consider contacting your _Senator_
Dec. 16th, 2010 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutIt looks like the modify-the-filibuster team is gaining some momentum and has an extremely outside chance at getting the Senate rules changed on January 5 at the opening of the new Congress.
If you've been wondering why health care took so long to pass (and became so compromised in the process), and we never got anywhere near cap and trade and other important legislation (and, for that matter, why the START treaty hasn't been signed yet), it's because the Senate, like any other organized group of people has rules. Those rules are game-able, and they have been aggressively gamed for the last couple years.
But rules can be changed, and there has been a group of people pushing to change the number of participants required to filibuster something, and possibly change exactly what is involved in executing a filibuster and (hopefully) getting rid of secret holds (or maybe just making them not so secret). This has been done before, and the current idea is to have a vote at the open of the new Congress on Senate rules, which would involve a simple majority.
I would encourage anyone who has been watching the sausage making and finding it particularly obscene to contact their Senators and ask them to participate in this rule change on January 5. It's one thing to really disagree with and hate something that is being legislated, and stand up for eight hours (or more) and complain about it in detail with slides or props or whatever. But that's not what's involved in a filibuster any more, and It Is Just Wrong to filibuster the procedural votes leading up to something _that you're going to vote in favor of when it happens anyway_. We've been seeing a lot of that kind of heel dragging and it's just lame.
If you've been wondering why health care took so long to pass (and became so compromised in the process), and we never got anywhere near cap and trade and other important legislation (and, for that matter, why the START treaty hasn't been signed yet), it's because the Senate, like any other organized group of people has rules. Those rules are game-able, and they have been aggressively gamed for the last couple years.
But rules can be changed, and there has been a group of people pushing to change the number of participants required to filibuster something, and possibly change exactly what is involved in executing a filibuster and (hopefully) getting rid of secret holds (or maybe just making them not so secret). This has been done before, and the current idea is to have a vote at the open of the new Congress on Senate rules, which would involve a simple majority.
I would encourage anyone who has been watching the sausage making and finding it particularly obscene to contact their Senators and ask them to participate in this rule change on January 5. It's one thing to really disagree with and hate something that is being legislated, and stand up for eight hours (or more) and complain about it in detail with slides or props or whatever. But that's not what's involved in a filibuster any more, and It Is Just Wrong to filibuster the procedural votes leading up to something _that you're going to vote in favor of when it happens anyway_. We've been seeing a lot of that kind of heel dragging and it's just lame.