Reid: Reconsiliation fix for HCR passed in 60 days.

[SirNitram]

Link

Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its healthcare bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster.

"I've had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi," Reid said during an appearance Friday evening on "Face to Face with Jon Ralston" in Nevada. "And we're really trying to move forward on this."

The majority leader said that while Democrats have a number of options, they would likely use the budget reconciliation process to pass a series of fixes to the first healthcare bill passed by the Senate in November. These changes are needed to secure votes for passage of that original Senate bill in the House.

"We'll do a relatively small bill to take care of what we've already done," Reid said, affirming that Democrats would use the reconciliation process. "We're going to have that done in the next 60 days."

The move would allow Democrats to essentially go it alone on health reform, especially after losing their filibuter-proof majority in the Senate after Sen. Scott Brown's (R) special election victory in Massachusetts.

Republicans have protested the maneuver as a hyperpartisan tactic to ram through a health bill, and have said that plans to use the reconciliation process make moot a bipartisan summit at the White House this week, where both GOP and Democratic leaders are supposed to present their ideas on healthcare.

Reid said that the final Democratic bill is likely to be unveiled Monday night.

Expect delays; there are some ways to extend the 30 hour limit on Reconciliation. But it's more than we had.

[Darth Wong]

You know, I am so sick of hearing about American governmental procedure that I just tune out whenever I hear anyone talking about it. Your stupid-shit government system is a fucking abortion, almost as if it was tailor-made for obstructionism. And this longstanding mythology about the "wisdom of gridlock" is so widespread that at every turn, the government has revised its rules to make it more obstructionist. The entire US governmental system is geared toward the protection of the status quo.

Do Americans find it as tiresome as I do? It seems like you're becoming a nation of procedure wonks.

[Steve]

Abuse of minor procedural rules for obstructionist behavior has become a time-honored tactic unfortunately.

[Havok]

You know, I am so sick of hearing about American governmental procedure that I just tune out whenever I hear anyone talking about it. Your stupid-shit government system is a fucking abortion, almost as if it was tailor-made for obstructionism. And this longstanding mythology about the "wisdom of gridlock" is so widespread that at every turn, the government has revised its rules to make it more obstructionist. The entire US governmental system is geared toward the protection of the status quo.

Do Americans find it as tiresome as I do? It seems like you're becoming a nation of procedure wonks.

Those that actually understand it, and are not part of the problem, do. Unfortunately, most of the population of the country is too busy watching 'reality' shows to know, let alone care, about things like this.

[eion]

You know, I am so sick of hearing about American governmental procedure that I just tune out whenever I hear anyone talking about it. Your stupid-shit government system is a fucking abortion, almost as if it was tailor-made for obstructionism. And this longstanding mythology about the "wisdom of gridlock" is so widespread that at every turn, the government has revised its rules to make it more obstructionist. The entire US governmental system is geared toward the protection of the status quo.

Not exactly tailor-made; it's just evolved into it. The Filibuster isn't in the constitution. Aaron Burr thought the ability to "Move the previous question" was redundant in the Senate, and so the rule was changed in 1806, which opened the technical possibility of a filibuster. No one actually used it until 1841.

In 1917, the procedure of cloture was adopted that allowed the Senate to end debate by consent of 2/3rds of the Senate, later reduced to 3/5ths in 1975 when the filibuster was seen as being abused by, does this sound familiar, Republicans.

Never before the 2006 Senate had anyone ever employed the filibuster as standing procedure. The Republicans literally filibuster everything in the Senate at the moment. It's disgusting, and this announcement is hopefully a sign that the Democrats are going to do what they should have done at the start, ignore them and pass good legislation until the Republicans either ceased to be a legitimate party or opposition or until they started playing ball again.

Unfortunately, the current Senate has by choice bound itself to the rules of previous Senates, something they are under no obligation to do. The next Senate could rule that all members must wear pink cowboy hats and pasties, and nothing else, while on the Senate floor with a simple majority vote during the opening of the session, but instead they just ratify previous rules.

