On whether or not Schumer’s new attempt to pass HR1 is subject to the filibuster
There was so much discussion and disagreement in the comments to the previous thread today about the new Democratic ploy to pass HR1 that I thought I’d tackle giving a response in a new post.
The question is whether this new effort can be passed by a simple majority of 50 votes, or whether it will be subject to the filibuster rule and will either need 60 votes to invoke cloture or a majority to eliminate the filibuster at least for this one bill. That distinction is an important one, for obvious reasons.
Sinema is on record for supporting the bill itself while not supporting the end of the filibuster. So if it could be passed by a simple majority vote without ending the filibuster, it seems that would satisfy her. Manchin seems to be against both, or at least against HR1 as it stands at present, although he might support it with some revisions.
Politicians being politicians, they could change their minds. But so far they haven’t and let’s assume they haven’t, because they’ve made fairly strong statements on these things (see my previous post for some links on that) and they’ve remained consistent so far.
Here’s a comment from “mkent” saying that the filibuster won’t apply, because the bill is one that has been stripped and refurbished:
My understanding of the parliamentary procedure is that because the “bill” in question already passed the Senate, it is not subject to a filibuster. That the “bill” now no longer contains a single word of the original bill does not matter.
From https://spacenews.com/nasa-leasing-bill-transformed-into-voting-rights-legislation/
“The Democratic leadership of the House, in an unusual move, then took the Senate-amended bill and stripped out the NASA provisions, replacing it with the text of two voting rights bills and now called the ‘Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.’ They did so because H.R. 5746 had already passed the House and Senate, so the amended version could go directly to the Senate floor without the threat of a filibuster from Senate Republicans, who oppose the voting rights legislation.”
…The whole point of co-opting the NASA EUL bill [the bill-stripping] is to avoid the filibuster. If the filibuster is still in play, they didn’t need to do that, just consider HR-1.
I have read quite a few articles on this latest move by Schumer, and all of them say that the filibuster – and the 60-vote threshold – will ultimately come into play unless they vote to end it. The most detailed article on the subject can be found here. I suggest that everyone interested in the question read it. Here’s a small excerpt:
“Taking advantage of this existing exception to the Senate’s supermajority requirements will allow us to end the Republicans’ ability to block debate on voting rights legislation,” Schumer said in the memo to Senate Democrats.
“The Senate will finally debate voting rights legislation, and then every Senator will be faced with a choice of whether or not to pass the legislation to protect our democracy.”
“Of course, to ultimately end debate and pass the voting rights legislation, we will need 10 Republicans to join us — which we know from past experience will not happen — or we will need to change the Senate rules as has been done many times before.”
Note that last paragraph in the quote, wherein Schumer himself indicates, in his memo to Democrats, that the 60-vote threshold will come into play.
I don’t know for certain, but I think that perhaps the confusion is about the difference between the vote to debate a bill on the floor, and the vote to pass the bill. Because of the bill-stripping, the debate (which hadn’t occurred earlier because the GOP blocked it) can go forward. The debate doesn’t need to cross a 60-vote threshold anymore to take place. But the actual vote on the actual bill can still be blocked by 41 votes.
It’s one of those complicated things, but that’s my understanding from what I’ve read so far.
But the actual vote on the actual bill can still be blocked by 41 votes.
Unless a majority votes to suspend the filibuster rule one time only using Senate Rule XX, or a majority passes a bill exempting it from the filibuster like they did December 9th (the bill to exempt it did not have 60 votes, but only 59, all the D’s including Sinema and Manchin plus 9 R’s including McConnell and Romney, Murkowski, Collins, the usual suspects).
I’m afraid it still comes down to having a bare majority. Right now, Manchin and Sinema put them one short of that bare majority. The only question is are they holding out for something and will be bought off, or are there other Ds also opposed and the D’s are trying to appease their base like Republicans did with Obamacare repeal letting Sinema and Manchin take turns being “John McCain”, or will some of the R leaders arrange to remove the filibuster for them the way they did with the debt ceiling.
