The Senate filibuster is anti-democratic, requiring 60 votes to move bills forward, and allowing a minority to stop nearly all legislation. It's been used for decades to derail civil rights legislation, until the last decade or so when it's use has been expanded to stop nearly everything Democrats have tried to do. It needs to go, and doing so is easy if the 50 Senate Democrats just vote to eliminate it.
Unfortunately for this issue, we have Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate, both of whom have spoken out in favor of kneecapping Democrats. Here's Senator Sinema.
"When you have a place that's broken and not working, and many would say that's the Senate today, I don't think the solution is to erode the rules," she said in an interview after two constituent events in Phoenix. "I think the solution is for senators to change their behavior and begin to work together, which is what the country wants us to do."
Seriously, WTF? The reason the Senate is broken IS THE FILIBUSTER, not some stupid antiquated notion of bipartisanship. Republicans have been demonizing Democrats for decades now and refused to work with Democrats since President Obama was elected. The idea that suddenly Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz are going to change their behavior and work with Democrats is insane. For the past year, we've been dealing with a pandemic that's killed over 500,000 Americans, and an economic recession, and not one fucking Republican voted for the Biden economic and pandemic response legislation, which passed with ONLY Democratic votes. And it's almost a certainty that Republicans won't be on board for the desperately needed infrastructure bill either.
The Senate's job is "to craft bipartisan solutions to solve the challenges we face in our country," she said. Asked how she thought both parties could come together, given how polarized the country has become, especially over elections, she responded: "I actually think I've got a pretty good track record."
No. The Senate's job is to HELP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE and you can't help them if you can't pass legislation. "I actually think I've got a pretty good track record?" That means nothing if the other side won't work with you to pass legislation. Are you paying attention at all? That's not a rhetorical question.
So far this session, the House has passed some excellent legislation, including voting safeguards, an end to gerrymandering, LGBTQ protections, and a minimum wage increase, all of which are very popular with Americans. We could have all of these nice things if Manchin and Sinema would just get the hell on board with the American people and stop enabling the seditionist party.
Eliminate the god-damned filibuster now.
4 comments:
What exactly is a "Filibuster" ?.
In case this is a serious question, the filibuster is a parliamentary procedure whereby a single Senator can object to a Bill, which then triggers a requirement that 60 senators have to vote in favor to consider the Bill. This allows the minority party to kill legislation, even if a majority (up to 59 Senators) support that Bill.
Cheers for taking the time to write that explanation my old mate, but i`m still none-the-wiser because it seems so ludicrously and unbelievably complicated, almost as though it was specifically set-up to be as confusing and perplexing for the populous as possible ! ! !.
It's set-up to kill legislation, specifically and historically, civil rights legislation. Now the Republicans use it to stop all legislation.
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