This is hot information from one of my favorite senators who isn't one of mine.
Senator Tom Harkin D-IA is considering introducing a bill which would severely restrict the filibuster as a senate tactic to kill legislation.
Senator Harkin is considering this, given the ongoing threats to filibuster HRC by none other than Joe LIEberman, who co-sponsored the bill when Harkin first introduced it in 1994.
"I think, if anything, this health care debate is showing the dangers of unlimited filibuster," Harkin said Thursday during a conference call with reporters. "I think there's a reason for slowing things down ... and getting the public aware of what's happening and maybe even to change public sentiment, but not to just absolutely stop something."
Harkin there it has no constitutional basis.
"did a lot of research on this back in the '90s, and it turned out the filibuster is just a Senate rule, not the Constitution or anything like that"
In the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, two constitutional scholars Martin Gold and Dimple Gupta said filibustering began when then-Vice President Aaron Burr did not see a need to call for an end to the debate, as holding it up was not something that was done in the "dignified Senate."
"The Senate followed this advice but failed to impose any other device by which debate might be restricted," the scholars wrote. "Thus, by sheer oversight in 1806, the Senate opened itself to the possibility of filibuster."
Harkin's earlier proposal required a 60 vote majority on the first call to end debate, but the number of votes would diminish by 3 each time a vote to end debate were called, resulting, after a month in a need for only 51 votes. He says he is considering a similar approach if he finally decides to introduce new legislation to end the unlimited hijacking power of the filibuster.
The word filibuster derives from the Dutch word vrijbuiter which means pirate. An apt a word to describe attempts to thwart HCR as ever there was.
Let's let Senator Harkin know we support ending the filibuster as it now is practiced. Here is his Senate page scroll all the way down. The contact information is at the very bottom of the page.