January 26, 2010

Filibuster Under Fire

By Joseph Smith
Reflecting frustration among the Democrats over their inability to pass a health care reform bill, there has been a clamor on the left for the elimination of the filibuster rule in the Senate.“God didn’t create the filibuster,” Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) pronounced last week. Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, calls the Senate “ominously dysfunctional,” due mainly in Krugman’s eyes to the sixty-vote filibuster rule. Another Times op-ed terms the filibuster “unconstitutional.”A recent Politico column calls the filibuster “the single greatest threat to the Democratic Party’s Progressive agenda.” And the Huffington Post notes that “a coalition of progressive groups and labor organizations have begun laying out a potential campaign to pressure lawmakers to revamp the filibuster rules.”On the legislative front, The Hill reports that Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) plan to introduce...(Read Full Article)