When Harry Reid made a motion to proceed to the Default Prevention Act of 2013 this afternoon, he got the support of 54 senators out of the 98 who voted. For procedural reasons, Sen. Reid changed his vote to ‘nay’ so that he could preserve the right to introduce the motion again. Here’s how the New York Times reported it:
As the House met to vote on yet another proposal that would go nowhere in the Senate, Mr. Reid called a vote to begin debate on a Democratic proposal that would extend the debt ceiling through the end of 2014 with no strings attached. No Senate Republicans voted yes, and the measure failed to reach the 60-vote threshold it needed.
The reporting is correct. In order for the motion to pass, it needed not a majority of fifty-one but a supermajority of sixty. There’s nothing unusual about this, unfortunately. Very little can pass through the Senate these days without overcoming a filibuster. A majority of the Senate voted to begin debate on clean debt ceiling extension, but a minority blocked that debate from happening.
It used to be that we only had to endure filibusters on the rarest of occasions and over the most divisive issues. Despite Republican lawmakers getting themselves worked up into a froth over ObamaCare and the debt, I don’t think defunding the health care bill and paying our bills rise to same the level of contentiousness with the public as, say, Jim Crow.
This is just a reminder that if the filibuster hadn’t become the new normal, we probably could have ended this standoff today.
It’s really the equivalent of sitting down to play poker with Senate Republicans and just giving them a matching pair of face cards at the start of every hand. There are times you might win the hand. But those occasions will be rare.
That is the self imposed game that Senate Democrats have been playing now, for years.
So do we blame feckless Dems who refused to change the rules, or the “moderate” Repulicans who continue with Ted Cruz? The next time I see Susan Collins, Bob Corker, or John McCain blaming Ted Cruz they should be asked why their votes look no differently. Time and time again. For the sake of unity in thiis most momentus occasion I will refrain from blaming the Democrats for refusing to change the rules. As we’ve seen in the House where Boehner changed the rules, rules are for fucking suckers.
Go unity!
If you’re going to violate the rules to save the country, it’s better to wait until you REALLY need to save the country. You’ll get NO credit for preventing a problem in advance.
Once the global economy is collapsing in flames, if the GOP keep stalling THEN you’re totally justified in holding a gun to Boner and beating up on BoxTurtleBen with a walking-stick.
Let’s just hope that the Big Money Boyez gets through to enough TeaTards to tell them that they are about to have a megaton of shit land on them from orbit unless they wise up PDQ
I agree that until Republicans have proven it is necessary, the administration should not even hint they are going to resort to extraordinary measures to continue paying the country’s bills if the debt ceiling is not raised.
On the other hand, the Senate Democrats should have overturned the filibuster when they had the chance. We’d be in a better position now if they had, and it should not come at all as a surprise that Republicans would use the filibuster in this manner.
Bumped, but I DO blame the democrats for not changing the filibuster rules when they had the chance.
see my post downstream.
If it comes down to preserving the filibuster and preserving the world economy, which way will the “traditionalist” Democrats vote?
I can’t think of a better thing to nuke the filibuster over than moving a debt ceiling repeal or increase through the Senate.
This time I have to say that Dems and Reps are equally to blame. The Reps because of their blind loyalty to the Tea Party over the country and the Dems because of their blind loyalty to tradition over the country.
Bullshit.
That’s like saying “the dems are equally to blame, because they decided not to go all Rambo on the GOP”
Good.
There are two acceptable ways out of this.
1. We need to hit the debt ceiling long enough for Republicans to be shown as the anti-American seditionists that they are.
We need Obama to immediately cite the 14th Amendment, order the Treasury to pay all debts, and then let the House Republicans finally end their reign by Impeaching Obama and losing the House in 2014. It sets up 2016 as the end of the Reagan era.
2. Republicans totally capitulate and pass a clean CR and raise the debt limit, causing much infighting and the possible likelihood that the Democrats can pick off enough seats to retake the House and gain in the Senate, again, setting up 2016 as the beginning of the end of the Reagan era.
Anything less, such as making any type of concession on the CR or debt ceiling, is another example of the Democrats snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Either you’re serious about ending the Reagan era, or you’re OK with simply maintaining the status quo of increasing wealth inequality and the destruction of the middle class.
Obama should have let this happen back in 2011. He needs to let it happen now. We don’t get to have a progressive party with teeth in the United States until the Republican party is essentially destroyed and left to regional status as a political party.
Unfortunately, many prominent Democrats LIKE the Reagan Era.
If you want to end the Reagan Era, Obama refusing to negotiate the debt ceiling increase in 2011 would have been an insanely risky method to gain that result. Obama needed to be re-elected, and the chaos of a financial collapse would have made an Obama second term unlikely.
I believe the Republicans would have been more willing to push the dispute into a full default back then. Republican Congressional leadership had more incentive to wreck the economy in 2011 than they do now. Of course, it’s a sickening comment on today’s GOP that we must even consider such questions.
So the Republican lead House has refused to pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling, not even one with ridiculous demands attached to it. It sounds like Boehner is leaving it up to the Senate. And it looks like the Senate Republicans are threatening to filibuster any bills that don’t include some sort of ransom? So what happens next?
The problem is democrats in congress refused to change filibuster rules when they had the opportunity do so.
WHY, I wonder?
the current rule allows the GOP arseholes in congress to merely suggest they will filibuster– they don’t have to actually show up to do it. smarmy Cruz actually did show up, obviously for the theater effect and media coverage it got him.
since the dems didn’t change the rules, I have to conclude they want it this way, because they want to be able to threat filibuster without actually doing it.
the problem here is dems want to pass progressive legislation (or do they not, actually) and the repugs can stop it with zero effort.
There are Democrats and Democrats. Some are very protective of the arcane rules they have spent time and effort learning just to have a procedural edge of Senators who haven’t taken that time and effort. Others see the filibuster as a check against majority complete domination should Republicans come to power.
They want different things, and few had the imagination that their Republican colleagues were this crazy. It’s the cognitive dissonance of dealing with someone every day and being in the situation of being forced to behave with decorum.
The problem here is not the Democratic majority in the Senate, but the Republican wingnut majority in the House.
There is hope that even traditionalist Democrats will value the country more than the filibuster.
I get it, but the excuse we have weak democrats in office wore thin long ago.
I want to know why they did not change the rules given the fact they did so to allow a filibuster without actually standing there and doing it. if they changed the rules once, they can do it again.