The appearance that such a thing as the filibuster exists is clearly important for quite a few people, to see all the pixels expended on it and the dramatic volte face of the Senators who just took the filibuster off the table for a key bill only last month.
I hope this analysis is correct. It would explain why there isn’t a major uproar on conservative sites about this scam.
If you say the same thing over and over, it is still the same thing. But, I’m not a PhD.
🙂
Frederick:
I already covered that in this post:
Also, in the thread earlier today, I have discussed (and other people have added) the fact that the issues involved in the debt ceiling were nothing like the issues involved in HR1. I’m not talking about the process, I’m talking about the bills themselves. Some Republicans had their reasons for wanting to raise the debt ceiling and so they were cooperative with Democrat machinations around it. That is not true for HR1.
In addition, I disagree with your analysis on John McCain and the Obamacare “skinny repeal” and what was going on there, by the way, and plan to write something tomorrow on that.
One can never be sure what politicians will do, of course. But I see no reason whatsoever to think there’s a Republican in support of HR1.
Neo: I pray that you are right. I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday.
@om:If you say the same thing over and over, it is still the same thing.
True things don’t stop being true, no, even when people won’t look at them.
Lucy loudly tells us she’s against changing the rule that says she has to let Charlie Brown kick the football, yet she still pulled it away last time. She just didn’t change the rule, see.
And I did so quit smoking. I just have cigarettes when I want them by making one-time exceptions to my no-smoking rule. I don’t favor changing the rule that says “no smoking”.
Frederick:
But your arguments are not true. They may or may not be true, but they are merely at this point your opinion. The same for everyone else’s arguments here, of course.
But you seem to exhibit no understanding of the difference between the debt ceiling issue and HR1, and why Republicans would have a very different attitude towards each of them.
As I’ve said to you before, this isn’t about the sacred unchangeability of a rule. The rule only stands if there’s no majority vote to change it. For HR1 and Republicans – and for a very few Democrats – there appears to be no reason to change the filibuster rule.
The future is unknown, of course. But to me your argument doesn’t make sense at this point in time.
Analogies to Lucy and Charlie Brown are jokes. We understand the point, which is that GOP voters often get fooled over and over. But not always, and not always on important issues. Sometimes GOP politicians stand firm. It depends on the situation and the motive.
Just because you say something more than once doesn’t make it true, Lucy. Who is not looking, Lucy?
@neo:the issues involved in the debt ceiling were nothing like the issues involved in HR1
All you’re really saying here, and I don’t disagree, is that for the debt ceiling 9 Republicans agreed to help them smooth it out and didn’t let the rest of their party make a fuss, which isn’t operating here. (That’s because lots of people might have lost money.)
And all I’m saying, and you don’t disagree, is that they never actually need 60 votes if 50 of them plus the VP for any reason decide they don’t, and they have multiple ways of getting around what on paper requires 60 votes, and the debt ceiling was an example of them doing this without formally changing the rule, but the 50 Dems could do the very same thing on THIS bill (which didn’t “change the rule”, since we’re still talking about it four weeks later), and Republicans would fuss, but it still would go the Dems’ way.
And we’re both saying that today it doesn’t look like there are 50 votes for this bill, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
I think the confusion is in use of the word “majority”. People sometimes assume I mean “the Dems”, who have the formal Majority positions, but actually I don’t. I mean “any collection of at least 50 Senators who can get the VP to help vote” regardless of party affiliation of the Senators or party polarization on the issue.
What Republican voters support, what Republican Senators say they support, and what Republican Senators actually work to make happen are three different things (and it’s all the same for the Dems too). There’s a big chunk of both sides Senators who are on the same side more often then they can publicly let on.
Where we may not agree is on the significance of having a “rule” that can be opted out of any time on a one-time basis. To me it is obviously a linchpin in the strategy of the DC insiders of both parties to serve their patrons and clients and dodge accountability to the voters, and their lapdogs in the media are helping them. Further, I think the situation will continue to worsen until they realize we see what’s going on.
