Republicans have continued to make the claim that they have 352+ Bills in the Senate that Harry Reid has been BLOCKING. I have tried searching for where someone has refuted those claims to no avail.
If there are that many Bills waiting for Senate consideration, shouldn’t we be talking about the Do-nothing-Senate instead of the Do-Nothing-Congress?
Lay the blame where it resides.
Since when has the senate not been part of congress?
Senate is part of Congress of course but we can be specific and say Do-Nothing-Senate instead of tarnishing all of Congress if one part of Congress (The House) is writing Bills that the Senate sits on.
If 351 of the House bills are to repeal the ACA, I’m not sure that’s the same thing.
Obviously they’re not. Here’s what I’m referring to…
Only about 50 or 51 of them are, at last count.
How many Senate bills has the House refused to take up? For that matter, how many House bills has the House refused to take up because of the Hastert “Rule”?
Without a list of these bills, it’s difficult to evaluate the OP’s claims. The burden of proof is on the person making the allegation.
That said, if these bills involve one of Paul Ryan’s budgets or something which is clearly nonviable in a Democratic led senate, then having a vote on them is pointless. A more interesting allegation might involve a bill that could gain majority support in the Senate. That said, recall that the so-called Hastert rule in the House (often observed in the breach) says that bills won’t come up for a vote unless they have a full majority of the Republican caucus.
At any rate, the key instances of Republican obstructionism involve cases where majority leader Mitch McConnell fillibusters his own damn bill when he finds that it actually could pass the senate. Show me something like that on an important measure like raising the debt ceiling. A vote for McConnell is a vote for obstructionism, gridlock and insider politics.
It should be easier in both chambers for the minority to force votes on bills that they believe have majority support. It’s a simple rule change, but make it easier to file discharge petitions, maybe set the bar at only 40% of the House or Senate.
You willing to pair that with the elimination of the filibuster in ALL instances of advise and consent.
In advise and consent, yes, that should always be straight majority vote. On laws, I don’t favor the current filibuster. I do think that votes on bills should be easy to delay by a determined minority, but there should be no way to kill a bill with a filibuster unless the majority just doesn’t feel like waiting the minority out.
The underlying principle is that the government should be a institution that forges deals between different sectors of society. Compromise isn’t a bad word: it’s a good word. I concede that certain matters are beyond compromise such as minority rights (very much including the first amendment) and to some extent issues like abortion. But the budget? That’s where transparency and compromise should prevail.
ETA: One factor that should be kept in mind is that many state legislatures spend their time passing bills that act as wedge issues against the opposing side. That’s another path to gridlock. The majority has good reason to squash the minority. The minority has good reason to force difficult votes on the majority.
I found this list:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/83057-290-bills
Now that we have a huge list, is there anything in particular the op would like to discuss?
Scrolling through the list - and picking out titles that look interesting…
**223. H.R. 2868, Chemical and Water Security Act **, so this bill, while it hasn’t been passed is redundant / moot
So is your point that even when the House is controlled by Democrats, the Senate, also controlled by Democrats, still ignores huge swaths of their submissions?
(I find it kind of curious that the article is datelined 02/23/10 but the headline reads “(as of 8/23/10)”, with no indication of the article having been updated – is The Hill in a TARDIS or something?)
My point is that the list, if that is what they are using to count, is a bit disingenuous.
Why would you vote on a measure that has already been covered by something else?
The point also is - the list, while looking damning is actually pretty meaningless unless you do a couple of things
a) poll the acts 1 by 1 and see why they haven’t been brought to vote
b) compare it to previous sessions of congress to see if it is out of line
c) look at the provisions of each act to see if it is “sensible” law or not (I understand that acts that don’t have support typically aren’t brought to the floor for a vote - I would assume that also includes acts that the republicans promise to filibuster)
Here’s a case in point - the DISCLOSE act- yet something that the Republicans vowed to veto.
Is there any surprise then that no further action was taken?
And then you have this
But some people are trying to blame the Democrats for being a do nothing Senate?
Little factoids presented by TV stations nobody’s heard of, quoting a Republican with no context, are worthless. Even reading them is silly. Anyone unclear about which side is responsible for 99% of the legislative gridlock is confused and misinformed.
I don’t know if the list posted is from 2010 or 2014, but one of the bills is to exempt guns from property considered in bankruptcy. I don’t want to hijack the thread, but to me – and perhaps many Democrats – it seems a silly priority to ensure bakruptees get to keep all their guns. It’s very likely this whole Bill is just political propping:
“See y’all? Dem god-hatin’ Kenyans jus’ wanna fin’ anudder excuse to steal y’all’s guns!”
According to HuffPost, this one passed the senate in 2011 with zero republican votes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-savage/chemical-plant-security-b_b_367674.html
Not sure. Only huge list of bills waiting on the senate that I could find in the admittedly few minutes I spend searching. You’d think with the amount that talking point gets thrown around it would be easy to find.