I’m of two minds about President Obama’s shout out for Senate rules reform in his State of the Union speech. I’m glad he brought attention to the need for reform, but mostly I’m very disappointed with what he chose to call for. From the State of the Union: Some of what’s broken has to do [...]

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, [...]

What is the only thing worse than having monetary policy in America run indirectly mostly by the banksters and large financial institutions? The banksters having total control of monetary policy.

Wyoming’s two Republican senators, Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, are pushing for a rules change that would only allow an individual bill to deal with a single issue, in order to prevent the current practice of Congress passing massive omnibus bills. From Politico: Enzi, Barrasso and their co-sponsor in the House, freshman Rep. David Schweikert [...]

Senate Democrats had an opportunity to get together and make the Senate a working, majority-rule-based chamber. They could have recently used the “Constitutional Option” at the start of this new Congress to rewrite the Senate rules to either eliminate the filibuster outright or at least make staging a filibuster more difficult. Yet, due to a [...]

With their total capitulation on Senate rules reform, Sen. Tom Udall (D-MN), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Tom Harkin (D-IA) again remind us why no one in Washington takes liberals seriously. . . and frankly why they shouldn’t. For months, Udall has been promoting the “Constitutional Option,” which would allow the senators to declare the first [...]

Quinnipiac is out with a new poll that shows a very slight plurality of the nation thinks that entirely eliminating the filibuster is a bad idea rather than a good one. This is still surprisingly strong support for ending the filibuster among the public, given that the position lacks a single prominent champion advocating for [...]

While there seems to be some growing intellectual consensus in support of slightly reforming Senate rules to modestly reduce obstructionism, the idea of returning the Senate to its original intent of a majority rule chamber is still labeled too radical. In reality there is nothing radical about merely bringing back the original Senate rule that [...]

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is trying to gain support for a modest proposal to change Senate rules to deal with the issue of filibuster support by proxy. The current arrangement allows Senators to support a filibuster even while on a tropical vacation. The rules regarding cloture in the Senate are unlike almost any other rules [...]

On Wednesday the newly elected Republican majority took power in the House of Representatives. As part of the changeover, the House Republicans adopted a new set of rules based on the principle of majority rule by a majority vote. This is effectively the same thing each new House has done for decades. Amazingly, there was [...]