And so I have little patience for talk about the process because I think such talk is designed to confuse the issues and makes it easier for DC insiders to profit from the rest of us.
Frederick is right in saying that Democrats could eliminate the 60-vote threshold at any time they choose. The question is whether they will do this. Apparently they would have to do so to pass this voting “rights” bill with 51 votes (including Harris).
@neo:But your arguments are not true.
But my facts are true.
Four weeks ago the debt ceiling could not get through because 41 Senators opposed.
Four weeks ago, fewer than 60 Senators made a one time exception to the filibuster for that issue.
Four weeks ago, two of the Senators “defending the filibuster” so publicly today voted to make the one time exception. (I linked to the vote record, you linked to their statements.)
Today, those Senators are saying they won’t “change the rule”. They are not saying they won’t make a one-time exception again like they just did. They have the power to make a one-time exception if they wish, we know that because they just DID it. These things I say happened did happen.
A one-time exception to a rule is by definition not a “rule change”. But if it’s resorted to whenever, the rule becomes laughable. That part is just my opinion, I concede. Some will solemnly invoke a meaningless rule no matter how many times it’s made inoperative by the people who invoke it and some people will continue to believe in the integrity of the rule and those who claim to follow it.
A number of bills which are not terribly controversial have proceeded without cloture votes. The minority has the option at any time to invoke the 60-vote rule. The majority has the option at any time to suspend it. Whether or not to do this is a political calculation, not a constitutional one.
Debt Ceiling and HR1 are indeed two different things, a fact. Debt Ceiling bills have been passed before with Rs voting with Ds to pass them, a fact. Does fact 1 have any significant bearing on fact 2? That’s a matter of opinion. Enough on this dead horse, another opinion.
Frederick:
But no one is disputing your facts. They are disputing the conclusions you draw from those facts.
The two are quite different. The issues are different. The situations are different.
We are all making predictions about human behavior. Reasonable people differ about such things. You don’t seem to acknowledge any of that.
A detailed knowledge of procedure is useful for the Good Man at civilizational apogee when everybody agrees on the Rules.
A detailed knowledge of procedure is very useful for the Rogue during the downward part of the trajectory.
A detailed knowledge of procedure won’t get the Good Man a drink in the Cattle Car.
A good chunk of late stage civilisational ennui is overthinking stuff. Also it’s tough to have the feedbag ripped away and realise that we’re for the Knackers stat if we don’t bolt the stable.
I wasn’t too upset about the Rs not invoking cloture on the debt ceiling because in general I think the debt ceiling is useless. Congress passes spending bills, and the invoices need to be paid. The solution is for Congress to reduce spending.
@neo:The two are quite different. The issues are different. The situations are different.
They are the same in one respect. That 60 votes are not needed in either case despite the existence of a rule “requiring” 60 votes. That rule may or may not stay on the books, but that rule is ignored whenever they want to ignore it, and a case of the rule being ignored without being changed just happened four weeks ago and by the very people who so loudly commit to not changing the rule.
And the reason I think this similarity is more important than these other differences, is because of how much energy is being put into the debate over whether the rule should be “changed”. A rule that can be set aside whenever it is convenient is not a rule that NEEDS to change. So the promises of people that they will never ever change something they know they don’t need to change sound to me like trying to get away with something.
They are talking about this to distract from something else. I don’t know if it’s about how they will get around the rule to pass the bill, or if it’s just about appeasing their voters for failing to get the bill passed. This amount of chaff can serve either purpose.
What I do know is that promises not to change this rule are worthless from the perspective of whether this bill will ever require 60 votes to pass. If they want to pass it with only 51 votes they will and if they want to pass it by 51 votes without changing the 60 vote “rule” they will, because they do that already whenever they want (and indeed just did). And I’m sure they will loudly brag about keeping the 60-vote “rule” in place if they do, perhaps not five minutes after the bill passes with 51.
In fact that would be a very McConnell move, saying that letting the voting rights bill pass and setting aside the filibuster to do so one time was necessary to preserve the filibuster!
