{"id":3216,"date":"2010-10-28T01:26:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T08:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3216"},"modified":"2010-10-28T01:26:41","modified_gmt":"2010-10-28T08:26:41","slug":"obama-on-the-filibuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/28\/obama-on-the-filibuster\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama on the Filibuster"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Obama invited five prominent lefty bloggers to the White House for a chat.  Overall it was a productive conversation, but I\u2019ve chosen to focus on one small part of it.  Most of the gridlock we have experienced over the last 20 months stems from Republican misuse of the filibuster.  Assuming that Democrats hold the Senate, they have a one day opportunity to change the rule with a simple majority vote.  Here is the discussion on that subject.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"obama\" Q On that same issue, because a lot of progressives — and you said you\u2019re not the king — well, a lot of progressives feel that senators, especially in the minority they think — we call them the House of Lords. And are you in favor of any form of filibuster reform?<\/strong> Because there are several bills being talked about. And there is a unique time that — by the way, we\u2019re also very happy that Vice President Biden went down to do a fundraiser for Alan Grayson. He\u2019s the type of Democrat that speaks out and fights. And that\u2019s what the progressive community really likes.<\/p>\n

But he also might have the opportunity in January to be — to help out. And can we get — or are you for any of the bills that are out there to support — to change this rule that is paralyzing the administration?<\/p>\n

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I\u2019ve got to be careful about not looking like I\u2019m big-footing Congress. We\u2019ve got separate branches of government. The House and the Senate have their own rules<\/strong>. And they are very protective of those prerogatives<\/strong>. I will say that as just an observer of our political process that if we do not fix how the filibuster is used in the Senate, then it is going to be very difficult for us over the long term to compete in a very fast moving global environment<\/font><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What keeps me up at night is China, Germany, India, Brazil — they\u2019re moving. They make decisions, we\u2019re going to pursue clean energy, and the next thing you know they\u2019ve cornered half the clean energy market; we\u2019re going to develop high-speed rail in the span of five years — suddenly they\u2019ve got high-speed rail lines going; we\u2019re going to promote exports, here\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do — boom, they get going. And if we can\u2019t sort of execute on key issues that will determine our competitiveness over the long term, we\u2019re going to fall behind — we are going to fall behind.<\/p>\n

And the filibuster is not part of the Constitution. The filibuster, if you look at the history of it, may have arisen purely by accident because somebody didn\u2019t properly apply Robert\u2019s Rules of Procedure and forgot to get a provision in there about what was required to close debate. And folks figured out very early, this could be a powerful tool. It was used as a limited tool throughout its history<\/strong>. Sadly, the primary way it was used was to prevent African Americans from achieving civil rights.<\/p>\n

But setting aside that sordid aspect of its history, it was used in a very limited fashion. The big debates, the big changes that we had historically around everything from establishing public schools to the moon launch to Social Security, they weren\u2019t subject to the filibuster. And I\u2019m sympathetic to why the minority wants to keep it. And in fairness, Democrats, when we were in the minority, used it on occasion to blunt actions that we didn\u2019t think were appropriate by the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Q On occasion.<\/p>\n

THE PRESIDENT: And in fairness, there were a whole bunch of folks here who were already writing blogs at the time who were saying, filibuster, block them, do anything you can to stop them. And so if we\u2019re going to call for reform, it\u2019s got to be with open eyes and an understanding that that also means that if Republicans are in power, it\u2019s easier for them to move their agendas for<\/strong>ward. But my general view is, what that does at least is it opens it up to serious public debate. Things don\u2019t get bogged down in the kinds of procedural nonsense that makes it just hard for us to do business. I mean, during the financial crisis, half my Treasury slots weren\u2019t filled — couldn\u2019t get them filled. And this is a time when we were worried that the entire financial system was melting down. So that\u2019s — I believe it\u2019s something that we\u2019ve got to take seriously. All right?\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars<\/a>><\/p>\n

I agree with most of what he has to say.  I\u2019m certain that, if Republicans get control, they will change the rules.  It\u2019s better to change them on our watch to accomplish the things for America that can keep Republicans out of power.<\/font><\/p>\n

The article contains a complete transcript of the meeting.  I encourage you to click through to it, because it is well worth the read.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama invited five prominent lefty bloggers to the White House for a chat.  Overall it was a productive conversation, but I\u2019ve chosen to focus on one small part of it.  Most of the gridlock we have experienced over the last 20 months stems from Republican misuse of the filibuster.  Assuming that Democrats hold the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}