The filibuster problem was solved in the Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974. Apparently, the House Rules Committee amended the requirement of sixty-seven Senators' votes to terminate debate and replaced it with twenty hours of debate. Thirty-five years ago, House members then were tired of passing bills only to have them blocked in the Senate by a filibuster. Today House Members are more than frustrated, having passed two hundred seventy-one measures to the Senate with no Senate vote. Everyone is charging Congress with doing nothing. House Members are working their heads off while it is the Senate that is doing nothing. Today the measure of time to deliberate should be changed as in reconciliation to so-many hours.
Action in the Congress thirty-five years ago was overwhelmingly bi-partisan. On March 22, 1974, the Senate approved the reconciliation rule by a vote of 80-0. And the Conference Report was approved on June 21, 1974, by a vote of 75-0. And no amendment to the reconciliation rule has been suggested in thirty-five years.
Senator Robert Byrd (D-WVa) tells the story of Jefferson reporting to Washington at Mount Vernon one morning telling Washington that the Convention had decided on a bicameral system. Washington asked: "Why two Houses?" Jefferson replied: "In the House of Representatives the members are close to the people and are full of passion on the issues. As you are cooling your tea in that saucer, we need the Senate to cool the passions of the House, have time to deliberate and decide." Thus, today's requirement of sixty votes to cut off debate.
Extended debate or filibuster was never intended to block majority rule. The intention was to provide time for news to travel, authorities to be consulted, and the Senators to check his or her state's opinion. Today, news travels fast. Pros and cons of an issue are delivered in the home by the media and a public opinion poll is furnished by the end of the week. But with filibuster after filibuster or threats of a filibuster last year and this year, we have ended up with minority rule.
Our trouble is with the free press. It has become so partisan or fearful of being partisan that the public receives a distorted opinion of reconciliation. Democracy operates on a majority vote, which is guaranteed by the twenty hour reconciliation rule. But news coverage would have most people thinking that the use of reconciliation was a dirty trick. President George W. Bush used reconciliation for his devastating tax cuts, and there was no charge then that the measures were being "rammed down our throats."
But this is the description of reconciliation today. One hundred individuals have become members of the Senate not by being rammed down anyone's throat, but by a majority vote. When Senators objected to the use of the reconciliation procedure to limit debate in 2005, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), Chairman of the Budget Committee, insisted that the twenty-hour reconciliation was a rule of the Senate to protect majority rule. The reconciliation twenty-hour limitation has been employed twenty-two times in thirty-five years -- sixteen by Republicans.
The United States Senate can regain the confidence and respect of the people by changing the sixty-vote requirement to terminate debate and replace it with a twenty, thirty, or forty hour limitation.
The complaints are all for show.
Nobody screeched louder about reconciliation and how immoral it was than democrats when republicans tried to use it to get a judicial nomination through. Reid called it a corrupt use of power.
That was then.
Republicans are abusing the filibuster, using it on every item up for vote in order to stall any and all legislation. THAT is bad for America. But the Repubs are not that concerned with governance.
A fact:
The Repubs first threatened to remove the filibuster in 2003, when it was used to hold Bush's demagogic judicial appointments. The Repubs then passed several pieces of legislature by reconciliation, so the hue and cry that reconciliation is somehow new and a breach of Senate rules is just stupid.
This is not the same as the issue the Dems are talking about, and equating the two is dishonest to the facts.
So like I said in the first place...
The problem is , in my opinion, that msm is not honorable anymore. There is no integrity with most "viewscasts."
The problem with the "Terintino" is that it clearly is broken when either side can stop everything, something needs to be changed.
The use of the fillibuster this last years was at an all time high, even worse than the early Clinton years. The Republicans are using every means possible to make the American people think poorly of the government. The bulk of the voting public doesn't follow politics, per se, so they just think the controlling party in congress and/or the Whitehouse is to blame for the disfunctional governrment. The lying, conniving Republicans have the smear down to a science. It's about getting back in power, not about for the good of the country.
If they again gain control of congress I torn about wanting the Dems to do the same thing to them or not wanting the Dems to be so nafarious, to stoop to such low-life, lying measures.
The Republicans and their noise machine (Fox) have been doing most of the shouting and the other news networks repeat the Fox lies.
It's beyond time that Democrats make as much noise and speak truth to power
I believe the Senator means to say:
“Our problem is the free press has become so partisan or fearful of being partisan that the public has received a distorted opinion of reconciliation.”
They oppose it because they are Republicans.
Over the years Republicans have created voodoo by their imagined happy marriage of prevarication (lying) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prevarication with a very healthy dose of concupiscence, or lusting http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concupiscence
and then exacerbating the resulting obscurantism, or blocking of objective reality http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obscurantism
They do not realize that the majority of people hold the truth as an important personal value and understand the simple basic concepts of logic. When will we the people return to debate guided by logic?
It’s all about corporations. Our founding fathers saw the danger in giving corporations control over anything, did not give them any control, and limited their existence. The American Revolution was all about rebellion to British corporations. The change in these policies began in the in last third of the nineteenth century. Shortly before Lincoln’s death, he warned that "Corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed."
A short but very important history of corporations in the United States:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Hx_Corporations_US.html
The canaries in their gold mine are dieing. Their voodoo is really muck.
the destruction is near completion
with the SCOTUS recent ruling and the inciteful lies spewed by Fox News, civility, reason and governance by the people and for the people are leaking out like water through a seive
We need level headed experts such as yourself to flood the airwaves to clarify this process of reconcilation. Since the masses are not reached by print this is the way to correct the thinking.
Mind you, two weeks of saturation should get the job done.
Thank you.
Friends, show your support here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Changing-the-US-Senate-rules-bring-back-democracy/278379601906?v=wall
Bwaaahahahahahahah-- how can you take someone serious when they say something like that??
Free press is our problem-- LOL
The news/media is driven by advertising dollars, and if a gorilla tap dancing to hurdy gurdy music rates high enough, THAT is what you will get.
Ad dollars, not reason, reality or facts rule the 24 hour infotainment industry.
The free press is owned by the same media giants that own the radio and television stations.
In other words, there is no truly free press in America any longer.
Democratic filibuster peaked at about 40 during the Bush administration mostly based around his judicial appointments...that is 40 filibusters in eight years.
Republicans have filibustered over 100 timed in 2009 alone. 1 year, almost 3 times the number of filibusters. If it remains consistent, the Repubs will offer 10 times the filibusters than ANY Congress in history, and that begs the answer, Why?
Too bad the fourth estate can't do its job properly.
It used to be you could count on the truth and they were embarrassed and ashamed if they got something wrong.