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The Sanders Rule: All Bills Get Up or Down Votes
What is the point of getting to 60 senators in the Democratic caucus if you can't keep the caucus together on all of the votes? Well, Bernie Sanders has the answer:
"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents. I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'" (emphasis added)
I love this Sanders Rule. It makes perfect sense. This is the whole point of having 60 senators in your caucus. I don't need or want ideological rigidity on the Democratic side. I believe in the Big Tent. So, how people vote is up to them. But getting these bills to the floor to get up or down votes is absolutely necessary. This is part and parcel of being in the caucus. Not just in health care, but all of the bills must have up or down votes (but by far the most important thing right now is to include a public option in the health care bill that gets an up or down vote).
I know Democrats bend over backwards to accommodate the Republicans and appeal to bipartisanship. Although the Republicans never, ever seem to reciprocate, that is all fine and dandy, as long as we get to vote on the legislative proposals. They can have bipartisan proposals come up. They can have progressive or conservative proposals come up. But no matter what they should all get a vote, as long as there are sixty senators in the Democratic caucus.
If the Democrats don't use their 60 seat majority to break filibusters, then they are absolutely complicit. There are no excuses left. It's one thing to say you're voting your conscience on a bill (though a great majority of the time they are in fact voting their pocketbook by voting with the lobbyists), it's another to say that you will join the Republicans in upholding a filibuster. That is not acceptable.
Everyone who voted for a Democrat in the country should absolutely insist that they follow the Sanders Rule. All bills must get up or down votes. That's the least they can do with the overwhelming mandate they have been given to get us real change.
If they squander this -- with control of the White House, a huge majority in the House, a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and all of the national polls behind them -- then they were lying. They never intended to bring us change in the first place. The lobbyists will have won. And Obama's presidency will be like all of the others. A lot of bullshit promises and no change despite every conceivable advantage. If they can't get it done under these circumstances, then they can never get it done -- nor did they ever want to.
Follow Cenk Uygur on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
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Move over Harry Reid, the Democrats have found their REAL Leader!!!
razor sharp article. if only all the dems would read it.
If the world had ever been perfect, all the necessary laws would already have been passed. Any new laws would be a decline from perfection. This is clearly not the case, but it is nearly enough to be a factor worth considering. What is done now to circumvent a Republican minority will come back to bite you when the Democrats are in the minority. Despite a nominal majority, the clear majority of progressive Democrats does not exist. The power in the Senate goes to the swing votes.
Bipartizanship is about putting principle over party, something we bitterly suppose Republicans are incapable of. As the 2010 election approaches, they may notice voters are not so rabidly partisan but expect their elected officials to do the people's business. The play to the base that we notice this year may move to the center as the primaries pass. Certainly, a politician who cannot get elected is little good to anybody. Practical people make adjustments so as to prevail.
To speak out cannot hurt provided we remain serious about serious matters. The thing is to be clear in your own mind where your interests lie because a impending flood of propaganda is about to hit the airwaves and sway the weaker minded just as several current crises come to their boil.
You might be right, except for the fact that we've ALL seen that the Republicans are incapable of putting country above party over the last 16 years.
What it's going to take to bring bipartisanship back to where it belongs will be the Democrats actually forcing some stuff through IN SPITE of Republicans fighting to prevent it, especially since it will help most Americans and the people will like it. The end result will be that the Republicans will have to come back to the center.
Some times I think that Sen. Sanders is the only sane man in the Senate. I'm not from Vermont, but he is kind enough to send me his emails.
I have no idea where the mistaken idea came from that the Senate needed 60 votes to pass legislation instead of a MAJORITY and when there are only 100 Senators...that means 51 votes.
I suspect it all came from the Republicans who gave us Bush/Cheney and all their messes.
Sen. Sanders is, as always, spot on. However, given the lack of support Al Franken got from the Democrats, I think it's close to "-- nor did they ever want to" than that they couldn't.
There was a reason why Maj. Leader Reid immediately came to the mics and cameras to announce that sixty votes doesn't mean anything.
At least now we can see for ourselves that we have always had a three-party system. The Democrats, the Repubs, and the Republicrats. If we think about it a moment, the Democrats are still in the minority.
Why aren't the Democratic-Socialists or Socialist-Democrats (Whatever Senator Sanders is) the majority party in Congress? Senator Bernie Sanders seems to be SO FAR out in front of his colleagues (I believe he has no peers) that the rest are embarrassments to the entire institution they infest as well as black marks on the American Political system.
I wish I could shake the conviction that Harry Reid is just too mild, too pliable, too wishy-washy be speaking for Democrats anymore- But I can't. I admire his rise to the Senate, but he's just another architype milktoast timid Democrat for the Republicans to focus on. He doesn't give hope, just cautionaries.
This latest quote attributed to him, that "60 votes doesn't mean anything." is one more bummer from Mr. Low Expectations, and I've just had it with him. I've worked too hard for the last 8 or more years to get rid of Bush and the GOP to put up with his sort of equivocation and tentativeness. We need a strong LEADER in the Senate who can rally the public as well as manipulate the Senate hardware. I'm ready for someone new.
