We can’t let immigrants in because parliament. World’s Oldest Democracy, ladies and gentlemen. Great shining beacon for all those yearning to be free.
Senate Parliamentarian is apparently the USA’s equivalent of Black Rod, only way less cool.
Weird how West Virginia Senator and Parliamentarian somehow become the most powerful people in the world when Dems are in charge.
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The Sergeant at Arms is the equivalent of the Black Rod. The parliamentarian is more like the clerk of the parliaments.
She’s basically right, though.
OK but who fucking cares, tho. I’ve been following politics for an embarrassingly long time and I don’t recall ever hearing about this parliamentarian or about major initiatives getting cockblocked because of parliamentary rules. afaict the parliamentarian’s rulings are completely non-binding so this is just Dems self-owning like they always do.
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You may have followed politics for a long time, but I feel that unawareness of the parliamentarian shows a lack of depth in your knowledge.
Republicans also get cockblocked by the parliamentarian, like when they tried to include a repeal of the Johnson Amendment in a reconciliation bill a few years ago.
Reconciliation bills are supposed to have a very narrow focus dealing with spending and revenue. The problem isn’t that the parliamentarian is keeping both parties from including extraneous topics in reconciliation bills; the problem is that the system is so broken–with Republican strategy being to prevent Democrats from ever accomplishing anything–that Democrats have to resort to trying to bend the rules to accomplish things that need to be done.
Reliance on the parliamentarian is actually rational behavior by the Senate. Relying on an expert to determine proper procedure means that the Senators themselves don’t have to become parliamentary experts and can focus their time on other matters. (Whether Senators are dedicating themselves to more important things is a separate question.)
The parliamentarian’s rulings are non-binding in the same way that your mechanic’s opinions on what you need to get fixed are non-binding, assuming you trust your mechanic and they have a long record of being good at their job. A lot of the complaints about the parliamentarian strike me as the political equivalent of people doing their own research on COVID. The office of the parliamentarian was created and evolved for a reason. It’s wrong to throw that away just because you don’t like the outcome. People should get vaccinated and members of Congress should listen to their parliamentarians.
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They can replace the person until they get someone who agrees with them, and there is no other check on that.
So, looking for the Robert Bork of parliamentarians?
“Reconciliation” is not something that is either in the Constitution nor something that is actually important on its own, unlike the independence of the Justice Department. It is strictly a fiction created by the Senate for its own purposes at the Senate’s whim. The majority can change its function at any time, and for any reason. It’s also not something I expect Republicans to actually respect or adhere to when inconvenient.
The Justice Department isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, either.
Reconciliation may not be in the Constitution, but it is in the US legal code. If Congress doesn’t want to follow the law, it should change it.
Republicans have respected the parliamentarian’s rulings. There’s a reason why Nelson Rockfeller in 1975 is cited as the last time a VP overruled the parliamentarian as presiding officer of the Senate. Even when Republicans dismissed Robert Dove, they still abided by his rulings. I’m pretty sure that nothing changed under his replacement.
Anyways, this all seems performative because I highly doubt Manchin ever votes to overrule the parliamentarian, even if it would allow a bill that he or his donors want.
Yeah it’s this. Right wing media would freak out, thus Manchin and Cinema would never vote for it. It’s even possible dems brought it to them and they said hell no
And reconciliation is only needed to work around the filibuster.
The eDems got where they are with slavish devotion to norms and procedures. Because of the psychological dynamics it’s literally impossible to convince them that slavish devotion to norms and procedures will be their downfall. Most of them have been playing the game forever and it’s all they know. Pelosi’s dad was a congressman and she started working for a congressman right out of university. Her whole life has been about learning the ins and outs of norms and procedures and she has been handsomely rewarded for that. Schumer went to law school and passed the bar and literally never practiced law - he went immediately into politics and his whole life has been … learning the ins and outs of norms and procedures and he has been handsomely rewarded for that.
There is just no way that they can pivot at this point. They aren’t just slavishly devoted to the system. They are the system.
Republicans don’t handcuff themselves like this. After the election last year they basically all just thought “Hey, wait a minute, what if we just, like, don’t recognize the election outcome?”
They don’t want to win. They’re corrupt as fuck. They didn’t achieve anything remotely threatening to corporations when they had 58-60 senate seats. They’re always “one vote short” or some stupid ass made up procedural hurdle away. Don’t fall for it. Stop letting them hide behind faux naïveté.
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They fired him because he wouldn’t let their tax cuts through and replaced him with someone who would, so in the most literal sense “nothing changed” in that they respected the new guy’s rulings but it’s easy to do when you put your guy in. Also, the parliamentarian has been overruled since 1975 at least twice that I can think of off the top of my head. It’s why you don’t need 60 votes anymore for judges, cabinet positions, and SCOTUS.
Totally agree. What I’m getting at is that I am not sure that their naivete about the threat of fascism is faux. I think they are certain that if they lose congress and the presidency they’ll just go right back to having the Rs lower taxes again and resume lobbing angry letters at the Rs and having press conferences about how concerned they are. They have way too much faith in the power of US institutions to fend off full on one party ethnofascism. When it comes, they will be genuinely shocked.
Agree 100%. They’re going to be arguing procedure right up to the moment they’re dumped into the re-education camps.
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I’m working with a small group of people who want to create an independent redistricting commission in Florida. They are nice, well-intentioned people, but they are really way too committed to democratic norms, imo. I raised issues with their method of selecting the committee and pointed out that in the system they had drawn up, the power between the groups was evenly balanced and in the event that one person from each of the three groups (Dems, Republicans, and independents/nonparty) wouldn’t sign off on any redistricting plan, then it kicked it to the courts to draw the maps. I pointed out that the Republicans in Florida have stacked the Florida Supreme Court, and so it will be easy for them to game the system by refusing to sign off on any plan that took power away from the Republicans and kicking it to the court which will keep the status quo intact. They asked what my solution was, and I said to give the minority party control of drawing the maps, that would ensure the majority party couldn’t lock in power in perpetuity, and at most they could secure power for 10 years, then it would be handed over to another party (which I still think is the only way effective way to handle redistricting). They basically acted like I’d suggested the 3/5ths Compromise and said that is the most undemocratic idea they had ever heard of. Then they basically said oh, I’m sure we will be able to peel off a vote or two from Republicans so that the S Court won’t have control. It’s pure wishcasting.
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To be fair politics was a completely different game back then. Nuking the filibuster would have been unthinkable. It took all those years of obstruction from Republicans to wake people up and want dems to be more aggressive. Dems were way more terrified of critism from right wing media back then, and they actually thought there were a ton of moderates they could convince and thats what the elections were determined on.
Even Republicans were surprised by the depth of depravity of their voter base and how they would vote for them no matter what. Lindsey thought Trump was going to get crushed in 2016 and the party would be doomed. Almost all politicians thought that, because nobody really knew how fucked America was.
I’m sure some political viewers had the insight, but they were ignored and thought to be fringe loons