{"id":188048,"date":"2010-12-22T21:43:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T02:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/12\/22\/a-sign-of-sanity-from-senate-democrats\/"},"modified":"2010-12-22T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T02:43:00","slug":"a-sign-of-sanity-from-senate-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/12\/22\/a-sign-of-sanity-from-senate-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sign of Sanity from Senate Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All of the returning Democratic Senators, and all of the retiring ones except for Christopher Dodd, have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationaljournal.com\/congress\/senate-s-returning-democrats-unanimously-favor-filibuster-reform-20101222\">signed a letter asking for filibuster reform<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging him to consider action to change long-sacrosanct filibuster rules.<\/p>\n<p>The letter, delivered this week, expresses general frustration with what Democrats consider unprecedented obstruction and asks Reid to take steps to end those abuses. While it does not urge a specific solution, Democrats said it demonstrates increased backing in the majority for a proposal, championed by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and others, weaken the minority\u2019s ability to tie the Senate calendar into parliamentary knots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This change can only come about if a fairly obscure change is made to the Senate rules first:  The Senate currently describes itself as a continuing body, meaning that any changes in the rules at the start of a new Congress require a \u2154 majority.<\/p>\n<p>If the President of the Senate, Vice President Biden, were to rule that the Senate <b>Wasn&#8217;t<\/b> a continuing body, then that could be approved by a simple majority vote, as could the filibuster rule changes.<\/p>\n<p>I would not something else interesting about the various proposals, it looks like Reid will accept a proposal to have committee chairs elected by secret ballot, as opposed to the current regime, where there is only a vote if another Senator publicly objects.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully, the old guard in the Senate won&#8217;t block these changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All of the returning Democratic Senators, and all of the retiring ones except for Christopher Dodd, have signed a letter asking for filibuster reform: All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging him to consider action to change long-sacrosanct filibuster rules. The letter, delivered this &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,978,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-politics","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}