The Senate is getting ready to pass the permanent bailout authority. I’m not sure why they settled on such an innocuous name. Why not just say that the Senate is going to build a second Auschwitz death camp on the Potomac and fill it with regular Americans?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I have to say that I don’t really mind Feingold voting against the Wall Street Reform bill to protest it’s mildness, but I don’t appreciate him voting against cloture. I think that that reinforces the use of the filibuster by the minority and it’s a bullshit move.
The illusion is shattered. Senators used to use cloture to hide their votes, and those days are gone. The Senate has long had a 60 vote requirement for legislation being passed – it just used to be that Senators could negotiate their cloture vote while still voting against the legislation.
Liberal activists and conservative activists both have railed against this tactic for awhile and have long tried to educate voters that a vote against cloture was the same as a vote against the bill itself. It finally took in the last decade – a vote against cloture is a vote against the bill. And by the same token a vote for cloture is a vote for the bill. That’s always been true, the veil has just been pulled off and Senators can’t be coy about their voting records anymore.
Frankly this should make it easier to get rid of the cloture rule down the road and get the Senate back to a majority rule vote scheme. The more people know about this abuse the better the chances of getting it changed eventually.
I don’t expect it to be public now. I don’t expect all of it to be public ever. But I really hope that powerful Washington Democrats (mostly in the Senate, but also the House and White House) are working to set up a vote to eliminate or severely weaken the filibuster in January 2011. (Holds too.)
If I had to choose one vote to play hardball on, this is it. Vote with the party on the revised filibuster rule (I think it’s Rule 22), or lose everything: your committee chairmanship, your seniority, your nice, large office close to the Senate floor, your amendments to the budget, campaign help from the DSCC and DNC, all of it.
All things considered, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin have done amazingly well at mustering 60 votes for health care and financial reform. Can they muster 50 votes (plus Joe Biden as presiding officer) for this one?
Agree on all points and I’ve said as much myself. If you really believe the bill should not be a law then your best bet is cloture.
I think Feingold should have allowed passage on it, because the bill while being far FAR short of anything resembling victory is better than nothing–and let’s face it, the way wall street is acting these days it seems almost certain that there will be a second bubble sooner rather than later.
100% agree.
Not only is it a bullshit, chickenshit, obstructionist reinforcing tactic…but it made the bill weaker by doing so. Because he was too high on his horse Dems had to work harder to get Scott Brown’s vote. If they moved it any more to the left, Snowe/Collins would have been back in play.
No, he should have voted for cloture to avoid Brown being given another “win” the second it was apparent the bill rested on his shoulders. Feingold could have been the hero by holding off any more “compromises” and still voted against the final bill. And would have took out Brown at the knees while doing so – and Brown certainly needs to be taken down a notch or two. Instead he allowed Brown to make the bill worse, and made himself partly responsible for it’s additional shortcomings even if he voted against it.
It’s really quite remarkable that the GOP has hung that monicker on it, considering that the parties it’s specifically designed to benefit basically an industry that has its hand up its ass and works it like a puppet.
If, say, a Sanders-Sanchez FinReg bill were about to be signed, would they run against it and complain that the Democrats had just created a ‘Let The Big Banks Fail And Their Corpses Rot Unburied Authority’?
Judging from what I hear on Bloomberg, the banks really hate this bill. The Republicans can’t just step forward and say,”Even watered down and full of loopholes, our masters hate this bill.” So, they pretend it’s a giveaway to the banks and they are Shocked Shocked that the Democrats would do that.
It’s amazing how half truths have lives of their own. Truth be told, this is the bill that the Republicans created by holding their breath until they turned red.