News Item:
By a 52-33 vote, Democrats fell far short of the 60 needed to overcome a GOP filibuster of the nomination of Craig Becker.
Source: Huffington Post
Anywhere but the United States Senate, a margin of 52 to 33 would be a drubbing. If this was the Super Bowl, a 52-33 game would lose half its audience after halftime. In the Bizzaro World of the United States Senate, a win by a score of 52-33 is a loss.
This diary will be short. I don't have much to say here.
I have always been a reasonably Center-Left Democrat. I was raised in a household where one of my parents was a Republican and the other was a Democrat. Both lived through the Depression and both felt that Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved America. Harry Truman was president when I was born, and the first president I remember was Eisenhower. Ike was president in the 1950's, he immediately worked to end the Korean War when he took office, and he feared another post-war depresssion. He took steps to prevent that depression by initiating the biggest public works program in the history of the world, the Interstate Highway System. 40,000 miles of divided highways with clipped lawns. The postwar GI bill and the interstate highway system combined to change America. The best trained workers in the world created a prosperity that lasted for 40 years. Everyone respected Ike, and after JFK came in, everyone respected him because he was the President.
Ike got legislation throught the congress by doing what FDR did. He was able to create a governing coalition despite having Democratic majorities in Congress. Filibusters were rare, very rare. Throughout most of our history, the filibuster was reserved for the big fights, and congress, and the Senate in particular, would usually give the president of either party the benefit of the doubt when approving nominees for positions which required the advice and consent of the Senate. What happened? Since 1994, and the introduction into Congress of the hyper-partisan Republican majority, whose hyper-partisanship was driven by a radicalized right wing media, the use of the filibuster has increased exponentially.
I chose the provocative title of this diary because I believe it is true that the American people are now being ruled, and I say ruled, not governed by a hyper-partisan minority of senators, who have decided that the route back to power for their party, the Republicans, is to stand in the way, to block, water down, fight tooth and nail, the economic and domestic policy program of the sitting president, Barack Obama. They have chosen to oppose all legislation, all appointments to posts, large and small, important or not important. They have chosen to prevent the president from implementing an economic recovery program in the middle of a deep recession, on the theory that if the economy is still bad when the next election comes around, the American people will blame it on the president and return them to power.
Thus, the Republcans have chosen to block all attempts to govern the country, to fix things that are in desperate need of fixing, not out of some principle, although they say that it on principle, no, they are blocking the governing of America so that they can return to power. They have made no useful proposals, or suggested reasonable alternatives, they have just blocked. And Blocked. And Blocked again.
The Republicans have blocked the business of our government on all matters large and small. Budgeting, and financing the continuing operations of government. Blocked until the last minute. Tax cuts for 95 per cent of Americans. Blocked until they could no longer block because they only controlled 40 votes in the Senate at the time. Appointments, Blocked. Held. Blanket Hold on 70 appointments. Never used in over 200 years of the Senate. Not. One. Time. Blocked a Labor Lawyer to a post on the National Labor Relations Board. The reason, he may favor unions. Is it the least bit inconceivable that a Democratic President may want a pro-labor person working in the labor department? No other congress would have objected to this qualified man from holding that position.
Name the subject, Health Care. Jobs bill in a terrible recession. Environmental protection. Cap and Trade. This minority of now 41 senators have become so drunk with the power they believe they hold that they simply are standing out on the corner and saying that they will prevent the President of the United States, a president who garnered over 300 electorial votes, from running the country in the manner which he was elected by a large majority of the voters to do.
They have become The Tyranny of the Minority.
Don't you think it is time to take back our freedom? Don't you think that it is time to remind these people that they have no right to run roughshod over the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans? I think it is the time to do this.
How about you?