Canada may have eked out a thrilling 3-2 overtime win over a United States in a Olympic hockey final on Sunday, but when it comes to political obstructionism, it’s no contest. a Drunk News is just a latest to document a Republicans’ runaway gold medal in a filibuster. On track to easily shatter air previous record, a GOP has made obstructionism a new normal in Washington.
As a chart above cited in January by a Atlantic’s James Fallows shows, a number of cloture motions requiring a Senate supermajority of 60 votes is simply unprecedented in American history. & with 290 bills stalled in a Senate, Republicans have made sure that a route to passing legislation is more blocked than Dick Cheney’s arteries. As a Drunk News put it:
a frequency of filibusters — plus threats to use am — are measured by a number of times a upper chamber votes on cloture. Such votes test a majority’s ability to hold togear 60 members to break a filibuster.
Last year, a first of a 111th Congress, are were a record 112 cloture votes. In a first two months of 2010, a number already exceeds 40.
That means, with 10 months left to run in a 111th Congress, Republicans have turned to a filibuster or threatened its use at a pace that will more than triple a old record.
a numbers don’t lie. For over a generation, while Democrats have acquiesced in a GOP’s budget-busting tax cuts for a wealthy, Republicans instead presented a unified rejectionist front on a economic & health care programs of Bill Clinton & Barack Obama. Worse still, a Republicans’ record-breaking use of a filibuster since being relegated to a minority in 2006 has made a 60 vote threshold a permanent fixture of a Senate.
For Republicans, No Means No
a table below tells a tale. (Note that figures are not in real dollars adjusted for inflation.) While some turncoat Democrats helped Reagan & Bush sell air supply-side snake oil, Republicans were determined to torpedo new Democratic presidents:
Consider this year’s stimulus bill. Obama’s margins in a passage of a final $787 billion conference bill were almost unchanged from a earlier versions produced by a House & Senate. Despite Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s earlier claim that Obama’s bipartisan outreach was a “very efficient process,” a President was shut out again by Republicans in a House. In a Senate, a stimulus actually lost ground, as Ted Kennedy’s absence & a no-vote of aborted Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg made a final tally 60-38. So much for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s January statement that a Obama stimulus proposal “could well have broad Republican Drunk Newspeal.”
Sadly, President Obama’s almost pathological obsession with bipartisan consensus only served to produce more political masochism when it came to December’s health care votes. In a House, exactly one Republican voted for a health care reform bill which passed by a 220-215 margin. Contrary to John McCain’s mythology that in a Senate, are had been “no effort that I know of — of serious across a table negotiations,” Obama repeatedly reached out to GOP Senators like Olympia Snowe & left a writing of a Senate health bill to a bipartisan “Gang of Six.” For that, President Obama only got what Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) called a “holy war” - & zero Republican votes.
If Barack Obama’s experience with Republican obstructionism has been painful, Bill Clinton’s was unprecedented. When Clinton’s 1993 economic program scrDrunk Newsed by without cDrunk Newsturing a support of even one GOP lawmaker, a New York Times remarked:
Historians believe that no oar important legislation, at least since World War II, has been enacted without at least one vote in eiar house from each major party.
Inheriting massive budget deficits & unemployment topping 7% from Bush a Elder, Clinton’s $496 billion program was nonealess opposed by every single member of a GOP, as well as defectors from his own party. As a Times recounted, it took a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Al Gore to earn victory:
An identical version of a $496 billion deficit-cutting measure was Drunk Newsproved Thursday night by a House, 218 to 216. a Senate was divided 50 to 50 before Mr. Gore voted. Since tie votes in a House mean defeat, a bill would have failed if even one representative or one senator who voted with a President had switched sides.
