Any Democrat that backs this outlandish proposal needs to be defeated on November 2nd 2010, in November 2012, or November 2014 which ever date they are up for re-election. This group of 'dishonest' Democrats will lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. They could care less what their constituents in their states are saying as long as they can pass what 'they' deem is important to their constituents. They won't listen to phone calls, Town Halls, emails, faxes, or office meetings as they have the Obama agenda they are shoving down every one's throats and nothing else matters.
The idea that they want to negate the voices of the 60 million people who did not vote for Obama and the Democrats is so wrong that it defies belief.
To add to this we have a Republican Governor Charlie Crist in Florida who is throwing a temper tantrum that he is not winning the Florida GOP primary for US Senate who now wants to go Independent to run and make that a much harder seat to keep in Florida. We will keep it, but Crist belongs in the Democrat Party with his arrogance and non-regard for the State of Florida and the people who voted him as a Republican the privilege of becoming their Governor. Just like a Democrat he turns his back on the people of Florida for his own person wishes. With his going Independent, he must support the rules change like this or he wouldn't be running. He would be supporting Marco Rubio.
This may be the most important issue today in the Senate as the Obama Democrats attempt to permanently change the rules. When Republicans take back the Senate and we will, watch the Democrats squeal it is not fair if this is passed. That's how they work -- only what is good for them counts not what is good for the Country. That wasn't always the way in the Senate when we had honorable people serving. There is nothing honorable about most of today's Democrats in the Senate as they have demonstrated time and time again.
Getting more obvious by the day that Obama and his lapdog Democrat leadership have no regard for the Constitution. Obama unfortunately we can understand because he wasn't raised red, white, and blue American but Harry Reid? Obama was mentored by a Communist during his formative years and it shows. His friends have always been radicals and probably why no one at Columbia even remembers him.
This is why you vet a candidate for any office which was something the MSM did not do in the last Presidential election. Why because they would have been called racist like the rest of us that didn't support Obama because of his agenda, his lack of experience, and his associates? That race card is still getting played today, but it is not working like they want it to work. Most of us don't care what they call us today because we will continue to oppose the socialist agenda of Obama and his Democrat lapdogs in Congress.
Please call your Senators and tell them to oppose this tactic to overturn what has stood for over 200 years. There was a reason the Founding Fathers made two unequal Houses and now the Obama Democrats want to destroy that. Senator Thune is giving the facts of what the Obama Democrats are trying to do. It is now time for all of us to support him and the Republicans in the Senate to make sure this does not happen.
April 21, 2010
Guaranteeing All American Voices are Heard
Not content with historically large margins and control of all three elected branches of
government, some members of the majority party now propose to gut the right to
extended debate. This right has long been the hallmark of minority power in the Senateand one that ensures bipartisan legislation that commands the wide support of the American people.
The Founders deliberately designed a system of checks and balances, one in whichBackground
minority voices play a prominent role in the political process. One aspect of this system is the unique nature of the United States Senate.
Two key features of Senate Rules are the right to amendment and the right to extended debate. Those rules help promote bipartisan and mainstream legislation, while tempering the potential excesses of one-party rule.
Frustrated by the Senate’s rules, the current majority repeatedly has used procedural tactics to limit the ability of the minority party to offer amendments or meaningfully participate in legislation. In fact, the current Majority Leader has used procedural tactics to block the minority from offering amendments more often than any Majority Leader in history.
Claims that the current minority is engaged in unprecedented obstruction cannot be
substantiated. The number of times cloture is filed or invoked is less demonstrative of obstruction than of an impatient majority bent on short-circuiting debate and eschewing bipartisan legislative solutions.
Several Senate Democrats, with apparent support from their leadership, have begun to push for a fundamental change in Senate rules. If successful, they would turn the Senate into a smaller House of Representatives, a body in which the majority party has almost limitless power.
These proposals are both unwise and lacking in historical perspective. When
Republicans gained a majority in the Senate in 1995, they voted to defend the rights of the minority party.
In parliamentary systems, like that in Great Britain, the barest of majorities can control the
government with an iron fist. Not so in the United States, where the Framers designed a system
of checks and balances to guard against the tendency of temporary majorities to overreach and
do great harm to the Republic. They accomplished this by limiting federal power and dividing
that power between the three branches—Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.
