The Imaginary Rule of 60 Senate Votes To Pass Anything

[Better Believe It]

September 30, 2009

The Imaginary Rule of 60
The Baucus Excuse
By DAVE LINDORFF

I’m reminded of this incident by the recent efforts in Congress to produce a health care reform bill—especially of the efforts in Sen. Max Baucus’s Senate Finance Committee, which yesterday, after weeks of allegedly painful negotiating among the so-called Gang of Six—three conservative Democrats and three Republicans—and several weeks more of discussions among members of the whole committee, produced a bill that essentially leaves us with the status quo, except with some rather smelly additions, such as a mandate that the uninsured and unemployed buy some crummy health insurance plan offered by the private health insurers or face a stiff fine by the IRS.

Of course, it’s not over yet. Once both houses of Congress have voted to approve the bills that have emerged from committee in House and Senate, there will be another session on the pot—this time in a secret conference committee, where members of the leadership of both houses will negotiate to come up with a single bill to send back to their respective houses for an up-or-down vote.

It can be safely predicted that the final legislation will resemble much more the Senate version than the House version, because Senate Democrats long ago surrendered control of that body to the minority Republicans by accepting the so-called Rule of 60, whereby any Republican can simply threaten to filibuster a piece of legislation and the Democrats will immediately take it back and hack off any offending piece of it to ensure that either all Democrats will vote for it, or that one or two allegedly sane Republicans will join the majority of Democrats, thus making a filibuster impossible.

Not once since at least 2006, when Democrats took over the Senate, has the Senate Democratic leadership demanded that all Democrats in that body support a bill or face retaliation, in the form of lost committee assignments or sabotage of a bill important to local constituents—the kind of thing that Republicans have done with their members for years.

Indeed, Democrats seem to like the imaginary Rule of 60, as it gives them a ready excuse to never have to actually do anything progressive, as demanded by their electoral base.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff09302009.html

[alsame]

1. Yesterday Orrin Hatch said they really need 70 votes in order to

consider this a 'bipartisan bill'. I'm waiting to hear this new refrain from Blue Dogs.

[wiggs]

2. Democrat Nelson said something similar yesterday. nt

[alsame]

3. Well, that didn't take long, did it? nt

[mohc]

4. Regardless of how they vote on any amendments or the final bill, all Democrats must vote for cloture

While I would prefer that all the Democrats stand behind single payer, let alone the public option, it is something I can accept if they all can not do. What I can not accept is that there any Democrat would vote against cloture with so much on the line. With 58 Democratic Senators and Sanders, all that is needed is Lieberman or a(nother) single Republican to invoke cloture. If any Democrat says they can not vote for cloture, that is not just being against the bill, it is being against the party.