Welcome back. Did y’all slap yourselves back awake after that School House Rock cadaver class on reconciliation? I know, I’m sorry, but it had to be done. In a month or less, you’re likely to hearing about reconciliation on likely a weekly bases, and you might as well have enough to go on before they start boring your ears off with all of the finer point bullshit.
But there was another important reason. Reconciliation works on certain kinds of bills to defeat the filibuster, but not all. And Joe Biden made a lot of campaign promises, to a lot of minorities, and they’re looking for action. I think Biden is smart enough to know that he’s on probation with these people, and that’s one reason why his executive orders have had as much teeth as possible behind them, to show good faith.
The problem is that a lot of these signature issues, such as the George Floyd Crime Reform Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and comprehensive immigration don’t have the requisite features necessary to make them candidates for reconciliation. How do Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi deal with those?
But it appears that they may already have a plan. Over the last couple of days, a couple of different Democratic Senators have slyly hinted that they may have found a parliamentary path to allow them to get around GOP obstruction on these issues.
Lawrence O’Donnell mentioned it briefly last night, and I had already started idly wondering about the possibility myself. Reconciliation is one rather arcane rule, but there’s another one, and it’s a doozy. If what Lawrence and I are thinking, the Democrats are thinking of invoking the most arcane parliamentary trick of all. They’re going to say, Fuck it and doing whatever they want.
Let me explain. You and I, along with pretty much everybody in the country, live under a specific set of rules. In our case, they’re called laws. States and the government pass them, and if we break them, then the cops arrest us, and a judge sends us to a concrete corner for 7-10 years.
In congress, both chambers, they also live under a specific set of rules. They’re called rules, and congress writes them. Congress doesn’t have cops and judges, each chamber has a Parliamentarian. When there’s a dispute over the rules, it is the chamber Parliamentarian who decide what is legal or unconstitutional.
But by far, the most important rule in congress is the Golden Rule. You know, He who has the gold makes the rules. Each chamber of congress writes it’s own rules, and they can change them at their whim, if they have enough power. Remember, Chuck Schumer will soon be weighing ways to change the rules to reform the filibuster. He can do that because he’s the Majority Leader, and he has the votes.
Here’s an example. During the Trump tax giveaway boondoggle, the GOP kept sliding in shit that clearly didn’t fall under the rules for reconciliation. The Democrats went screaming to the Senate Parliamentarian, who generally ruled that the Democrats were right, and that those items had to be stripped out. After which Mitch McConnell simply said Thank you, went back to the well of the Senate, and called for a simple majority vote to suspend the rules for that particular bill. And the shit stayed in. There is no appeal process for this. These are chamber rules, the courts have no jurisdiction over them, and the Parliamentarian’s role is purely advisory.
As little as a year ago, I would never have even considered this possibility, much less written about it. But this is a new Democratic party. The younger, more progressive members are pushing hard for action, and they’re being heard. The “old” Chuck Schumer would have responded to McConnell’s threat to filibuster the change in Senate power quietly, and behind closed doors. This Schumer not only told McConnell to fuck off publicly, he mocked his cheap power play, and McConnell backed down.
The GOP itself is in the middle of a messy civil war, and McConnell’s hold on his caucus is weaker than it has ever been. The Democrats punched the bully in the noise, and drew blood. The Democrats have one shot to go bold, pass major legislation they promised, and improve life in the US if they want the people to give them more power in 2022. And if it means bending the rules to meet their purposes, these new Democrats might just be down with that. And so am I.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like to check out President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange . They comprise a pretty much daily report from the front of the 2016 GOP primaries, as well as the general election
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
Damn. I wrote a lengthy comment to Part I about reconciliation being good but that what would be better is a return to Regular Order. Although I did try to note that I like Schumer sticking it to McConnell by giving him a dose of his own medicine. But for all my diving into arcane stuff I completely forgot about suspension of the rules! I “crashed” last night during Maddow and by ten was hitting the rack so I didn’t see O’Donnell’s show but given his prior life I can’t say I’m surprised he didn’t glean this possibility from McConnell’s abrupt face saving (it’s not like Machin or Synema had said anything they weren’t already clearly on the record about – and they aren’t the only ones) “you win Chuck” statement. But THIS makes perfect sense. If Schumer called Yertle and said “I tried to give you a chance to save a little face but Nooooooo! You had to keep being a dick so guess what? I’m gonna do to YOU exactly what you abused your authority to to do US over and over again. Better grab on to your butt because I’m going to start carving big chunks out of it!” everything makes sense now. McConnell and the GOP have ALWAYS counted on our side being the ones to try and play fair. Time and time again I’ve suggested that it’s long past time to recognize we were caught up in a bar fight and act accordingly, if only for the time it takes to make it outside to relative safety. Of course, the other option is to be willing to take some extra punishment to dish out some retribution to anyone (including the instigator who might be on the other side of the bar when you go for him) who dinged or injured you. Maybe Schumer has decided not only to accept that he’d been in a bar fight for years (longer than Trump’s term) and that standing on a chair appealing for calm only means it hurts more when you get knocked off it. I don’t have any doubt that Pelosi can handle herself in the legislative equivalent of a bar fight. Even a biker bar fight. If Schumer is going to join forces with her to kick ass and take names and repeatedly shove McConnell’s tactics right back in his face this is gonna be a sight to see. I can already hear McConnell’s hypocritical whining. Maybe (I hope so) Schumer has spent the time since the GA races were called to start lining up examples to throw in McConnell’s face from the podium once Mitch yields the floor. Ole Chuck WILL after all be the Majority Leader and can exercise his right to respond right there on the spot! And then leave McConnell hanging by moving to some other matter for the Senate to tend to!
IMHO, it’s not bending the rules, it’s just thinking of ways to enforce them. These are good articles Murph, encouraging and thought provoking.
Thanks for the tutorial, Murph. It should help me sleep tonight!
This is great on top of Part I, Murf. There is so much about government I didn’t get in school, and this is part of my self-education since then, and thanks for that. You have such a gift for explaining how things work. You can just break it down and make it simple for people like me. Thanks for fun and informative reading!
I only ask one question of Schumer: what boundary would moscow mitch ‘honor’ if frump had stolen the election, or succeeded in the violent insurrection, & allowed yertle to control the senate? What would he allow king frump to do to the country? Planet? All of us? Ok, ok. Like eating chips, hard to stop with just one.
I consider “what if” the same way I do “maybe” on past events: strictly the province of the loser. Given the really good position we occupy right now, better questions need to be asked. Here’s one I have to get any answer: what can we realistically do right now to back the play of the folks on Capitol Hill who are firmly in our corner?
This is what the late, great William Greider from The Nation was calling for for decades with the Democrats. It’s a shame he died in 2019 and couldn’t witness this.
We use parlimentary rules at my work place. Just got in an ugly meeting over something. Went down 4 to 2. The two are pissed. To be honest I prefer consensus decision process over roberts any day.
If I were Schumer I also would consider changing th eSenate rules to recquire 41 votes to sustain a filibuster if McConnell decides to go there. Right now, the pressure is on the Democrats in this case to come up with the 60 votes, and the GOP doesn’t even have to show up for a vote. Make them come in and come up with the votes. I heard Al Franken and Norm Eisen promote this very fix.