Do Americans find it as tiresome as I do? It seems like you're becoming a nation of procedure wonks.

Yes. I would love to strike the word filibuster from our national vocabulary. But it's a small price to pay for not asking the Queen's permission for every law passed.

[Phantasee]

Unfortunately, the current Senate has by choice bound itself to the rules of previous Senates, something they are under no obligation to do. The next Senate could rule that all members must wear pink cowboy hats and pasties, and nothing else, while on the Senate floor with a simple majority vote during the opening of the session, but instead they just ratify previous rules.

This sounds like a fucking awesome idea. C-SPAN viewership would either go through the roof, or crater as hard as those numbers possibly can.

Yes. I would love to strike the word filibuster from our national vocabulary. But it's a small price to pay for not asking the Queen's permission for every law passed.

And getting the President to sign things isn't the same thing? At least our Queen doesn't really have the power of veto anymore, practically speaking, whereas the US still has people talking about giving the President a line-item veto.

[Dragon Angel]

Do Americans find it as tiresome as I do? It seems like you're becoming a nation of procedure wonks.

Oh, hell yes. Even my father, who is right-wing and watches Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly religiously (but fortunately scorns Hannity), wishes that this system was much less one-sided in a lot of aspects. Some of the ideas of the founding fathers may have been understandable, back in the day when they did not want another King George to rule the Thirteen Colonies, but times change...and thus governments must evolve.

However, people are still unfortunately made to believe that if we had a semblance of change in government, then we will enter some kind of monkey dictatorship under another King George, Stalin, ...

[Darth Wong]

Yes. I would love to strike the word filibuster from our national vocabulary. But it's a small price to pay for not asking the Queen's permission for every law passed.

Rubber-stamp royal assent on laws is vastly superior to presidential veto, since A) it is far less likely to be used, and B) the Queen is not an elected figure and is therefore unassociated with any political party and has no need of personal grandstanding. Think about that.

As for filibuster, it sounds like the kind of rule that a bunch of pre-adolescent boys would invent for a clubhouse. The idea that you can actually control government policy by simply refusing to stop talking or taking a pee break is something that would seem utterly insane and ridiculous if you didn't take it for granted. It seems as childish and arbitrary as "jinxing" people for inadvertently saying the same thing simultaneously.

[eion]

Yes. I would love to strike the word filibuster from our national vocabulary. But it's a small price to pay for not asking the Queen's permission for every law passed.

And getting the President to sign things isn't the same thing? At least our Queen doesn't really have the power of veto anymore, practically speaking, whereas the US still has people talking about giving the President a line-item veto.

The President's veto may be overridden by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. And the Supreme Court ruled the line item veto unconstitutional, which means no law by congress can change that. I am unaware of any procedure that allows bypassing of Royal Assent. In the only case I am aware of, the withholding of royal assent by the Lt. Governor of Alberta in 1937 to two laws regarding regionalization of banks led to the laws being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada and by the Privy Council.

Just because she chooses not to utilize her power to withhold assent by tradition does not mean she lacks it.

[Darth Wong]

The President's veto may be overridden by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. And the Supreme Court ruled the line item veto unconstitutional, which means no law by congress can change that. I am unaware of any procedure that allows bypassing of Royal Assent. In the only case I am aware of, the withholding of royal assent by the Lt. Governor of Alberta in 1937 to two laws regarding regionalization of banks led to the laws being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada and by the Privy Council.

Just because she chooses not to utilize her power to withhold assent by tradition does not mean she lacks it.

Oh bullshit. If the Queen actually started acting like a dictator, we would simply revise our constitution to remove that power.

[eion]

Yes. I would love to strike the word filibuster from our national vocabulary. But it's a small price to pay for not asking the Queen's permission for every law passed.

Rubber-stamp royal assent on laws is vastly superior to presidential veto, since A) it is far less likely to be used, and B) the Queen is not an elected figure and is therefore unassociated with any political party and has no need of personal grandstanding. Think about that.

