Can't the Senate just pass all the bills the House has already passed for the next 2 years?

[jsamuel]

I mean, if we retain the Senate and do away with the filibuster, can't we just pass unmodified House bills through the senate with 50 votes plus Biden? There are hundreds of great bills just waiting to be taken up by the Senate. If they are unmodified, they don't need to go back through the House. (Important if we lose the house.) They go straight to Obama.

[emulatorloo]

1. I like it.

They are going to try to push a lot of it through the lame duck session. Durbin seems to think there are Repubs who will vote with them after the election, afraid to now because of Fox News.

[frazzled]

2. Just so you won't have to feign disappointment later ...

No one, even those pressing hardest for filibuster reform (Udall, Bennett, even Reid or Obama) are not proposing "doing away" with the filibuster. The proposals are to constrain and limit its use. There will still be filibusters.

So please, don't say that Obama told Jon Stewart we were going to eliminate the filibuster and then act all betrayed. He didn't.

[jsamuel]

3. it certainly depends on the level of constraint on the filibuster

but some of the proposals would eventually get down to a simple majority.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. I think the bill-roster resets with each new (2 year) congress.

I may be wrong, but that's my understanding. A bill has to be passed by both houses in the same Congress. (Each two years is a different congress, like "The 114th Congress")

[deaniac21]

6. That is correct.

[TheKentuckian]

7. Maybe true on that but that's not constitutional that I can recall.

but in any event, they'd have to pass the bills word for word as conference wouldn't work out and that would be nearly impossible. Even at 50+1 the votes would be very, very, very, very tough to come up with.

We still got Holy Joe, Typhoid Mary, Mutual of Omaha Ben, and many others to contend with.

[walldude]

5. You know this is the thing here

if the Republicans take some seats, and they will, it happens in every mid-term election, no matter who is in office, the world will not come to a fucking end. There is still a Democratic President and there will still be enough votes to keep any crazy Republican legislation from passing. All this hand wringing is a bunch of crap. We survived 4 years of total Republican control even though they started 2 wars and de-regulated us into the ground, we survived. And we'll survive this.