Senate Democrats apparently are trying to scare Republicans into not filibustering every single thing, by threatening to filibuster everything the GOP tries to do if the GOP regains power. From Politico: The White House and Senate Democrats are issuing a blunt warning to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans: You live by the filibuster, [...]

The biggest Congressional news story yesterday was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoking the rarely used procedure of appealing the ruling of the chair to the full Senate. When this is done, a simple majority of the Senate decides how the Senate rules should be interpreted. A majority of current senators are the people in [...]

The United States government has a general policy against paying ransom for a hostage. This is not because paying ransoms is an ineffective policy. Most hostage takers would be happy to return the hostage for money, so as a short-term solution, it does work. The problem is, long term, paying ransom just encourages many more [...]

Senate Democrats have again failed to pass a large tax-extender and jobs bill because of a unified Republican filibuster. The bill is meant to stop massive layoffs, make sure poor people don’t lose their health care and provide continued unemployment insurance to the many Americans hit hard by the recession. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) firmly [...]

Democrats seem to have an unsolvable legislative problem on their hands. It does not seem that their current strategy of passing the Senate bill as is and then arranging some fixes through reconciliation will work. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and his anti-abortion gang want changes to the abortion language before voting on the bill, and Senate [...]

During Wednesday’s health care address, President Obama said that the American people deserve a final up-or-down vote on health care reform: So, no matter which approach you favor, I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform. We have debated this issue thoroughly, not just for the [...]

Ezra Klein writes: This reflects the sense that the right compromise on the public option is a compromised public option. That’s true to an extent, but you can define the public option so far downward — a state-based, opt-in, trigger-dependent, nonprofit option, for instance, is seriously under consideration right now — that you’d be better [...]

Imagine I sat you down in front a Chutes and Ladders board game. I tell you all that you need to do is get the red piece onto the finish square. You could spend half an hour rolling the dice, moving up ladders and down shoots until you get your red piece to the finish [...]

Gerald F. Seib at the Wall Street Journal wrote, How? Mr. Lieberman says he has made his position absolutely clear to Mr. Reid. And Mr. Reid, all agree, is a wily tactician. So does he think Mr. Lieberman, and the two or three conservative Democrats who share his inclination, will give in at the end? [...]

A group of pro-public option senators met with Harry Reid last night to discuss health care reform. Indications are that the possibility of using reconciliation to pass health care reform was indeed discussed. Reconciliation is just one way to pass health care reform or the public option with only a simple majority. Reconciliation is not [...]