Turning the progress of your government over the personal whims of one person, elected by no one does not sound like a superior system; it is only benign thanks to the wisdom of the operator. It's like putting the nicest person in the world in charge of the entire world's nuclear missiles; she'll never use them, but it doesn't change the fact that she could blow up the world if she wanted to.
Again, a lesser monarch might abuse the prerogative and leave the commonwealth with its hands tied. At least the Presidential veto can be overridden.

As for filibuster, it sounds like the kind of rule that a bunch of pre-adolescent boys would invent for a clubhouse. The idea that you can actually control government policy by simply refusing to stop talking or taking a pee break is something that would seem utterly insane and ridiculous if you didn't take it for granted. It seems as childish and arbitrary as "jinxing" people for inadvertently saying the same thing simultaneously.

Welcome to American Political Science, where petulant little boys and girls who seek the approval of the driveling masses are put in charge of such fun topics as National Defense, Healthcare, and Civil Rights! Television is one of the worst things to happen to politics because all the ugly smart people can be beaten by anyone with a hairdryer and a self-help book on winning friends and influencing jackasses.

And we haven't even started talking about the privilege and tradition of Senatorial Holds, also known as a one man filibuster. Think 41 idiots holding back progress is infuriating? Try the same thing with one moron with a beef. The best part is that holds don't even have the nebulous procedural support that the filibuster has; it’s just a tradition of the Senate, like pinching intern's asses and paddling the majority leader with a plank off the U.S.S. Constitution at the Senate Christmas Party.

[eion]

The President's veto may be overridden by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. And the Supreme Court ruled the line item veto unconstitutional, which means no law by congress can change that. I am unaware of any procedure that allows bypassing of Royal Assent. In the only case I am aware of, the withholding of royal assent by the Lt. Governor of Alberta in 1937 to two laws regarding regionalization of banks led to the laws being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada and by the Privy Council.

Just because she chooses not to utilize her power to withhold assent by tradition does not mean she lacks it.

Oh bullshit. If the Queen actually started acting like a dictator, we would simply revise our constitution to remove that power.

That might well work for countries with singular, codified constitutions like Canada, but the U.K would find it harder to bypass the royal perogative.

[Darth Wong]

Turning the progress of your government over the personal whims of one person, elected by no one does not sound like a superior system; it is only benign thanks to the wisdom of the operator. It's like putting the nicest person in the world in charge of the entire world's nuclear missiles; she'll never use them, but it doesn't change the fact that she could blow up the world if she wanted to.

Again, you are ignoring the fact that if the Queen went berserk, the nation would simply not tolerate it. it's a ceremonial rubber-stamp, and nothing more.

[eion]

Turning the progress of your government over the personal whims of one person, elected by no one does not sound like a superior system; it is only benign thanks to the wisdom of the operator. It's like putting the nicest person in the world in charge of the entire world's nuclear missiles; she'll never use them, but it doesn't change the fact that she could blow up the world if she wanted to.

Again, you are ignoring the fact that if the Queen went berserk, the nation would simply not tolerate it. it's a ceremonial rubber-stamp, and nothing more.

I am. I was attempting to point out that every legislature over 50 years old has eccentricities that often escalate to dysfunction. The U.S. lacks a ceremonial figurehead like a monarch to direct our national pride and sense of tradition towards, so unfortunately we must invest our esteem in our government and its rules and traditions.

You can see how well that works out.

[Havok]

If you think Americans don't direct our national pride towards the Presidency, you are deeply deluded.

[eion]

If you think Americans don't direct our national pride towards the Presidency, you are deeply deluded.

The Institution of the Presidency is very different from the men who have held the office. We may have in the past held the men in high esteem, but after Watergate the illusion of the peerless president has wavered. Unlike the U.K., our constitution doesn't ascribe the President's election to an act of god. We love the idea of George Washington, but anyone who's read on the man knows of habit of falling into hysterics, his bastard children by his slaves, etc.

