I hear all this talk about Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, that pig. Where does he get off acting like he’s top dog?
We now have the first 50-50 senate in history about to be sworn in. Where’s his majority? There is no more majority, no more minority. Loot will have to play ball with Daschle as his equal from now on.
Not exactly.
The President of the Senate (aka Vice President) votes in case of ties. That makes a majority.
If Bush-Cheney gets elected, that means the President of the Senate is republican. If Gore-Lieberman gets elected, Lieberman resigns his senate seat, and the Reupblican governor of Connecticut is expected to appoint a Republican replacement, giving a 51-49 split of Republican to Democrats.
However, that isn’t the end of the process. If VP-elect Lieberman resigns etc., the Connecticut Legislature is expected to call for a special election to fill the seat. State Atty. General Richard Blumenthal would be expected to win, restoring the seat to the Democrats and giving the tie-breaking vote to VP Lieberman. Possibly Gov. Rowland might accept the inevitable, spare the country a few months of chaos, and appoint Blumenthal anyway, but don’t count on it.
Also, Jesse Helms is 79 and Strom Thurmond is 98, they’re both in poor health, and their states have Democratic governors. Other senators may be in line for Cabinet posts. There could be other unpredictable occurrences. The extreme case of a 50/50 split with VP Cheney glued to his chair would only last 2 years until the next election, anyway - the odds of a continued split after that would be low.
I’m sorry, but there is still a Republican majority - either 51-49 or 51-50.
If the ultimate result of the Presidential election is a win for Gore and Liberman, then Liberman’s Connecticut Senate seat becomes vacant, Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland, a Republican, will undoubtedly appoint another Republican to fill the seat, resulting in a 51-49 Republican-controlled Senate.
If, on the other hand, Bush wins the White House, former Secretary Dick Cheney will become Vice-President and President of the 50-50 Senate, casting the dividing vote on all ties and giving the Republicans a 51-50 win.
But the vice president is not a senator! He shouldn’t count toward this supposed majority! The way I see it, it’s 50-50, not 50-51. There are not 101 senators last time I checked.
No, the VP is not a senator. Like the title suggests, he’s the Vice President. However, the VP’s solitary duty (other than trying to stay alive when the President fails at this) is the be the President of the Senate. Check your Constitution. The position is meant to be a tie-breaking position. So call him one-tenth of a Senator. Still makes a 50.1 to 50 majority.
The Vice-President is not a senator, but by Constitutional rule, he is “President of the Senate.”
Since the function of a majority leader is to coordinate the majority rule that a particular party exercises in the Senate, and since the Republicans will (for the next two years, anyway) almost certainly have a voting majority in the Senate, Trent Lott has every right to act like top dog, per the OP’s graceful description.
Since the Democrats will control the Senate for the first few weeks, while Gore is still VP, will they take advantage of this in appointing committee members and selecting the president pro tem? Can the Republicans undo this after they take over?
There’ve been news reports that Daschle and Lott have agreed that the Democrats won’t take undue advantage of the situation, even though they could. However, if they have an election to deal with, all bets would be off, naturally.