Same shit, different day.
I didn’t make this mess.
I can do better than this.
Someone is not listening. Sad.
Somewhat relevant:
https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2022/01/14/politics-after-clausewitz-by-which-i-mean-politics-today/
“…Lenin is here drawing the corollary of Clausewitz’s famous dictum that “war is the continuation politics by other means.” The corollary is that “politics is a continuation of war by other means.
.
.
After Clausewitz, a serious political party knows that it has the single objective of power accumulation, and that it must therefore use any and every means that help it to achieve that objective. Some of these means are above ground and “political”; some of these means are underground and “militant.” Sometimes it will struggle in a “hot war” fought by means of bullets and bombs; sometimes it will struggle in a “cold war” fought by means of politics and propaganda.
After Clausewitz, a serious political party does ask whether a means to power is right, or legal, or sporting, or gentlemanly. After Clausewitz, it asks only whether a means is expedient.
This is because it wants to win. This is why it is ruthless.
.
.
Lenin was crafty enough to understand that ruthlessness means a willingness to use any means necessary, and that ruthlessness therefore includes a willingness to use means that are legal, respectable and above-board. Because a serious political party aims to win, it is not too pure to engage in criminal conspiracy—and neither is it too pure to engage in legal politics and public institutions.”
The trick is to rip all that ‘Dern Commies’ stuff out of yer Boomer Craniums and focus just on the Making of the Sausage / Mechanics of Power. Gotta avoid the instinctive thought-killing ‘Dern Commies’ reflex whenever you see the word ‘Lenin’. The man was pure all-seeing genius about the Getting of Power. The fact that he wasn’t much use at using it is irrelevant. Usually true. Same went for Mao.
You can have all the virtue in the world, but if you won’t go to the mat with those who oppose you, you lose.
Z misses the point again. throws in the “boomer” just to insult, and rambles about another Vlad and some dead German. Though not Bismarch and his Pomeranians, this time,
BFD Z.
Do you get to vote in Hong Kong or actually have any “rights” out there? Not your country, remember, and neither is the USA. Your CCP masters are more in keeping with Vlad than our leftists and Ds, not that you seem to mind.
But you have a listening problem too, it seems. So continue to pound sand, gravel, cobbles, and boulders; that’s geologist speak, sonny.
Yo Om:
Actually I *do* get to vote here, being a Permanent Resident and all. Frankly I think this is a mistake. As a Metic (look it up) I should not have a vote. And the vast majority of my fellow expats shouldn’t be permitted a pulse let alone the vote. But Universalist Liberalism GloboHomo Poz has infected even this appendage of the PRC. Just a teeny bit, you understand.
I only get to vote for CCP-approved Muppets these days. So I don’t bother.
Your Muppets have to run the gauntlet of the Deep State and the Oligarchs in order to be electable, so I don’t see much difference.
Only difference is that the Government here, whilst being loaded up with time-serving corrupt scum like every government, isn’t fixing to kill me. Yours? Not so much.
Meanwhile I concern myself with life, liberty (in everyday life, I have more than you to speak as i see fit.), and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness being a good rollicking troll.
Frankly I’m lost in the weeds on this one. Along a similar line…
I had a British friend who enjoyed pointing out that the UK has an “uncodified constitution” (whatever that is) and smiling knowingly at the shrewd superiority of their system.
____________________________________________
The Constitution of the United Kingdom or British constitution comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document. Thus, it is known as an uncodified constitution.
This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched.[2] However, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom recognises that there are constitutional principles, including parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy and upholding international law.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom
____________________________________________
Sounds rather tricky.
I remain a fan of the Bill of Rights.
@Huxley:
Walter Bagehot was your man for understanding the mysterious English Constitution.
Until Tony Blair came along and drove a busload of bastardry through it.
Was probably doomed anyway. Whether written or unwritten, these things reflect a state of being at a given time and the people of that time. The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.
