TPMDC Donald A. Ritchie
Cloture
The Rise Of Cloture: How GOP Filibuster Threats Have Changed The Senate
Ben Frumin and Jason Reif | January 27, 2010, 12:51PM
While Republicans spent the last several months threatening to filibuster the Democrats' health care reform bill in the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scrambled to secure 60 votes -- only to have the whole fragile arrangement blow up when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts senate election last week -- we kept hearing that the relatively recent rise in filibuster threats was a bipartisan phenomenon. Both parties are guilty of this when they're in the minority, we heard.
It's true that there has been a decades-long uptick in the use of cloture filings -- often to overcome filibuster threats -- by whichever party is in the majority, but the best measurement of that trend shows an explosion since Republicans were consigned to minority status after the 2006 election.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (35) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Topics: Cloture, Donald A. Ritchie, Filibuster, Norm Ornstein, Sarah Binder
Filibuster
Filibuster 2.0: How 41 Senators Control The Country Without Actually Filibustering
Ben Frumin | January 25, 2010, 2:40PM
Still from "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" (1939)
When Republican Scott Brown won the special election for Ted Kennedy's old senate seat last week, the GOP rejoiced and Democrats fretted about the legislative implications of losing their filibuster-proof, 60-seat supermajority. With their advantage whittled to 59-41 -- still a huge advantage, at least in the context of history -- Democrats wondered whether they could pass their signature health care reform package. Some media outlets even declared that Democrats had lost their majority (they hadn't).
Sure, in recent years, threats of filibuster have become more and more common -- and getting 60 votes for key pieces of legislation has seemed to become evermore necessary. But at the same time, we rarely actually see senators filibustering, at least not like Jimmy Stewart's character did in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Why?
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (158) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Topics: Donald A. Ritchie, Filibuster, Health Care
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