Tag Archives: Senate

Greatest Deliberative Body

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The national press corps held its collective breath on Monday night as members of the United States Senate wrangled over whether the holiest of holies – the filibuster rule – would be changed or scrapped altogether by the 55 Democrats in the majority.

This is known as the “nuclear option” and it is generally threatened by the Majority Leader – Republican or Democrat – when the Minority Leader – Republican or Democrat – successfully uses the existing filibuster rules to slow progress on legislation or nominations to a crawl.

The modern version of a filibuster can be broken if the majority can muster 60 votes. As the AP’s Dave Espo wrote: “While a simple majority vote is required to confirm presidential appointees, it takes 60 votes to end delaying tactics and proceed to a yes-or-no vote.” Continue reading →

The Traffic Cop

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Unlike the House, where the Speaker is expected to expedite the will of the majority, the person charged with running the Senate is not expected to exert his will.

Instead, he or she is more like a glorified traffic cop, making certain that all of the highways of the upper chamber are cleared of obstructions and moving smoothly.

It’s a tough job because the Senate is necessarily full of obstructions and rarely moves smoothly.The Senate majority leader, unlike the Speaker, is not named in the Constitution. Nor is the majority leader the top Senator in the line of succession to the White House. That title goes to the president pro tempore — usually the longest serving senator. Continue reading →

Higher Salaries to Attract Better Candidates

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

I got to thinking the other day about what was ‘more important’ to the United States of America: Having great referees in our professional sports leagues….or having great representatives and senators in Congress in Washington?

Apparently, based on the way we pay our elected representatives versus professional referees, we ‘value’ the services of NFL/MLB and NHL referees at or around the same level as we ‘value’ our elected officials in this nation.

We know, we know: ‘The market values rare talent’. Alex Rodriguez, LeBron James, and Peyton Manning are those ‘rare talents’ and command massive salaries up to $25M per year. ‘They put fannies in the seats and sell advertising on the tube!’ team owners and general managers say to justify such exorbitant salaries. Continue reading →

Leaders and Followers

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

At my gym, they put little inspirational quotes up on the wall to get you to work out harder (that’s the theory, at least).

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” was last Tuesday’s quote, attributed to the Marine’s handbook, which was a revelation to me. I always thought that Lee Iacocca was the man who first said that memorable phrase when he was trying to fix Chrysler.

This quote must haunt Congressional Republicans on both sides of the Capitol dome.

In the House, the followers aren’t following the Leaders. In the Senate, the Leaders aren’t following the followers. Continue reading →

‘Smoke-and-Mirrors’ Budget

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

Know who ‘Mr. Irrelevant’ is? He is the last player drafted in every NFL Draft each year. He is considered the least important player with the lowest possible chance of making an impact on an NFL roster come regular season.

How can President Barack Obama be considered ‘Mr. Irrelevant’ when it comes to managing the most important problem facing us today in America, the federal budget and its attendant deficit and debt complications?

Let us count the ways: Continue reading →

Politics Ain’t Beanbag

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Newport Beach, California

One reader asked me: “If Fox News Channel is so far ahead of MSNBC and CNN why did the GOP lose the Presidential election last fall?”

The answer is: The number of people who watch cable news is a tiny percentage of the voting population. Continue reading →

Empty Votes, Dangerous Promises

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It was a good thing that the Senate finally passed a budget last week. I guess.

The Senate budget resolution was unique in that the Upper Body passed a budget resolution before the President actually proposed his own budget, probably for the first time in history.

And the fact that the Senate passed a budget seemed like a novelty because the world’s most deliberative body has been so deliberative that it hadn’t bothered to take this action required by law for almost a half a decade. Continue reading →

You Can’t Spend What You Can’t See

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

America Held Hostage: Sequester Day 11

Although it hasn’t made much news, what with the world missing a Pope, the Senate missing an on-the-floor bathroom, Venezuela missing a President, and President Hamid Karzai missing a press conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel; but President Barack Obama has missed the deadline for producing a budget document for the United States.

It’s not as if the whole government spending thing hasn’t been a big deal in Washington. You might have been following along as Republicans and Continue reading →

L.E.G.A.C.Y.

