Timex
4513
The thing is, horse trading took place… and then they passed the bill in the Senate. Progressives agreed that was a good bill.
But then, after that, they then said they wouldn’t vote for it unless ANOTHER round of horse trading took place, on another bill.
So this goes explicitly against the idea that without the filibuster we could just do single purpose bills. The progressives are explicitly acting against this notion. They want to tie different things together, to try and gain leverage over other legislator to vote for things they wouldn’t otherwise support.
If you want to pretend that there wasn’t at that time a clear agreement to pass both bills together in the House, and that this is why progressives in the Senate agreed to the BIP, then you can do that, but — again — your analysis is going to suffer.
It was all in one bill originally. They agreed to take things out of one bill to get bipartisan support for it in exchange for having the stuff taken out put into another bill that would get voted on at the same time. How can you not remember this? It’s only been a month or so.
Timex
4516
So why separate it into two bills, if you just need to do it all at one time anyway?
Again, you are explicitly going against the idea of…
You, explicitly, do not want to do that.
You don’t want these separate bills to get their own up or down vote.
Because there were at least 10 GOP Senate votes for some of the stuff, but not for other parts of the stuff. The whole thing was going to pass the House in its entirety, but it was not going to pass the Senate in its entirety. Some of it would have to be passed in reconciliation to overcome Republican intransigence.
Come on, Timex. I’m generally in agreement with you that progressives need to be prepared to make a deal, but this insistence that they’re the ones inventing the problem is ahistorical and, well, stupid. They had a deal to vote on both together.
138
4519
@triggercut, your posts are really helping my sanity today. Thank you.
138
4520
And not everything could be passed through reconciliation, correct? Hence the need for the two bills? Or am I making shit up?
No, I think that’s true too.
138
4522
On another note, I was reading in WaPo yesterday some are considering overruling or ignoring the Senate Parliamentarian, should she rule against some items in the Reconciliation Bill. I really hope that does not happen, as it sets a horrible precedent.
Timex
4523
A bunch of the stuff in the infrastructure bill could actually have been passed through reconciliation, if not all of it. The stuff that got pulled due to not fitting into reconciliation was stuff like immigration reform that got yanked and also didn’t have GOP support.
The bipartisan bill simply was… bipartisan. It had much broader support.
And… again… the idea that you would then not actually vote on that bill, until also pushing through ANOTHER bill, that doesn’t have that support, flies directly in the face of the idea that you want to have a bunch of small bills and get up and down votes on all of them.
The idea that you’d have a bipartisan bill with broad support, but then not actually allow it to pass unless you ALSO pass a bill that has much narrower support, is the opposite of that idea.
Back in the day, GOP Senator Trent Lott simply fired the parliamentarian for ruling against the GOP.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/05/08/key-senate-official-loses-job-in-dispute-with-gop/e2310021-0f14-4667-a261-54e6c033207c/
I’d say that precedent has been set.
I don’t say it’s a good idea, but whenever we find ourselves thinking that it would be a step too far for the Dems to do X maneuver in the Senate, remember that the Republicans either would do it themselves given the opportunity and need, or have already done it.
This is a really great point/reminder, thank you.
I don’t care that you want to focus on this tiny little claim in order to win debating points. Without granting it — because it ignores the particular context of the example — I’ll simply keep pointing to the fact that you’re relating the history here all wrong, and that you’re not actually acknowledging that error when anyone points it out to you. Do better.
138
4527
From the article…
The “final straw,” as one GOP aide described it, came late last week when Dove told Republican leaders that they would have to produce a 60-vote majority for the 2002 budget if it included a $5 billion fund to cover damage from natural disasters. The rules do not provide for such a fund, triggering the requirement for 60 votes. Republicans are having trouble getting even 50 votes for the budget, which is scheduled for a vote later this week. As a result, the GOP dropped the provision.
So the Republicans fired him because he ruled against them one time too many, but they didn’t flat-out ignore the ruling. That’s what I was talking about. Ignoring the Parliamentarian’s ruling would lead to charges that what the Senate was attempting to do was illegitimate, and the Reconciliation Bill has enough headaches attached to it as it is.
Timex
4528
In the future without the filibuster, why would this exact same process not happen?
For instance, let’s imagine today that the filibuster doesn’t exist, right now. What happens?
Doesn’t the exact same thing happen as we’re seeing now?
Certainly, the Dems in the senate could pass a TON of stuff in that case, with their 50 votes. But there are tons of things that the progressives want, that you DON’T have 50 votes for in the senate.
Wouldn’t they do exactly what they’re doing now, and say that they wouldn’t support those other things, in order to gain leverage over the moderates in the senate?
I mean, this is why huge omnibus bills came into being.
It’s a fair point. Even without the filibuster, you would often have different concerns being bundled together since it makes it easier to do horse-trading. E.g. we’re passing this giant climate change bill, but we will throw in $X billion dollars for carbon scrubbers for coal plants in order to get Manchin on board, and another $X billion for heart-chakra crystals to get Sinema on board.
But you would not have the imperative that absolutely everything the Dems want for a legislative cycle be forced into a single reconciliation bill. You wouldn’t be forced to do what Gerson is complaining about, e.g. packing climate change, child care, elder care, veterans care, etc. etc. into a single titanic bill.
Right now we have 2 buckets. The bi-partisan bucket has the stuff that can be passed with bi-partisan approval, and the Reconciliation bucket has to contain everything else. Without the filibuster we could move to a 3, a 4, or even a 12 bucket strategy.
Timex
4530
Yes, the filibuster definitely contributes to this problem, because it only gives you a single shot to pass stuff without 60 votes.
I’m just pointing out that the filibuster isn’t the only thing contributing to this, and that the progressive tactic right now is evidence of that.
Personally, I would much rather we had smaller votes, and people gave up and down votes on individual, small bills. Mainly, because I think that in that kind of world, you’d have broad consensus on a huge number of things. Even with the GOP, I think there would be a broad consensus on tons of stuff.
But I just don’t see it happening, even without the filibuster.
The stuff we disagree on always becomes the dominant issue, and then people try to hold the stuff we agree on hostage to get stuff that we don’t agree on. And I think that’s, to some extent, contributed to the ultimate disfunction we see in government. I’m not suggesting that this is something to Progressives alone do, far from it. On some level, all the stupid debt ceiling stuff falls into this category too, in an even more extreme way.
Try this:
If there were a Democratic majority in the Senate largely committed to advancing the Democratic President’s agenda,
And If the Senate could pass things on a simple majority vote,
Then many parts of that agenda could quite easily be passed piecemeal in one-off bills that would then make it through the House.
So when you say why is this thing happening right now, doesn’t that prove it can’t work, the answer is because neither of those bolded conditions have been met. And when you say that this thing is happening now proves that it can’t be different, the answer is, again, bad things are happening because neither of those bolded conditions have been met; but if they were both to be met, then different things would be possible.
Timex
4532
Yes, I absolutely agree that could happen.
But, wouldn’t the Progressives (or any other minority group that was large enough to be required for the overall majority) do exactly the same thing as we’re seeing now?
Wouldn’t they in fact NOT allow you to pass the individual, small bills, because it would negate their ability to gain leverage on other small bills that they want, but which the overall majority didn’t support?