Imagine as a thought experiment writing a US Constitution (or a British one) which codifies *exactly* how things *really* work today. Would it sound more like me or Aristotle? Not a happy thought.
Not surprised that Z finds having a vote in Hong Kong is of no value to him, as it is controlled by Xi. Also not surprised that Z projects his disdain globally, because Z is above it all, As do globalists IIRC, they are above it all too.
Cheers, Z.
@Om:
Not floating Above it All at all.
I think of myself more as blossom sprouting from a cow turd.
Beats being a Dung Beetle.
Hope this clarifies the matter, but feel free to invite me to taxonomise more.
Some disadvantages to being neither fish nor fowl. A Chinese would invite you to chow down (see above) and a real Australian would suggest you go visit the taxidermist. Rootless Cosmpolitanism has neutered me!
Right now all this talk about this bill and the filibuster, in and out of the Capital, is the “soap box.” The vote is about eliminating the “ballot box” and making the “soap box” irrelevant. Doing that will box the entire nation in. God help us because it seems no one else will or cares to.
Z pushes his ball of manure about but claims to know nothing about it.
If the Democrats can do this, so can the Republicans.
It’s just theater for Schumer to show he is doing something to mollify the Twitter mob / far left, then the proposed work around gets blocked at the last minute due to some reason / technicality that can’t be bypassed.
The need for 60 votes doesn’t come into play to *bring* the bill to the floor and debate it. The 60 votes will still be necessary to *end debate* and call a vote on the bill itself.
Dave Harsanyi, writing at the NY Post, agrees with Neo, me, and others here. He speculates that Schumer is only doing this useless gesture (we hope it’s useless) to counter a possible Senate primary from Ocasio-Cortez.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/13/hopeless-chuck-schumers-left-hook-fails-him-again-2/
If Sinema is serious about not wanting to further tear the country apart by passing major legislation on a narrow party line vote (her reason for wanting to keep the filibuster), then she should vote against HR1 if it comes to a vote because of some arcane parliamentary maneuver, even if she is in favor of the legislation.
The knowledge that a bill can be passed by substituting the text of a relatively harmless bill with the text of a far more dangerous bill and simply keeping the old title makes me want to make better use of the lamp posts and rope in the Washington, D.C. area. This is a subversion of the democratic process that is much more outrageous than the so-called January 6th insurrection.
John Galt–that’s for sure. I’d feel better about our democracy if I thought voters would seriously punish a party for pulling this scam, regardless of how they felt about the awful merits of the bill used to stuff the empty suit.
ditto the Galt and Laubach comments.
First, we started resisting the British due to taxation without representation.
Then we had the Obamacare “pass it to see what’s in it” garbage, equal to “representation” without representation.
Now it seems we are ending up with legislation (laws) without representation, either.
“A Republic … if you can keep it!” indeed!!
I’m late to this party, having been in Mexico, on a beach, for the last 10 days, but I think the key to remember here is that the “action” taken here was done by the lefty lunatics in Pelosi’s house. They claim to have re-invented the NASA bill and replaced the entire text with HR1.
But that doesn’t mean squat in the Senate, especially with the Parliamentarian having to pass judgement on whether or not this idiotic progressive gambit actually makes a bill magically immune to the rules of the Senate.
Color me utterly unconvinced. Hell, if they actually tried to pull it off, I wouldn’t be surprised to see both Manchin AND Sinema vote against it. You’re not passing squat with 48 votes.
Wendy, the real problem is that if HR1 passes, it won’t really matter who votes for what as the votes that are counted will always go the Democrat’s way.
Kinda weird to see so many people on and on and on about what is or isn’t a rule, or what could or couldn’t be done.
It’s as simple as this – it requires Joe Manchin AND Kristen Sinema to vote both for HR1 and to either temporarily or permanently change the Senate rules to pass HR1.
They’ve been after this for a YEAR. There is no reason on earth to believe, especially after BOTH Sinema and Manchin made it clear they won’t support both measures required to pass HR1 and did so in an all but scorched earth manner.