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

For the next 1,418 days the top issue on the mind of President Barack Obama and his ever-tightening inner circle will involve the six letters: L.E.G.A.C.Y.

Just as years three and four were totally focused on the President’s re-election; so the last two years of his second term will be focused on the legacy he leaves behind.

Will it be Jimmy Carter’s well-intentioned ineptness? Or FDR’s history changing vision?

One thing is for sure: unless the Democrats win control of the House and maintain control of the Senate Obama’s legacy will be an eight-letter word: Gridlock. Continue reading →

Hagel Testimony = Fail

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I subscribe to the general theory that a President, Republican or Democrat, should be able to have the people running his Departments, Commissions, and Agencies that he wants.

Unless there is some overriding disqualifying reason to reject him or her, the Senate should abide by the terms of Article II, Section 2 that says the President, “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Officers of the United States.”

The nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense is an excellent case in point.

I may not agree with Hagel on the 3 I’s – Iran, Iraq, and Israel – but we don’t generally allow Secretaries of Defense to make foreign policy. Nor, for that matter, do Secretaries of State make foreign policy. Continue reading →

Abusing Government Institutions: Part III

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“The word is out. He hasn’t paid taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.”

Those were the words of the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Harry Reid, speaking on the Senate Floor, leveling an accusation against Gov. Mitt Romney that he could not prove, for which he offered no evidence, and had every reason to believe was not true.

Reid’s attack on Romney was clearly calculated to goad the Governor into releasing more income tax returns. The tactic is pretty transparent. A person of Romney’s wealth has to have something in his income, or his tax deductions or his charitable contributions to the Mormon Church, or something else that the Democrats could exploit. Reid, who is a wealthy man, of course, has never released his. Continue reading →

The Jobs Speech

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

President Barack Obama’s speech wasn’t awful. It wasn’t great. It had some excellent lines “Last thing [vets] should have to do is to fight for a job when then get home.” It some tired union-soothing rhetoric.

At 7:35 Eastern I Tweeted: “Officially bored. This could have been a 20 minute Oval speech.”  True.

Here’s the thing the President left out: He never told us how many jobs this would create and how far down it would bring the unemployment rate. Let’s spend more money and hope for the best. Having listened to the 127 times President Obama said some variant of “pass this bill” I pinged a leadership staffer office only to find there IS no bill. No paper. No package. No nothing. Here’s the text of the email I got having asked if the President dropped off a bill on his way into the House chamber:

“Of course not – no one has seen it. No consultation with House or Senate GOP. No Pay fors [identified]. Just more of his “I decree” this is the plan and [is, therefore] bi-partisan.” Continue reading →

Sunset Every Law

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com

As anybody who ever watched Schoolhouse Rock in the 1970’s knows (“I am just a bill, I am only a bill and I am sitting here on Capitol Hill, but I hope to be a law one day, oh, yes I know that I will, but today I am still just a bill”), it is awfully hard to make a law in this country.

Continue reading →

Republican Demise A Bit Premature

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feehery Theory

In many ways, it was the best-case scenario for the Republican Party.

They swept the House in dramatic fashion, and while they didn’t quite win the Senate, they got the next best thing: Harry Reid is still going to be the chief spokesman for Congressional Democrats.

Continue reading →

Fighting for the Filibuster

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/fighting-filibuster

Fighting for the Filibuster

BY Gary Andres

January 7, 2010 12:00 AM

Legislative battles sometimes produce unlikely victims. After clashing with Republicans for months, Democrats appear poised to win a major partisan victory on health care.

Yet while triumph could be imminent, some liberal lawmakers and pundits want another scalp.  Get rid of the Senate filibuster, they say. It’s an outmoded procedure that allows a minority of 41 votes to stop legislation. Like the spittoon and the handlebar mustache, it’s just another anachronistic piece of congressional history.  These “reformers” say the Senate should operate more like the House, where a simple majority regularly does whatever it pleases.

But here’s an inconvenient truth. The Senate wasn’t designed to operate like a smaller version of the House. And changing the filibuster rules would be a major mistake, not only resulting in more ideologically extreme legislation, but also changing the very purpose of the upper body in our constitutional system.

Continue reading →