Archive for the ‘Senate rules – reconciliation’ Category

Thank you, Senator Harry Reid

June 29, 2018

The perils of being “too cute by half”
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Big week for the Supreme Court … leaves liberals in panic mode … and conservatives doing an end zone dance.

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First, Trump’s travel ban (version 3.0) was ruled to be within the Presidential authority to secure the nation.

Then, a  ruling that merchants need not violate their religious beliefs to serve everybody.  (The Red Hen Restaurant should be happy about that).

And finally, a ruling that government employee unions can’t make employees cough up money that gets laundered through to the DNC to elect bosses.

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So, what has that got to do with Harry Reid?

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Are Dems taunting Trump into pushing the nuclear button?

January 22, 2018

Maybe it’s time to kill the legislative filibuster …
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Trying to pin the shut-down on Trump & the GOP, Dem front-men and their supportive media keep repeating the same refrain:

“They control the White House and both houses of Congress … how can they not be responsible?”

CNN’s Jim Acosta asked that question of OMB Director Mick Mulvaney and was summarily schooled on the obvious.

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The short clip is worth viewing but, if you’re in a rush, here’s the story …

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To fix healthcare, the GOP has to nuke the legislative filibuster …

July 27, 2017

The past couple of weeks of Repeal & Replace has been annoying along several dimensions.

Foremost, all of the chatter has been about health insurance, not healthcare … just fiddling with who is going to get stuck paying … moving nickels around.

Woefully little talk about how to improve healthcare delivery.

That’s not surprising since the Senate’s fillibuster rules require 60 votes to pass any legislative action.

Keep in mind that Obama had 60 Senate votes in 2009 and 2010 … thanks to the DOJ sidelining Ted Stevens and Al Franken pulling a narrow upset in a disputed election.

Today, there are 48 Dems who reliably vote in lemming-like lockstep against anything the GOP proposes.

Even if centrist Dems were to band together with moderate GOPs,  the middle-of-the-roaders wouldn’t have enough votes to get a sensible proposal enacted.  It would be squashed by either the ultra-conservatives or the ultra-liberals.

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So, the GOP-controlled Senate has its hands tied … it has to work through the “reconciliation” process which, by definition, just moves nickels around.

I think its time for McConnell to go nuclear…

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