The president is at best a representative of our national pride. Ask people what they think it is to be an American, and you'll probably get some of the following results

-Love Mom, Apple Pie, and Baseball
-Honor the Flag
-Speak English (Ironic, no?)
-Vote

I doubt, "Love the President" will rank too highly, as even the best current president is still a politician. We love the ideal, we are ambivalent about the actual thing.

[Liberty]

You know, I am so sick of hearing about American governmental procedure that I just tune out whenever I hear anyone talking about it. Your stupid-shit government system is a fucking abortion, almost as if it was tailor-made for obstructionism. And this longstanding mythology about the "wisdom of gridlock" is so widespread that at every turn, the government has revised its rules to make it more obstructionist. The entire US governmental system is geared toward the protection of the status quo.

Ah, but don't you see? That's the point. Government is evil, and will always lead to a dictatorship. The only way to handle this, therefore, is to do our best to hamstring the government and make it inoperable. Only then can our freedoms be maintained. Our most wise founding fathers knew this, and the Constitution they created is the only hope for a free and democratic government. If only other countries would adopt the same constitution, and follow it as the founders intended, the entire world would be free and prosperous.

And in case no one caught it, that paragraph was dripping with sarcasm. However, I was taught everything in it as a child.

Honestly, though, I am fucking tired of hearing the founding fathers held up like gods. What the crap makes them better than any modern political thinkers? And seriously, they could never have imagined things like the internet. Their system didn't even work well back then (look up the fight over a national bank), and if they couldn't work together and agree on what it meant, why the crap should we follow a two hundred plus year political system to the tee? Fuck it. That's what I want to say to all those who cry "oh, but if you look at the original intend of the constitution" and "oh, if the founding fathers were alive today!" Fuck that! Will they listen? No. Americans think they have the best political system on earth, and there is no reasoning with them.

[ThomasP]

There's far too much money on the line to allow a functioning government to exist, especially one that's responsive to citizen's needs.

Nobody* really has a vested interest in having a system that could be changed according to what the people want.

* With few exceptions. I'm sure there are some genuinely well-meaning politicians out there, just that they're largely outnumbered by the ones beholden to some lobbyist or another.

[Darth Wong]

The Institution of the Presidency is very different from the men who have held the office. We may have in the past held the men in high esteem, but after Watergate the illusion of the peerless president has wavered.

Perhaps, but the notion of the peerless founding father has not wavered at all. Britons don't say things like "Queen Elizabeth would never approve of what our government has become". It would be an absolutely ridiculous thing to say; if anyone said it, it would surely be intended as some kind of humourous remark.

But replace "Queen Elizabeth" with "The Founding Fathers", and it suddenly sounds perfectly reasonable to the average American. It would be said with no trace of sarcasm.

[Sea Skimmer]

Perhaps, but the notion of the peerless founding father has not wavered at all. Britons don't say things like "Queen Elizabeth would never approve of what our government has become". It would be an absolutely ridiculous thing to say; if anyone said it, it would surely be intended as some kind of humourous remark.

But replace "Queen Elizabeth" with "The Founding Fathers", and it suddenly sounds perfectly reasonable to the average American. It would be said with no trace of sarcasm.

The average American wouldn’t give two shits about the founding fathers or any other dead politician past the Roosevelt’s, if they even know who those guys are. The average American doesn’t vote most of the time let alone really care in the first place. I’ve yet to encounter one of those founding father worshippers in real life so far. They are vocal on the internet, but so are a lot of other kinds of dumbasses.

[eion]

The Institution of the Presidency is very different from the men who have held the office. We may have in the past held the men in high esteem, but after Watergate the illusion of the peerless president has wavered.

Perhaps, but the notion of the peerless founding father has not wavered at all. Britons don't say things like "Queen Elizabeth would never approve of what our government has become". It would be an absolutely ridiculous thing to say; if anyone said it, it would surely be intended as some kind of humourous remark.

