The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: mystery-ak on November 21, 2013, 09:13:05 pm
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/191102-obama-hails-filibuster-changes (http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/191102-obama-hails-filibuster-changes)
Obama hails filibuster changes
By Amie Parnes and Justin Sink - 11/21/13 02:25 PM EST
President Obama hailed the Senate’s move to gut the minority party’s filibuster powers, saying it would end obstruction in the upper chamber.
In an appearance at the White House, Obama argued the Senate GOP’s recent use of the filibuster was not normal and was never intended by the nation’s founders.
He said “enough is enough” and applauded Senate Democrats for changing the body’s rules to prevent a filibuster on nominations other than to the Supreme Court.
“I support the step that a majority of Senators took to change the way Washington does business,” Obama said. “I realize neither party has been blameless for these tactics ... But today's pattern of obstruction just isn't normal.”
The 52-48 vote was triggered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who invoked the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules on the filibuster with a majority vote.
The White House and Democrats have been frustrated that Republicans have blocked a string of administration nominations, including three nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Democrats said the rule change was necessary after unprecedented obstruction from the Republican minority, with White House aides noting that the GOP had blocked nearly as many nominees during the Obama presidency as through the rest of American history.
The White House has also repeatedly noted that the president's judicial nominees waited about twice as long, on average, as those offered by former President George W. Bush.
Republicans argued that Democrats used the same arguments to block appointees of President George W. Bush when they were in the Senate minority.
They also accused Democrats of trying to distract attention from the rollout of ObamaCare, which has led to falling poll numbers for Obama.
The move by Reid allowed the White House to change topic, after the administration has spent weeks on defense over the botched healthcare rollout.
Obama said the gridlock in Congress “has not served the cause of justice. In fact, it has undermined it.”
“Public service is not a game,” he said. “It's a privilege.”
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/364534/obama-flip-flops-nuclear-option-andrew-johnson (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/364534/obama-flip-flops-nuclear-option-andrew-johnson)
Obama Flip-Flops on Nuclear Option
By Andrew Johnson
November 21, 2013 2:21 PM
President Obama expressed his support for Harry Reid’s decision to invoke the nuclear option because the current “pattern of obstruction is not normal.” “For the sake of future generations, we can’t let it become normal,” he said at a press conference on Thursday shortly after the Senate’s vote.
The president argued that the Founding Fathers did not design the rules “in what is supposed to the world’s most deliberative body” to be used in the way Republicans have towards executive nominations. He went on to say that neither Republicans nor Democrats have been blameless in their employment of the tactic, but that its use has escalated on the GOP’s watch.
The president has changed his tune on the nuclear option since his time in the Senate. While serving in the chamber, he warned in 2005 that the nuclear option was “more about power than about fairness” and an effort to “change the rules in the middle of the game.”
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Of course he does.
Rules are only rules when they go your way.
Now he can nominate and put in place as many unqualified radicals as he wants. **nononono*
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Well, make this shitbird eat his own words:
Everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster – if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.
I urge my Republican colleagues not to go through with changing these rules . . . I sense that talk of the nuclear option is more about power than about fairness. I believe some of my colleagues propose this rules change because they believe they can get away with it rather than because they know it’s good for our democracy.
What (Americans) don’t expect is for one Party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game, so that they can make all the decision while the other Party is told to sit down and keep quiet.
- Senator Obama, 2005
so much for his "democracy".