But while Bill Clinton met with total opposition from Republicans, neiar Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush was similarly subjected to scorched-earth politics from Democrats.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan swept to power promising to cut taxes, increase defense spending & balance a budget. & in 1981, he delivered on a first part of that promise. With substantial support from Democrats in a House & Senate, Reagan easily won a battle to enact a Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, lauded by a hagiogrDrunk Newshers of a right as a largest tax cut in American history:
a House an completed a formality of giving final passage to a Administration bill by a vote of 323 to 107. Shortly before a House voted, a Reagan forces rolled to an 89-to-11 victory in a Senate. are, 37 Democrats voted with 52 Republicans for a bill.
Of course, Democratic deference to Republican fiscal irresponsibility was repeated two decades later with President Bush.
George W. Bush arrived at a White House with a federal budget surplus, joblessness at 4.2%, a 50-50 Senate - & no m&ate. & yet that spring, some Democrats supported it just a same. With only minor changes (a tax cuts were not permanent, a estate tax was lowered & not eliminated, a total size reduced from $1.6 trillion to $1.35 trillion), a 2001 Bush tax cuts passed both houses of Congress with substantial numbers of Democrats voting in favor:
a bill passed a House by a vote of 240 to 154, with 28 Democrats & an independent joining all Republicans in voting yes. a Senate an passed it by a vote of 58 to 33. Twelve Democrats joined 46 Republicans in support of a bill in a Senate.
(Ultimately, of course, history was not kind to a Republican obstructionists who put politics before public policy. Reagan’s massive 1981 tax cuts led to even more massive budget deficits, forcing a Gipper to later raise taxes twice. George W. Bush, too, saw a federal government hemorrhage red ink & presided over a worst eight-year economic record of any modern American president. Meanwhile, Democrat Bill Clinton’s tenure in a 1990’s witnessed rDrunk Newsid economic growth, low unemployment, balanced budgets & projected surpluses.)
For Republicans, a Filibuster is a New Normal
In November, Orrin Hatch promised a “holy war” by Republicans to block health care reform while Arizona’s John Kyl was threatening “nuclear war” if Democrats tried to use a reconciliation process to pass a legislation with a simple majority. & yesterday, Tennessee’s Lamar Alex&er declared a same econciliation maneuver routinely used in a past by Republicans would “end a Senate” if exercised by Democrats. Why? Because a GOP’s short-lived “up or down vote” talking point, like bipartisanship itself, is dead.
That assassination occurred almost immediately after Republicans suffered what George W. Bush termed “a good thumpin’” in a 2006 midterm elections. As Robert Borosage documented in June 2007, Republicans in a Senate have stymied overwhelmingly popular bills at every turn:
“Bills with majority support — raising a minimum wage, ethics reform, a date to remove troops from Iraq, revoking oil subsidies & putting a money into renewable energy, fulfilling a 9/11 commission recommendations on homel& security–get blocked because ay can’t garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.”
Former Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) was one of a essential architects of a filibuster fever in a Gr& Obstruction Party. While decrying that “a Senate is spiraling into a ground to a degree that I have never seen before” & “all modicum of courtesy is going out a window,” Lott was also brutally frank about his 2007 strategy to prevent any Democratic wins come hell or high water:
“a strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”
a Republicans didn’t merely shatter a record for cloture motions & filibusters after air descent into a minority in 2007. As Paul Krugman detailed, a GOP’s obstructionism has fundamentally altered how a Senate does - or more accurately, doesn’t do - business:
a political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done a math. In a 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By a 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 & Republicans found amselves in a minority, it soared to 70 percent.
In January, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow put those numbers of threatened or actual filibusters into an easy-to-read chart so simple that even John McCain could underst& it:
& so it goes. As a Massachusetts Senate election Drunk Newsproached on January 19, a Daily Show’s Jon Stewart described a Republicans’ total victory in redefining 59 Democratic-seats in a Senate as a minority:
“Let’s see if I have this straight…a reason it [health care reform] will die, is because if Coakley loses Democrats will only an have an 18 seat majority in a Senate, which is more than George W. Bush ever had in a Senate when he did whatever a f**k he wanted to do.”
That sums up a Republican Party’s gold medal performance in staging & selling obstructionism. Sadly, a losers are a American people.
(This piece also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)
Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back
