don’t recall, “he was for it before he was against it,” and “he flip-flopped on health care reform.” I would say losing an election because your opponent hammered you for six months as being indecisive is a definite “downside.”
Geeno
@Incertus:
It was 2/3 of those present. What would happen on really contentious stuff is a few senators would hold a session with no one else there and 2 of the 3 guys there would vote to end debate. Filibuster over.
In the sixties it was changed to 60% of the whole senate so you couldn’t do that anymore.
Common Sense
Isn’t California fucked because it’s too easy to amend their laws? Seems requiring a straight 51% can have some dire consequences too.
kent
I have a related question / suggestion, which came to me during the Stupak amendment time.
Why are Senators or Representatives who are going to vote against the final bill allowed any say on what is in it?
The only reason the Stupak Amendment to the bill passed was because people who were going to vote against the final bill voted for the amendment to it.
If you’re voting against the bill, you don’t get to have a say in what’s in it. Or so the world ought to be.
Sayeth I!
Vincent
You don’t want to make things too easy but you don’t want to make them practically impossible either. And you have to remember that even if the Senate got rid of the filibuster that there are still other chokepoints that would prevent bad stuff from becoming law such as the House of Representatives and the President who all have a say.
D-Chance.
I think we need to debate the debate about the vote to debate… or something.
Our democracy in all its glory… savor.
Martin
Well, voting against starting debate is pretty unheard of in the Senate, actually. I doubt anyone considered the need for such a rule, but someone should introduce a vote on that rule as a result of this.
It seems that many members of the GOP are worried about how China will respond to this piece of legislation. Harry should ask the GOP if they are introducing a resolution to add two Senators from China.
Martin
Oh, and the rule of thumb in the Senate is that party members are expected to go along with any procedural votes in order to keep their committee appointments. They’re free to vote against the bill itself, but never against the wishes of the majority leader to bring it to the floor or to end debate. Harry has a very large stick to keep his folks in line if he’s willing to use it.
Martin
@Common Sense:
Sort of. It’s absurdly easy to get something approved by the public on a ballot initiative, but much harder to get many things passed by the legislature – tax increases of any kind, for example.
It’s much easier for us to recall the governor than it is to raise property taxes, for example. It’s been pushed so far that it requires the same vote margins to raise property taxes as it does to scrap the state constitution and start over.
California is a lesson on the abilities between direct democracy and representative democracy. Direct is losing the battle pretty badly because voters are very happy to vote to spend money (we get stuff!) and generally unwilling to vote to raise money – plus the voters approved measures to make sure the legislature can’t raise money either.
Yutsano
@Elizabelle: I’m pretty sure the law in WV is that the governor appoints the replacement, and the current governor is a Democrat, so it’s not that. My guess is the man is older than God but is also the longest serving Senator so no one wants the task of telling him to step down until he’s damn good and ready. I could, however see him resigning after this whole health care business is done. Like a large number of the Senate he was a longtime friend of Ted Kennedy, I could totally see him wanting to see this thing through just for his memory.
Bobby Yamaha
@Anya: Allow me to explain. We love and respect him like a great-grandfather who has distinguished himself so much for so long that he can and does say and do exactly as he pleases.
But it’s never for personal financial gain. He’s served in Congress longer than any person in history, and even though he’s been on the wrong side of an issue or two morally, he’s never been involved in ANY scandal….ever. One of the least wealthy there, really.
A few years ago – not necessarily having to do with Schiavo, but about the same time – I was listening to NPR and they played audio from the senate floor. Byrd sternly and fluently corrected then-majority leader Bill Frist and Frist thanked Byrd profusely, almost to the point of groveling.
And it wasn’t because Byrd sat on this committee or that committee, but because of things like his speech in the run-up to the Iraq War. (It’s in 2 parts, about 13 minutes long. Seriously – watch it if you’ve never seen it – it’s great.) And that’s just one example.
Webster, Clay, Byrd.
You just don’t shitcan someone like that just because they’re old. So whether or not outsiders understand it, Byrd wants to die as a senator, and if that’s what he wants, that’s what we want.
Again, we love and respect the man and hopefully you can bear with us for just a little longer.
Samnell
@Martin: That would be great, if Harry Reid knew how to wield a stick to save his life. The Dems got used to being able to do whatever they wanted individually in the Senate during the long minority and elected a leader who would continue letting them do the same by doing nothing. Idiots.
Honestly, the very idea that the party should be led by a conservative pro-lifer from a conservative state is raw lunacy. That’s how the GOP picks leaders and it’s only good if you want to follow the GOP’s agenda. The Dems should have been looking for the smurfiest smurf that ever smurfed, a blue-stater who is pretty much invulnerable for as long as he or she wants to continue in office with impeccable liberal credentials.
But that assumes that the Democrats understand that they operate in a two-party system and the inevitable consequence that they must be as night and day to the other party if they intend to sustain support for anything more than empty protest votes when the other party has sufficiently humiliated everybody.
Steeplejack
@Samnell:
Awesome. May I subscribe to your newsletter?
Brien Jackson
Right. Because it’s all Harry Reid who does things like welcoming Joe Lieberman back with open arms. Why, he’d never dream of saying anything negative about anyone. Or, you know, he did. Reid all but came right out and said he’d take Lieberman’s gavel away, until he realized that his caucus wouldn’t back him. Because, for the umpteen millioninth time we do not have a parliamentary system. Especially in the Senate, where the caucuses are very small in relative terms, the party leaders have virtually no unilateral authority over those sorts of things, and decisions on those sorts of matters are made by votes of the entire caucus where individual members don’t really give a damn what leadership thinks.
It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that Democrats could exert the sort of discipline that would more or less guarantee solidarity on procedural motions, but Harry Reid, or any other leader for that matter, has nothing to do with that. The entire caucus, or at least a solid majority of it, has to decide that that’s the direction they want to go, because ultimately they’re going to be the ones making the decision.
Redshift
When the Stupak amendment was being debated, I wished we had a system in both chambers where any amendments that didn’t pass with a majority of those voting for the final bill would be dropped from it. Kind of a variation on “if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.”
Redshift
@Samnell: The sad thing is that the netroots were already pointing that out after the debacle of Daschle as majority leader. Having a majority leader who can’t advocate for core Democratic issues without worrying about it affecting his own reelection is just a terrible idea.
Samnell
@Brien Jackson:
Isn’t that more or less what I said? They elected an incompetent, impotent leader who doesn’t have any particular interest in or ability to advance any kind of leftist agenda as a viable alternative to the Republicans, thanks to his domestic political vulnerability. And they did it so they could keep doing whatever they like individually, regardless of what happens. They got used to that in the long minority and are keen to keep it going.