After months of bipartisan negotiations the Senate Gang of Eight has finally released their immigration reform bill. You can read the entire 844 pages of the bill here. The all encompassing bill covers a range of immigration, employment and border security issues. Some key components of the bill include 1) increased funding for border security, [...]

I would like to make a simple suggestion to vastly improve the quality of reporting in Washington. Whenever a reporter writes “Republicans filibuster” they should instead replace it with the far more accurate phrase, “Senate Democrats allow Republicans to filibuster.” Simply reporting that Senate Republicans “blocked” a bill or a Presidential nominee implies that the [...]

From its anti-democratic design, to its bizarre rules, to the absurd way it is run, the United States Senate is simply a terrible institution. Yet whenever I think my opinion of the chamber can’t get any lower the Senators manage to find a new way to disappoint me. The recent failure of the cloture vote [...]

For the first time ever a Secretary of Defense nominee will be filibustered. Some Senate Republicans are forcing Democrats to go through with the lengthy process of cloture to get a vote on Chuck Hagel. This has apparently given Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) a sad. From NPR: For President Obama’s choice to become [...]

Millions of voters  across the country gave Democrats a majority in the Senate this past November.  They gave Democrats the power to fully govern the chamber. Democrats in the Senate were handed the ability to pass any bill they wanted and approve any nominee by President Obama they deem qualified. Today the Senate Democratic caucus decided [...]

Update: Reid has reached the deal with McConnell. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is close to reaching a bipartisan deal with Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on changing the Senate rules. To even call this package of incredibly minor changes “reform” requires stretching the definition of the word almost to its breaking point. Almost nothing of [...]

Republicans have managed to whip themselves into a frenzy about the failure of Senate Democrats to pass a “budget” in over four years. What seems to be lost in this discussion, though, is the fact that the normalization of the filibuster has effectively eliminated any reason for a Senate majority to adopt a budget. It [...]

Even though Speaker John Boehner should be the most powerful Republican in Washington, as we have seen, it is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who ends up making the deals. McConnell is not only more skilled at getting agreements, but he can more successfully whip his caucus behind any decision he makes. So when McConnell [...]

In a rather monumental development Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for the filibuster to be reformed on the Senate floor. From Politico: “If there were ever a time when Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley were prophetic, it’s tonight,” Reid said on the floor. “These two young, fine senators said it was time to change [...]

One thing I’m grown increasingly tired of is the old trope that the United State Senate is somehow the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” The already absurd claim was taken to even greater levels of hyperbole by Senator Olympia Snowe in her op-ed about her retirement. She called the Senate the “greatest deliberative body in human [...]