Harry Reid: The Filibuster Is Suffocating the Will of the American People

[Zorro]

I am not an expert on all of government, but I do know something about the United States Senate. As the former majority leader, I know how tough it is to get anything through the chamber, which was designed to serve as the slower, more deliberative body of the United States Congress.

But what is happening today is a far cry from what the framers intended. They created the Senate as a majority-rule body, where both sides could have their say at length — but at the end of the day, bills would pass or fail on a simple majority vote. In their vision, debate was supposed to inform and enrich the process, not be exploited as a mechanism to grind it to a halt.

The Senate today, after years of abusing an arcane procedural rule known as the filibuster, has become an unworkable legislative graveyard. Not part of the framers’ original vision, the modern filibuster was created in 1917. The recent use of the filibuster — an attempt by a minority of lawmakers to delay or block a vote on a bill or confirmation — has exploited this rule, forcing virtually all Senate business to require 60 of the 100 senators’ votes to proceed. This means a simple majority is not enough to advance even the most bipartisan legislation.

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. Even routine Senate business is now subject to the filibuster and Republicans’ seeming obsession with gridlock and obstruction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/opinion/harry-reid-filibuster.html

[democratisphere]

1. The will of most people no longer matters.

The will of the wealthiest and corporations does.

[philf99]

2. Our founding fathers

Never designed the United States Senate to do the will of the people.

That is why California has the same representation as Wyoming in the Senate.

Although I understand the feeling, Harry Reid is wrong.

In the hands of the wrong people it could be the end of our democracy.

[sharedvalues]

4. No. Wyoming, Montana, 2 Dakotas were CREATED to pack the Senate

Back around 1890, those Western states were created by Republicans to pack the Senate.

If Republicans agree to merge Montana and Wyoming and North and South Dakota, THEN we can talk about keeping the filibuster. Until then, the structure of the Senate deeply disenfranchises urban, Democratic, young, smart, and creative and tech industry voters.

Make DC a state. Give PR the option. Abolish the filibuster. All key for any hope of getting anything Dem done in the Senate ever. Either we do these things or Republicans will rule us for decades.

[sharedvalues]

5. "Origin of these Western states was nakedly political"

https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/07/wyoming-delaware-the-dakotas-how-the-states-nobody-lives-in-got-to-elect-all-those-senators.amp

But it’s too late to argue about this. The appetite for new state creation is sated, and the decisions of 19th-century politicians to vastly overcount the West are going to go unchallenged. It’s a little strange, when you think on it, because the origins of some of these states were nakedly political.

- How did Nevada become a state in 1864, when its population was far below the standard for statehood? Republicans wanted it in the union in time to vote for Lincoln, submitting its constitution two weeks before the election. (Only 16,420 voters cast ballots that year.)

- Why are there “North” and “South” Dakotas? Because the 1889 act that split up the Dakota territory was passed by Republicans who wanted two more senators in an area of the country that broke their way.

[sharedvalues]

6. Ps welcome to DU philf99!

[sharedvalues]

3. Yes it is. K&R. Make DC a state!!!