The Dumbocrats vs. the Filibuster: Let the Battle Begin!
Filed under: US Elections
If you want to understand national governmental power in the United States, one word is far more important to know than any other. That word is "filibuster."
The president of the U.S. can do nothing unless a law is passed authorizing him to take executive action.
A law cannot be passed by Congress unless both of its constituent bodies, the House and the Senate, agree.
And the Senate cannot agree unless it can vote. As long as there are 41 votes against voting, the Senate can be stopped from voting (and hence agreeing) even if there are 59 votes in favor of the substantive topic, because any individual senator is permitted to speak on any topic as long as he likes -- meaning he can decide to speak forever and stop all business unless a specific proposal is rejected. That's called a filibuster.
What this means is simple. No matter what happens in the presidential election this fall, no aspect of any Democratic Party agenda will be enacted unless the Democrats can muster 60 votes in the Senate. If the Republicans can muster 41 votes, then they can use the "filibuster" to block any legislative action and bring the legislative process to a halt.
The Democrats currently have 51 seats in the Sentate. You might think, then, that they need to pick up 9 seats in the November elections in order to block the Republican filibuster. But you'd be wrong to think that.
Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Robert Novak explains why. When the Democrats tried to put forth a proposal to address global warming and impose a windfall profit tax on the oil companies, their proposal went down in flames. Why? Novak writes: "Though [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid blamed Republican intransigence, 10 Democratic senators -- including five-term liberal stalwart Carl Levin of Michigan -- had written Reid last Friday telling him they could not 'support final passage of the bill' because of the economic impact it would have on their states." The same thing happened yesterday when the Democrats tried to extend unemployment benefits.
In other words, winning nine seats wouldn't be enough. To reach 60 votes on the global warming bill, the Democrats would have needed at least 70 seats -- and there's no chance they'll get anywhere near that total in this fall's elections. The Dumbocrats just can't seem to remember how many conservatives there are in their midst who simply don't support the left-wing agenda.
Though they have a larger majority in the House of Representatives, the Dumbocrats fortunes there have been no better. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has totally failed to enact any significant Democratic Party agenda items during her tenure as the first female speaker.
In other words, if the Dumbocrats somehow imagine that by winning the White House and expanding their congressional majority in November they can then move forward to actual govern the nation, they are deluding themselves. The last time they won such a victory, in 1976, their attempt to govern resulted in such a fiasco that they lost both the presidency and the Senate just four years later. Even if they win and hold on to power longer, that will mean nothing if they fail to enact their agenda.
During the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton, Republicans nonetheless managed to enact free trade, a balanced budget and the abolition of federal welfare -- and they blocked the only serious Democrat agenda item that Clinton dared put forth, namely national healthcare. Viewed in hindsight, since the Republicans were also able to seize control of the House of Representatives for the first time in half a century, the presidency of "Democrat" Bill Clinton could easily be mistaken for one of the great Republican periods of governance in the nation's history.
Even as we speak, Obama and McCain are arguing about who will give the American people a bigger tax cut. Obama stated: "Both John McCain and I favor tax cuts. No matter what he says, both of us favor tax cuts. The difference is that Senator McCain wants to continue the Bush tax code that rewards wealth and I want to reform our tax code so it rewards work."
Maybe Obama hasn't noticed, as Clinton didn't, but cutting taxes is a Republican agenda point. It seems that the Dumbocrats would prefer to have a nominal president who enacts Republican policies than to have a Republican president who furthers the Democrat agenda. That’s just plain crazy, egomania of the highest order, and explains why the Dumbocrats have been so unsuccessful for so many years in actually governing the nation.
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