Recently in Congress Category

Professor Brad DeLong on his blog today included a link to the U.S. Senate reference page on cloture motions.

Looking at the chart will show you just how much things have changed as the filibuster has morphed from being a tool to ensure everyone has time to make all of their arguments in a debate into a weapon to obstruct debate and action.

Let's put it this way: 25.7 percent of all successful cloture motions in the history of the U.S. Senate have happened since the Democrats retook control of the Senate in 2007.

Yes, you read that right. More than one-quarter of all successful cloture votes in the history of our Republic have happened in just the past three years. And the 2000s have seen particular abuse of the system that is accelerating.

This is nothing less than an amendment of our system of government without public debate and without going through our Constitutional process.

For how much longer must we tolerate it?

James Fallows has a round-up of U.S. Senate filibuster commentary, including a note by a lawyer friend that sheds some light on what the framers of the Constitution might think of the 60-vote rule.

As Fallows' friend notes, one of the few defined responsibilities given to the Vice President is: "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided."

Of course, if 60-votes is the new requirement to do anything in the 100-member body, the Senate shall never be equally divided. The filibuster robs the Vice President of one of his or her few actual Constitutional responsibilities!

This Constitutional travesty is just one of many reasons the filibuster should be eliminated.

Paul Krugman correctly points out that even this imperfect health care bill probably would not have been possible without the radical conservatives in the Club for Growth forcing Sen. Arlen Specter to switch parties.

Nice work there.

The Washington Independent's David Weigel reports that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government are targeting the continued utilization of secret holds in the United States Senate.

Good. A hold is a bad enough practice. Those that dare use it should be forced to admit it publicly.

Ezra Klein discusses how different our present political power structure is from the intentions of the framers of our Constitution.

There was, of course, a reason why Congress and the legislative branch is outlined in Article I of the Constitution. While we have three co-equal branches, the legislative branch was to be the first among equals. Within the Congress, moreover, the House of Representatives was supposed to be more prominent than the Senate overall.

Of course, that is not the present situation, as Klein explains:

But that hierarchy has been tossed on its head. For all practical purposes, the House is less powerful than the modern Senate and Congress has taken a back seat to the president. The reasons for the preeminence of the president are complicated, but a big reason that the Senate has stepped to the forefront of modern politics is that it's less democratic than the House, and thus most attention focuses on whether it can pass legislation, and most compromises focus on helping it pass legislation. That's unavoidable given the filibuster's centrality to the system, but it's not a good state of affairs, and it is not how the Founders intended for things to go.

It is just one more reason for why we should work to eliminate the Senate filibuster.

The weekly Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll has a few results that should worry every Democrat less than a year from the mid-term elections.

QUESTION: In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?

The results were, to put it mildly, shocking:

Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting

Republican Voters: 81/14
Independent Voters: 65/23
DEMOCRATIC VOTERS: 56/40

We knew Republican voters were fired up. But look at those Democratic results: only 56 percent say they are definitely or probably voting in 2010, and 40 percent say they are not likely or definitely not voting.

Now, there is still a year to go, so there is still time to change some minds. But the President Obama, his administration, and Congressional Democratic leaders may want to spend as much time visibly trying to reignite Democratic voters' interest as they are trying to get Senator Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) vote.

TPMMuckraker's Justin Elliott updates the status of an investigation involving Democratic members of the Appropriations Committee, defense contractors, and the PMA Group, a lobbying group raided by the FBI earlier this year.

A federal criminal investigation has touched two House Dems, and another three, along with two Republicans, are under scrutiny by a pair of congressional ethics panels in matters related to the defunct lobbying firm, PMA Group.

The investigation appears to have two focal points, according to reports: that PMA may have funneled sham donations to members of Congress through so-called "straw donors" who would be reimbursed, and that there may have been a quid pro quo, exchanging defense earmarks for campaign donations.

Of all the factors that could cause the Democrats to lose major seats in 2010, I admit this one has me quite worried. Catching up with Elliott's post is well worth your time.

Ezra Klein finds a US News analysis that measures just how much greater the use of the filibuster is today. It's gone, according to this research by UCLA Professor Barbara Sinclair, from impacting eight percent of major legislation in the 1960s to over 70 percent today.

