« on: May 04, 2017, 01:34:23 am »
Ending Filibuster Would Be Short-Sighted
By David Thornton | May 3, 2017, 09:16pm | @captainkudzu
President Trump tweeted yesterday morning that voters should “either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%,” implying that the Senate should go nuclear once again and completely eradicate the filibuster rule. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was quick to respond.
“That will not happen,” McConnell told The Hill and other reporters as he rejected the president’s idea out of hand.
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The filibuster, originally a Dutch term for pirates, goes back to the early days of the Senate per the Senate website. The filibuster was well established by 1841 when Henry Clay (Whig-Ky.) threatened to change Senate rules to allow the majority to vote to end debate. Clay was rebuked by Thomas Hart Benton (Democratic-Republican- Mo.) for his attempt to stifle the Senate’s tradition of unlimited debate.
The Senate did weaken the filibuster in 1917 when adopted Rule 22 which established a cloture vote. A vote of two-thirds of the Senate could end debate on a bill. The filibuster reached its current form in 1975 when the number of votes required for cloture was reduced to 60.
“There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis not interested in changing the way the Senate operates on the legislative calendar,” McConnell said, adding that the move would “fundamentally change the way the Senate has worked for a very long time. We’re not going to do that.”
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http://theresurgent.com/ending-filibuster-would-be-short-sighted/
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No government in the 12,000 years of modern mankind history has led its people into anything but the history books with a simple lesson, don't let this happen to you.
