Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Time for a Real Filibuster

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans an all-night session to highlight Republican intransigence on allowing Iraq war measures to come to a vote. And about time, too! It's bad enough that the filibuster has become such a routine mechanism that basically nothing can get through the Senate without a 60-vote supermajority. Even worse is the practice of allowing the filibustering minority to keep bankers' hours.

If the Republicans want to filibuster the Democrats' proposals to bring our troops home from Iraq, they have they power under the rules, but let's make them really do it. Let's see them on their feet all night, in good, old-fashioned, real filibuster form. Maybe holding their feet to the floor long enough will inspire a little compromise on actually bringing matters to a vote.

3 comments:

MJ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MJ said...

I've been wondering -- can a filibuster fail if too many of the filibustering group fall asleep or go home or something? (I assume the mechanism would be that the non-filibustering group (Democrats, here) hold a vote and the sleeping/absent Republicans get counted as abstentions. Of course, sleeping senators would have staffers to wake them up/vote for them, but hey, maybe they'd be asleep too.)

Jon Siegel said...

Yes, but see the new post