Originally posted by PensacolaEagle:
How many times did Republicans filibuster their own bills? Amendments add to a bill are nothing new, don't see the revelation in this. I do wonder about a party that would rather filibuster their own sponsered bill than face an up or down vote. Thanks for the info on the reporter, saw later the different name spelling.... Black/ Golds
Well lets say that it was opposite. Republicans were in control and weren't allowing any bills other than standard running of government stuff. No healthcare bills, no immigration bills, no wall street regulation bills. So for everything from now on I substituted Republicans for what the dems are doing.
The democrats wanted to actually do things however, so they started pushing bills through the house to the senate. The Republican leader (Republican Harry Reid) of the senate doesn't want to show how divided his party is so he wants to make sure no controversial bill passes through the senate. He doesn't want some of his moderate republicans to vote yes on the bill, or if he gets them to tote the party line to have to go back to their voters in conservative states and tell them why they told them they would do one thing and then did another. (There are many democrats in states like Montana that if they vote on anything like tax increases (even for the wealthy) or for the healthcare bill, (which those democratic senators said they didn't like to get elected in those red states.)) they would lose the election next time around for lying. It would look terrible if for bill after bill moderates were teaming up with the other party on major legislation (like the healthcare bill where a bunch of dems voted against the bill and no republicans voted for). It would show how extreme that parties positions are.
So when democrats bring the bill to the senate he puts in an amendment which lowers the taxes on the wealthy, or maybe he repeals a ton of wall street regulations, or how about he cuts the budget of the department of education, or gets rid of Pel Grants.
The point is there is something that could be put into a bill that would make you not want to vote on it. So the democrats filibuster their own bill to stop it from going to a vote. Now why would they have to resort to filibustering their own bill? Surely neither party would vote yes in there because there's things they both don't like. For several reasons.
1) Your now voting against a compromise bill. In any non-hard state one way or another that hurts your relection chances if your opponent uses that against you.
2) There are moderates and even 2? independents in the senate who would probably like almost everything in the bill anyway and vote yes on it.
3) There have been too many times this was done throughout history and failed. (People putting stuff in bills that would be so bad it wouldn't pass but ended up actually passing) Tariff of abominations, the income tax bill etc. This is because people don't act like you would think they would to serve their own self-interests. It many times backfires and people are more interested in working against the opponent than they are for working for themselves. See Prisoner's dilemma on Wikipedia if you've never heard of this. So there is a very real possibility that the bill will pass.
Switch democrats and Republicans and you have what is actually going on in the senate.
Now remember that bill that's going through the Senate to end all of this filibustering? The news for the most part is hailing Harry Reid getting the bill to pass as it will end the blockage of bills and allow democrats to work without Republicans stopping it. You put forth already that republicans are using the filibuster to stop any democratic bill right? Well why would republicans then vote (they almost all said they will vote for) to remove the filibuster? Are they that stupid? Nope. The compromise to remove the filibuster was to allow 2 amendments to be added to any bill by the minority party and the ability to remove any amendments wanted by both parties. All this changes is that instead of filibustering bills, the bills will now be stuck in a perpetual state of limbo as both parties will be adding and removing amendments.
But, at least the senate is seen to compromise right? And Harry Reid looks oh so good since it was his bill.
This post was edited on 2/7 2:10 AM by Eagleyed
