Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) penned an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday calling for the Senate filibuster to be abolished.
Reid, who served as the Senate majority leader from 2007 to 2015, blamed the filibuster for allowing GOP senators to make the chamber an “unworkable legislative graveyard.”
“Republicans over the past decade — knowing their policies are unpopular and that obstruction benefits them politically — perfected and increased the gratuitous use of the filibuster,” he wrote. “Even routine Senate business is now subject to the filibuster and Republicans’ seeming obsession with gridlock and obstruction.”
Lamenting that the future of the country “is sacrificed at the altar of the filibuster,” the former senator called for the procedural rule to be abolished “in all its forms” and to allow a simple majority vote.
“If a Democratic president wants to tackle the most important issues facing our country, then he or she must have the ability to do so — and that means curtailing Republicans’ ability to stifle the will of the American people,” Reid wrote.
Reid famously abolished the filibuster in 2013 for most presidential nominations except Supreme Court nominations in an effort to stop Senate Republicans from obstructing the appointment of former President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees.
Then-Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) slammed the move as a “sad day in the history of the Senate” at the time.
Yep. For good or bad, liberalism — the majority rules.
Delay, the latency of the Senate, contributes to the growth of corruption. There’s plenty of time to lie and buy media for any purpose.
Witness Trump colluding with Russia.
You don’t necessarily need to get RID of the thing. Right now all a Senator has to do is raise a finger and say ‘I filibuster.’ What SHOULD happen is go back to the good ol’ days when Senators read from the phone book, pissed in wine bottles, slept in the cloakroom and shit in trash bags.
You bring THAT back and put it on television and the GOP (ten letter description that has the narcs on TPM clutching their pearls in horror) wouldn’t stand a chance.
Timing is everything.
(“Tie-MING…TIE-ming…tymun’…”)
#MaybeAtLeastWaitUntilDemsControlTheSenateAgain?
There’s no question Republicans have abused the filibuster -as they have any maneuver or procedure put in place by our forefathers to strengthen good governance in their unquenchable quest for power. The Senate was supposed to be the body to cool things down, to engage in deeper thinking than the rather impulsive nature of the House. But that has changed dramatically under McConnell - into a wall of obstruction where nothing meaningful gets done for the American people.
The dilemma in abolishing the filibuster is that there are more red states than blue, so Republicans have an unfair, but inherent advantage in the Senate.