Not content with these moderating structural designs, however, they went further. The Framers divided the Congress into two bodies—House and Senate—and built a Senate with features that
guaranteed that body would be less susceptible to temporary swings in public opinion: senators
would hold six-year terms, would represent an entire state rather than a single district, and would be chosen by the state legislatures (until the 17th Amendment, after which they were elected directly by the states’ citizens).
Some of today's Senate Democrats, frustrated that a majority as large as theirs still faces some
limits to its power, have begun suggesting that the rules of the Senate be changed to diminish the power of the minority and expand the powers of the current, and future, majorities. This hasty— and dangerous—proposal should be resisted, and rejected, by Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.
Senate Rules Give Voice to the Minority
In the 2008 presidential contest, 52.9 percent of Americans voted for the Democratic candidate,
while a substantial minority of 45.6 percent—almost 60 million citizens—voted for the
Republican candidate.1 The presidency, of course, is a winner-takes-all contest under the
Electoral College and Barack Obama, the Democrats’ nominee, was duly elected. The voters
also sent substantial majorities of Democrats to Congress, both in the House and the Senate.
The House of Representatives operates under bare majoritarian rules. If America were governed by only the White House and the House of Representatives, the President and his partisan allies could enact any law they fancied, with little debate. The 60 million people who preferred another course would have no choice but to sit on the sidelines, waiting patiently until the next election.
As the Founders knew, however, our country works best when all Americans participate in
guiding the ship of state. For this reason, they designed a Senate in which each state, regardless
of population, gets equal representation, offering substantial protection for minority rights.
Moreover, by giving the Senators features like six-year terms, the Framers wanted to limit the
influence of temporary swings in public sentiment, ensuring that a broad array of Americans
support legislation. The result is that the most extreme proposals of a momentary majority can
be thwarted, or moderated. Because of the Senate, what becomes law is more likely to represent a mainstream consensus.
A legendary story has it that Thomas Jefferson once asked George Washington why the Framers created a second legislative body. Washington is said to have responded by asking 1“Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” “To cool it,” responded Jefferson. “Even so,” said Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”2 Whatever the historical accuracy of this story, it has a core of truth to it. Indeed, in the words of James Madison, one of the primary authors of the Constitution: “The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom” than the House of
Representatives.3 The Senate has always served as a moderating force in our national politics.
A recent example of how the Senate can work to improve legislation is provided by the 2007
Energy Bill, H.R. 6. The bill passed by the House contained massive tax increases and onerous
federal mandates. Although the House-backed version commanded majority support in the
Senate, a determined minority opposed the bill by denying cloture and insisting on extended
debate.4 Later, after the majority moderated the bill to remove the taxes and some of the
mandates, the legislation was reconsidered and passed the Senate by a large margin, with only
eight Senators voting against it.5
The Senate performs its unique function in American politics because it follows markedly
different practices and procedures than those of the House of Representatives. In the House, the
majority holds the power to set the rules for debate and can even decide what, if any,
amendments will be considered. The majority in the House also has the power to cut off debate
at any time. By contrast, the Senate has traditionally operated under the principles of unlimited
debate and a free amendment process. Many procedural steps in the Senate effectively require
“unanimous consent,” that is, all members of the Senate must agree to proceed. An individual
Senator often has considerable power to lodge objections and have his or her say. In short, the
rules compel senators to consult each other and achieve consensus.
One-Party Rule in the 111th Congress
Congressional Democrats currently have a 76-vote majority in the House of Representatives and, until recently, had 60 seats in the Senate. These significant majorities are far greater than any enjoyed by Republicans in more than 80 years. The solid majority control of the House has already allowed for rapid passage of a wish list of Democratic priorities, including a government takeover of health care, a job killing “cap and trade” bill, and other measures.
Under the rules of the Senate, majority leadership does not have the same ability to jam bills
through without any input from the minority. That has not stopped the current Senate majority, however, from using every procedural tool at its disposal to limit, and even shut down, minority
debate and input into legislation. These maneuvers include: bypassing the committee process;
blocking floor amendments proposed by the minority; and precipitously ending debate, as well as the use of the fast-track budget reconciliation process to pass healthcare legislation.
_____
1 http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2008/2008presgeresults.pdf
2 Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The United States Senate: a Bicameral Perspective (1982), at 5.
3 James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, June 7.
4 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00
213
5 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00
430
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