As Klein notes:

I can't emphasize this enough: Things are not as they have always been. The filibuster has transformed, and the Senate has followed suit, and it all happened accidentally, not with anyone debating the consequences and implications of adding a supermajority requirement to the American legislative process.

Now would be a good time to start considering whether we want this anti-democratic blight on our Republic to continue.

Bruce Bartlett has written another must-read column in Forbes about House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey (D-Wisc.)'s demand that any expansion of the war in Afghanistan be paid through a tax increase and not by adding to the national debt.

Bartlett reminds us that the Bush Administration became the first in U.S. history not to ask its citizens to sacrifice to aid in a war effort. Instead, we were told to go shopping and to enjoy tax cuts that, like the wars, were funded through large increases in the national debt.

The same people who cheered on these policies have returned the balanced budget religion now that a Democrat is in the White House. Yes, it only matters when a Democrat is president. How convenient.

Wars that cannot be supported through the sacrifice of a large proportion of the American people, and not just the few families of people who volunteer for our armed forced, should not be fought. As Bartlett writes:

"If Americans aren't willing to follow John F. Kennedy and "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" to fight a war, then we shouldn't be fighting it."

Indeed. And it is well past time for the Republican supporters of these wars to be called out on their budget deficit hypocrisy. If these wars must be fought, we should pay for them -- not future generations.

Let's see them vote on this and watch these fiscal responsibility converts conveniently lose their newly found religion.

Ezra Klein has posted a memo sent to President Johnson in 1964, one which highlights just how much the use of the filibuster has changed since then.

As Klein notes, the author of the memo to LBJ could not write today that the then-controversial Medicare legislation should pass 55-45--because now the filibuster would be used to stop the vote from ever happening. As Klein explains:

The filibuster of yesteryear, in other words, was not a supermajority requirement. It was closer to a tantrum. That's not to say it was never used to prevent a vote: Southerners did exactly that to block the Civil Rights Act, and Johnson was forced to find 67 votes to break their effort. But such measures were left for extraordinary moments, not built into the everyday workings of the body. The use of the filibuster has changed, and with it, so too has the Senate. If that transformation is a good thing, then the practice's supporters can make their argument. But the radicals aren't the ones who want to undo stealth rewriting of the legislative process. It's those who want to ignore it.

There are enough checks-and-balances (including the small-state bias of the Senate) in our government system now. Our Republic does not need this supermajority requirement as a matter of routine business.

It is time for the filibuster to be eliminated.

Mark Schmitt points with justification at former Senator Robert Dole and the ideological realignment of our two major political parties..

And, yes, I still think it is well past time for us to eliminate the filibuster--even if its elimination has to be set at some future date (perhaps six years from now) so no one knows for sure who will have the majority then.

Funny how a Democratic President can remind all Members of Congress that they hold the power of the purse and do not have to accept an out-of-control executive branch. As CQ Politics David Nather reports after the House voted 429-2 to negate an Obama Administration signing statement:

Cut off the money? Congress can do that? Well, yes, that's one of the most basic oversight tools Congress has. It's just odd that no one remembered that during the years when President George W. Bush was burying the Hill in signing statements, and making far more sweeping claims of executive power than Obama has.

Ah, yes, this highlights another problem. Yes, it is hypocritical for Congressional Republicans to suddenly remember they have an oversight role in our Constitutional Republic. (Does one get a headache after such a sudden revelation?) But, for me, the bigger problem lies with the Obama Administration continuing to issue signing statements after all we experienced over the past eight years.

Better choices, please.

A memo to those who have been, um, aggressive (that's a nice way of putting it) in expressing their frustration about my decision to support State Senator Mark DeSaulnier in the 10th Congressional District special election race despite the potential succession of special elections which could follow: a vacancy in the Lt. Governor's office also can have serious consequences on state issues.

The Nation's Chris Hayes is right to tweet that one could run this Hill headline "every single day."

FiveThiryEight's Nate Silver runs the numbers as he tries to project from where 60 votes for the climate legislation may come in the United States Senate.