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Republicans Use Filibuster to Prevent Government from Working for the American People

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 03/05/2010 - 6:40pm.

HAYLEIGH STEPHENSON FOR BUZZFLASH

The filibuster is used to protect minority interests in the Senate, ensuring that minority interests are not trampled by the popular party. However, the Republicans have used the filibuster to simply paralyze government. Creating this paralysis feeds the Republican talking point that government doesn't work and should be slashed. In fact, the reason why "government doesn't work" is because Republican senators use the filibuster to prevent essential legislation from becoming law. Republicans can thus block the legislative process, then blame "the system" for being unworkable.

Curiously, almost every major news story covering congressional gridlock spreads the blame around evenly between both Republicans and Democrats. We're told that the problem is "the system," and "bipartisan bickering." However, the facts show a more specific problem. The reason why nothing is getting done in Washington today is because the Republican Senate's record-breaking use of the filibuster. Republicans, in the minority in the 2007-2008 session of congress, used the filibuster 112 times. The most that Democrats resorted to the tactic, when they were in the minority in 1999-2000, was 58.




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People buy into this garbage

Submitted by epramberg on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 6:04am.

Pete Ramberg

The thing that I can't believe is that MY friends will actually tell me not only how Obama is ineffective (leaving out the part where Republicans are preventing anything from going through), but will quote the standard unfounded, stupid lies (ie "he will take away our guns").

What's worse is that I verbally punish them and make them admit that none of their beliefs are true, and then one week later, they are spouting the same garbage.

It almost seems like they know that they believe in a heaping load of BS, but they still want to tow the line.

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So you bought into this garbage, Pete?

Submitted by Mike5000 on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 1:38pm.

The Rethugs are not really preventing anything going through.  They'd like to but they don't have the votes.

The Dimocraps as always are preemptively surrendering every time the Rethugs whisper the word "filibuster".

That's what they're paid to do.

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Repuglican Party(???)

Submitted by Chuck38 on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 7:23pm.

Chuck38

It appears to me that Corporations now rule the Republican Party, if you can still call

it that, a party. This was the state of affairs in Hitler's Germany. Corporations ruled.

'Nough said!!!

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the filibuster: a catch-41

Submitted by kostya on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 8:46am.

Catch-41

Minority Senator Yossarian decided that the majority’s new bill was the best solution to the problem that plagued the country. He wanted to stop blocking the bill.

“You’re wasting your time,” said the minority leader.

“Can’t you allow someone to vote for the bill?” Senator Yossarian asked.

“Oh, sure, I have to,” the minority leader explained. “Our rules say anyone who wants to vote yes can to do so.”

“Then why don’t you let me vote yes,” said Senator Yossarian, “I believe this bill is the best approach to the problem. Ask any Senator from our party; they all think we should pass this bill.”

“They’re right.”

“Then why don’t you let them vote yes?”

“If they believe in the legislation, they should vote yes. They just have to ask me to allow them to vote yes.”

“That’s all they have to do to vote yes on the bill?”

“That’s all. Let them ask me.”

“And then you’ll let them vote for the bill?” Senator Yossarian asked.

“No, then I can’t let them vote for the bill,” the minority leader replied.

“You mean there’s a catch?”

“Sure there’s a catch. Anyone wanting to get out of voting no is not a sane member of the party and will lose in his next primary,” the minority leader said.

U.S. Senate Catch-41 specifies that sane minority Senators could transcend party loyalty if a bill proposed by the majority would be the best solution to a problem facing the nation. Any sane minority Senator could vote yes. All that Senator needs to do is ask. As soon as the Senator asks, he would be deemed insane, since voting yes would ruin his chances in the next party primary. If that Senator votes no, he could be crazy not to support the best solution for the country, but only the minority leader could determine if a minority Senator was insane. If the Senator asks the minority leader if he could vote yes, it proves the Senator is insane, and so the party could not possibly let him vote yes.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-41,” Senator Yossarian observed.

“It’s the best there is,” the minority leader agreed.

. . .

 

What we have is a legislative body that has outlived its original function holding sway over a republic with a rule it keeps alive to throttle itself. 

 

We should get rid of the Senate.

 

 

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False

Submitted by Mike5000 on Fri, 03/05/2010 - 7:34pm.

There were not 112 Rethug filibusters in the 2007-2008 session of Congress.

There may well have been 112 occasions on which the Dimocraps preemptively surrendered when some Rethug was heard to mutter the word "filibuster" but there were definitely not 112 Rethug filibusters.

"In the 2007-08 session of Congress, there were 112 cloture votes and some have used this number to argue an increase in the number of filibusters occurring in recent times. However, the Senate leadership has increasingly utilized cloture as a routine tool to manage the flow of business, even in the absence of any apparent filibuster. For these reasons, the presence or absence of cloture attempts cannot be taken as a reliable guide to the presence or absence of a filibuster."  [Wikipedia]

Well, waddya know!  That whole 112 filibuster story was just another DLC attempt to lie to Progressives.

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Yep.

Submitted by thepuffin on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 10:25am.

Democrats are there to give the appearance--for the myopic media-flummoxed masses--of resistance.  They always have an excuse, and the excuse simply changes, and the trillions keep flowing away from the people and to the elite.

The filibuster "issue"--like Britney Spears shaving her head or the death of the King of Pop--it's a distraction.  Only a general strike, where everyone refuses to play until those in power step down or act in the public interest will work.

Sorry to post a negative comment, but this popular misconception--that the current structure need only be tweaked to function--is naive in the extreme, to the point of actual danger.

 

The overall transfer of wealth continues, unabated, under Obomba.

 

This is the basic, unchanging fact.  The Democtratic Party ceased to care about people in any meaningful way when Clinton enacted NAFTA and eliminated "welfare as we know it."

 

The corporatacracy, like that in the original Rollerball film, is here.

 

They won't leave, regardless of what happens with the GD filibuster.  Not even if we ask nice.  And with truckloads of money direct from the corporate coffers now as legal as milk, we won't be voting anyone out, either.  ANYONE elected in the near term will be a corporate toady.  The jaws of the trap have sprung, and we'll likely have to chew off our own leg to escape with our republic.

 

 

 

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You are correct, sir

Submitted by huacon on Sat, 03/06/2010 - 7:46am.

A failed cloture vote does not a filibuster make.  The chichen s*$t senate has not demanded that the filibusters be conducted in public.  I understand the whole argument that forcing filibusters delays the work of the senate, but what exactly are they doing?  Exposing the republican delay tactics to the public and speaking regularly about the obstructionism will allow the Dem leadership to use it as a bludgeoning tool.  Harry Reid is a failed leader.  We need a principled leader, someone like Paul Wellstone (RIP), to take the lead in the senate.

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