Centrist Democrats and Republicans still make up over 50% of the votes, the 60 vote rule only benifits liberal Democrats.
You're wrong. So-called centrist Democrats and Republicans are less than a majority. Additionally, the 60 vote rule ONLY helps the Republicans who want to prevent anything from happening.
Now I'm not saying that I want to get rid of the filibuster, I think that it's an important part of the Senate, but since the Democrats have that supermajority, they should all vote to end cloture and then vote their conscience on the bills in a straight up or down vote!
The Senate's rules requiring sixty votes to impose cloture or end a Senator's hold on an appointment violates the spirit of the Constitution, if not the Constitution itself. The only super-majorities required in the Constitution are the two-thirds vote for Constitutional amendments, for Senate ratification of treaties and for conviction in the Senate of impeachment charges. Everything else should require only a simple majority. While the Constitution gives each chamber a very wide latitude to organize itself and set its own rules, I do not believe that the Framers meant to allow a mere 100 people to basically amend the Constitution on their own by conducting their business in such a way that sixty votes are required for everything they do. If the Framer's meant to require a three-fifths vote to pass legislation and approve appointees, then why didn't they say so?? The current Senate rules are an assault upon democracy and I do not care whether the issue is health care reform or Bush nominees to the judiciary. For democracy to be a vital and real thing to the people, elections need to matter. If a party has won the White House and the Congress, then they have won the right to advance their agenda and appoint the people to implement it. If that agenda and those people turn out to be a disaster, then that is what the next election is for.
I agree that in the present political confusion the filibuster is an anachronism we cannot afford, and Sanders has proposed a beautiful - if temporary - solution. But the chambers are allowed to set their own rules and some conceivable disasters our Democracy might not recover from. What do we do about popular very bad ideas? There may not be a perfect solution that satisfies everybody, so we have to look for solutions that work, however temporary they may ultimately prove to be. "Sander's Rule" looks like it will work. Now if we can find a solution to problems with state initiative voting.....
Under almost any circumstances, I would say that anachronism is a vital part of our Democracy. On the other hand, when it happens (as it has right now) where one party actually HAS the votes needed to overcome any filibuster, then it's because the American people want them to USE it, and they need to do so!!
Some of the conservative senators would leave the caucus if the leadership tried to impose this rule.
Let them leave, then vote them out.
We, the People, deserve representation, not obstruction, and the slow death of good legislation through delaying tactics.
Harry Reid is the so-called Majority Leader. It's his job to whip them back into shape.
If they refuse and want to leave the caucus, then they'll only be showing their true colors, that they are, and always have been, Republicans in Democratic clothing. Let's see if their constituents will vote for them come re-election with an "R" by their names.
There's a reason why they got their cushy Senate seats running as Democrats, not as Repubs. Let's see if they can remember that.
Yes. That's what I'd say to them. Do you really want to join a party that only 20% of the country is willing to identify themselves with and whose congressional membership (including the Senate) only has a 13% approval rating. If you do, buh-bye. Don't let the door hit you on the way out and have fun raising money for your re-election bid.
They don't need an "R" next to their names. "I" for "incumbent" worked for Lieberman.
Yeah, that's why they all voted with georgie for the last 8 years, right? Even when they claimed that they didn't like what was being done, like our new buddy Arlen Specter!
Dear Brother Cenk,
Outstanding post, of course Senator Sanders is correct.
Happy 4 th of July Cenk. Agape always, dapper
I think that the new message from Dems should be that if Reps fillibuster that they are blocking a majority of states from having a vote in the senate. Call it what it is. Nail this to them. Make 2010 be about how voting for a Rep means voting to prevent votes in the senate.
"Sander's Rule": I like this - it has a good sound to it, and it seems logical and reasonable. In these days we are experiencing the virtual dissolution of one of our major parties and we are beginning to experience the flow of more or less conservative political refugees from the ebbing party into a more or less liberal or progressive one. Something like "Sander's Rule is sorely needed.
This political change cannot but create a center shift to the right in the growing party creating factions, which will turn it into more of a coalition than party. This new "coalition party" can also now contain it's own "loyal opposition", hopefully. In time, a new major party (right or left) may bud off, but he reasons and logic for the creation of the filibuster rule have meanwhile become inoperative
Until the time the two party system has been restored, the conditions, logic, and political realities that created and sustained the filibuster rule are for the time not appropriate or applicable.
Love, simply love Sanders. Best senator in the whole place.
And - gasp! - a SOCIALIST! For real. :)
I've been disgusted by how, contrary to every civics text book in the nation, the far right has morphed ALL news reporting to magically claim it takes 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. It never has, and it never will.
Passing a bill requires a simple majority, so long as it isn't overriding a veto. The magic 60 votes is, as Sanders says, to prevent an attempt at obstructing a bill from being voted on.
So great! We vote on every bill! Weren't all the GOoPers chanting "Up Or Down!!!" a year ago?
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