The HELP Committee oversees the coronavirus response. Its chairman was Lamar Alexander, who chose not to run for reelection. As I understand it, until a new organizing resolution is passed, the committee has no chair and can’t convene, which means it can’t hold hearings to confirm Xavier Bacerra, the nominee for HHS secretary, a job which may be important in dealing with COVID.
Manchin has stated that the priority should be the COVID vaccine and that this is more important than stimulus. This should be his trigger point for filibuster reform. I don’t think he’s going to go for the full nuclear option and you also have to worry about Sinema, King, and Feinstein, so I think the obvious compromise is allowing the filibuster to stand but guaranteeing that a few key bills will get through to a floor vote.
Feinstein has to go. I mean like right now. Tomorrow. The fuck are these people doing?
Schumer suggested multiple times that she step down for the ACB hearing with dignity, and the reason he did it multiple times is because she didn’t recall meeting with him. She doesn’t even know what fucking planet she’s on.
committees don’t change numbers until there’s a deal so I believe dems only chair the ethics one right now (that is because of roberts retiring) Don’t know why either I just read it. No deal, no gavels is a problem. You have to make some sort of deal at 50/50 unfortunately.
god damnit Maine. all you had to do was no susan collins and that shit isn’t happening but nope
you can still filibuster and annoy as minority leader, schumer stonewalled the hell out of the trump cabinet
Sanders on Wednesday defended his casual inauguration attire, telling CBS News’s Gayle Kingin an interview that he was more worried about warmth than appearance when choosing his outfit that day.
“In Vermont, we know something about the cold,” Sanders explained, “and we’re not so concerned about good fashion."
Lmao wtf so either no ending the filibuster or dems dont get committee chairs? Thats fucking insanity. So mitch can just refuse to give them committee chairs if he wants? This fucking country.
Is it set in writing or can dems agree then nuke the filibuster anyways?
well I’m sure they could do the latter but I think that’s a bad idea, they can’t get the big stuff in now anyway and R’s are gonna eventually get the senate back
don’t know why it’s fucking insanity, senate is only 50-50 split. Majority is essentially just the tiebreaker not any actual margin.
if you’re arguing there should be rules on this instead of having to rely on agreements, well yeah but that was a norm people just did before and wasn’t a problem. There’s many senate dems who agree with you though.
Reality is this is all borked, they still only have one cabinet member in 2 days for gosh sakes, plus the trial looming which is gonna waste a lot of time. Biden isn’t wasting much time on his end, bunch of EO’s and firing people left and right.
one holdup is the senate is 50-50 so they have to strike a deal before dems can chair the rest of the committees, no deal by rule they stay the same as before
so if they want to get things that normally need to go through committees first, (though they are slowly going through the cabinet, very slowly) they have to deal with mitch, then deal with mitch after that just to pass the darn thing
if they don’t they’re certainly risking very little if not absolutely nothing gets done and well we already know what happened last time they did that
The Republicans will filibuster the organizing resolution. Schumer does not have the votes yet for the nuclear option, so can’t overcome that. If the situation were reversed, McConnell would have the votes.
If Schumer holds fast, will centrists like Manchin and King agree to nuke the filibuster or will they choose to join the Republicans? If the latter, does Schumer need to compromise or should he dare them to leave?
Absolutely fucking not. We are not starting this administration by instituting rules drafted by Mitch. A lot can change in two years. Otherwise, if Manchin is a hard no why does Mitch care about the rule change?
Dare them to leave. Nothing that gets through a filibuster proof senate right now is worth doing - and the stuff that IS will get done anyway. Make Mitch spend two years not confirming secretaries. Trump used “acting” secretaries for a million positions.
Jesus fucking Christ we hit runner runner one outers to take the senate and within a week we’re back to Mitch fully running the show.
This is so ridiculous. The academic / game theory literature is very clear, the only option in dealing with someone like Mitch McConnell is retaliation. Part of me is glad he’s forcing the Democrats to confront his obstruction right away, but if they don’t have the votes he will do it with impunity.