But replace "Queen Elizabeth" with "The Founding Fathers", and it suddenly sounds perfectly reasonable to the average American. It would be said with no trace of sarcasm.

Well HM the Queen has the benefit of still being able to state her own opinions, but your point is well taken.

I can't think of too many other countries that hold their founders in such fanatical devotion. The more I have read about them, the more amazing they are, not because they were perfect, but because they were so imperfect, and yet the basic system of government they implemented (eventually) is rather ingenious. And when the checks and balances are respected and obeyed, works pretty well.

But it does lack one thing: an apolitical ceremonial office holder to direct national pride towards. The First Lady is about as close as you can get, but she still has a political agenda of her own.

Compare the flags of the UK and the US. I don't imagine people would clamor for the execution of someone who burned the Union Flag in protest; they would probably not think it was a great idea, but it would not rise to the level of outrage one can see in the United States when the Stars & Stripes is burned in protest. But what if they burned a picture of the Queen?

I think a ceremonial monarch is quite a good idea, if impossible to implement in the US.

The biggest problem I've encountered in talking about the filibuster with people is that they think it's been part of our government from the start; that the framers included it in the constitution as one of the checks on the populist house's powers.

It wasn't, they didn't. It's a loophole, and when used with restraint in the pre-tracking (which allows the Senate to move multiple pieces of legislation through at once, removing the bite of a filibuster) days can actually give the minority a chance to voice their opposition and induce compromise. If we retain the filibuster, Reid has to return to the days of Mr. Smith, and make these idiots talk it out and show the people that they have no ideas of their own.

[montypython]

You know, I am so sick of hearing about American governmental procedure that I just tune out whenever I hear anyone talking about it. Your stupid-shit government system is a fucking abortion, almost as if it was tailor-made for obstructionism. And this longstanding mythology about the "wisdom of gridlock" is so widespread that at every turn, the government has revised its rules to make it more obstructionist. The entire US governmental system is geared toward the protection of the status quo.

Do Americans find it as tiresome as I do? It seems like you're becoming a nation of procedure wonks.

The procedures I've had to process through are among the biggest reasons why I find the machinery of American government so disgusting at times, processes that to anyone with a technical mind would despise with a passion, because it resembles a Rube Goldberg machine with untold numbers of workarounds for workarounds instead of straightforward, streamlined systems. This gets more aggravating when dealing with multiple agencies, especially as they all use different systems on top of that.

[Havok]

Perhaps, but the notion of the peerless founding father has not wavered at all. Britons don't say things like "Queen Elizabeth would never approve of what our government has become". It would be an absolutely ridiculous thing to say; if anyone said it, it would surely be intended as some kind of humourous remark.

But replace "Queen Elizabeth" with "The Founding Fathers", and it suddenly sounds perfectly reasonable to the average American. It would be said with no trace of sarcasm.

The average American wouldn’t give two shits about the founding fathers or any other dead politician past the Roosevelt’s, if they even know who those guys are. The average American doesn’t vote most of the time let alone really care in the first place. I’ve yet to encounter one of those founding father worshippers in real life so far. They are vocal on the internet, but so are a lot of other kinds of dumbasses.

That is bullshit. I will give you that most Americans may not be able to name all the 'founding fathers' or even give you a vague idea about who stood for what, but as a whole, the term 'founding fathers' carries quite a bit of weight. What Mike is saying is that just invoking the name is enough to give false credence to whatever is being said that 'founding fathers' is tacked on to. Americans as a whole are basically taught not to question the 'founding fathers', and for the most part, it has worked out pretty well.

[Phantasee]

Well HM the Queen has the benefit of still being able to state her own opinions, but your point is well taken.

DW was referring to Queen Elizabeth of England, not Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the reigning monarch.

[eion]

Well HM the Queen has the benefit of still being able to state her own opinions, but your point is well taken.

DW was referring to Queen Elizabeth of England, not Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the reigning monarch.

Oh, missed that. Two queens should never have the same name anyway; plenty of good names in english and german.