Filibuster reform originated with...a blogger. Congratulations to fellow blogger David Waldman (@KagroX) today
http://t.co/...
— @SamWangPhD
I remember when @KagroX was an uninformed and naive cheeto-munchin’ blogger when he first advocated for the reform we got this week.
— @markos
There were only, like, a billion other people vital to making this work. And Twitter's the worst possible place to try to name them.
— @KagroX
David in action on Thursday:
@KagroX What other weapons does McConnell have besides Motion to Adjourn to stall the vote?
— @byelin
@byelin He'll be able to appeal rulings of the chair, move to reconsider votes, move to divide questions if complex motions are made, etc.
— @KagroX
@KagroX Cool, so we can all get lunch.
— @byelin
@byelin Maybe. They might just rather give up and not extend the "Watch Us Lose" show.
— @KagroX
CNN:
And credit for the nuclear option goes to...
The power of the Republican minority was outsized, filibuster opponents say. And filibuster reform became their mission.
Daily Kos blogger David Waldman started to drum up support online. "I knew that this would be an issue because I had seen mounting threats of obstructionism on the Republican side," Waldman told CNN.
He wrote extensively about filibuster reform in 2005, another time when the Senate was mired in partisan gridlock. At that time it was over President George W. Bush's judicial nominees and Democrats were in the minority. Republicans threatened the nuclear option then, but never acted. Eventually, the bipartisan "Gang of 14" senators cut a deal that calmed things down...
I might be destroying the Senate," Waldman said on his radio program Thursday just before the Reid pulled the trigger. But he quickly dismissed that assessment: "But it kind of sucks now."
@knck1es The really great part was that I got the reporter to listen to the radio show!
— @KagroX
This goes back to 2005, and our old blog,
The Next Hurrah:
Your Nuclear Option Resource Center: Monday Edition
Dana also summed up illuminating posts on the topic by himself, RonK and Marcy Wheeler, but the key posts were David's.
More politics and policy below the fold.
From Dana Milbank, the truly stupidest thing you'll read on the Senate rules change:
The Democrats’ naked power grab
Reid was right that Republican obstruction has been intolerable; half of the 168 filibusters of executive and judicial nominations in the nation’s history, he noted, have come during the Obama presidency.
But Reid’s remedy — calling a simple- majority vote to undo more than two centuries of custom — has created a situation in which the minority leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.), is expected to use the minority’s remaining powers to gum up the works, and to get revenge when Republicans regain the majority.
“If a Senate majority demonstrates it can make such a change once, there are no rules which binds a majority, and all future majorities will feel free to exercise the same power, not just on judges and executive appointments but on legislation,” Levin said Thursday. Quoting one of the Senate’s giants, Arthur Vandenberg, Levin said his fellow Democrats had sacrificed “vital principle for the sake of momentary convenience.”
If it was possible to make things even worse in Washington, Reid just did it.
One of the smartest things you'll read, same topic, same newspaper, from
Ryan Cooper:
Pundits bemoan end of filibuster
What’s the argument in defense of the GOP power grab? Notably, pundits who are bemoaning the Dem decision to go nuclear haven’t been offering one. Instead, they admit that Republican obstruction was unjustified, but still blame the Democrats simply because they supposedly worsened D.C partisanship by doing something in response to that unjustified GOP obstruction. Both sides should have come to a compromise, they say. But what is to be done when one side’s position is that important judicial vacancies shall remain empty simply because filling them would help advance Obama’s regulatory agenda? They don’t say.
Another smart take from
Jonathan Bernstein:
Placing the blame on Harry Reid and the Democrats, however, gets it very, very wrong.
What has to be understood is that there was a “power grab” in the Senate. It was a power grab by the minority party. Or, to put it more accurately, a “control grab.” Republicans, defeated in the presidential election and with only 45 seats, attempted to change the de facto rules of the game by preventing President Obama from filling several positions, with the final breaking point being the blockade of D.C. Circuit nominees. That is, they attempted to control the Senate — not to influence outcomes, but to control the Senate — as a minority. That couldn’t hold, and it didn’t.
Every pundit who claims that what happened in the Senate is bad because obvious current dysfunction might be replaced by
someday somehow something bad needs to understand something: Reid's response is the only correct one. Blame Republicans for their obstructionism. They brought it on themselves. But we have known this for some time. Here's the classic
Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. from Ornstein and Mann, April 27, 2012.
USA Today editorial:
Democrats' decision Thursday to change Senate rules so they can confirm presidential nominees without Republican support is sure to worsen partisanship in a body that is already dangerously dysfunctional.
Republicans instantly promised to retaliate, and important national business — the current budget negotiations, for example, or attempts to head off another government shutdown — could suffer.
Even so, the Senate's GOP minority brought the rules change, known as the "nuclear option," on itself. The Republicans' repeated abuse of the filibuster to block highly qualified nominees simply because they were picked by a Democratic president had left Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., with little choice.
While critics of the law pretend to care, here's what's at stake (
CNN):
Cancer survivor: Obamacare got me covered
As a 36-year cancer survivor, I am watching with great interest as the debate rages over whether the Affordable Care Act strengthens the individual insurance market, as the law's supporters contend, or dismantles it, as critics say. Having been repeatedly denied health coverage I needed and wanted to buy because of my pre-existing condition, I know that provisions of the law can dramatically improve the quality and cost of insurance for people shopping for coverage on their own.
LA Times with a reality check:
President Obama's healthcare law, struggling to survive its botched rollout, now depends more than ever on insurance companies, doctor groups and hospitals — major forces in the industry that are committed to the law's success despite persistent tensions with the White House.
Many healthcare industry leaders are increasingly frustrated with the Obama administration's clumsy implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Nearly all harbor reservations about parts of the sweeping law. Some played key roles in killing previous Democratic efforts to widen healthcare coverage.
But since 2010, they have invested billions of dollars to overhaul their businesses, design new insurance plans and physician practices and develop better ways to monitor quality and control costs.
WaPo:
After anemic enrollment in the new health insurance marketplaces in October, states have begun to see a much faster pace of sign-ups in November, prompting health policy researchers to announce a “November surge.”
By the end of October, the federal government had counted 106,000 people enrolled into private coverage through the 14 new state-based marketplaces and the federal marketplace, a small percentage of the projected half-million sign-ups.
By mid-November, though, with the state marketplaces reporting fresh data, that number had just about doubled to more than 200,000.
“The latest enrollment figures from the 14 states that are running their own marketplaces show that enrollment has climbed to at least 200,000 people nationwide,” Sara Collins and Tracy Garber wrote Friday for the Commonwealth Fund. “This latest figure does not account for any new enrollment in the federal marketplaces in 36 states, which is also likely to have increased since early November.”
See
Joan McCarter's post, same story.
Jonathan Cohn:
But readmissions aside, just how much of the [health] spending slowdown is really because of Obamacare? Nobody knows for sure and, honestly, it will be some time before anybody can make anything approaching a definitive judgment. As experts will quickly tell you, at least two other factors are also restraining health care costs. One is the recession and its lingering effects, which has left people poorer. When people have less money to spend, they are less quick to seek medical care. It’s basic economics. The other is a shift in private insurance, towards policies that include higher out-of-pocket spending. This, too, is making people more reluctant to get medical care. (Conservatives will take this as validation higher out-of-pocket spending can slow spending—a fair point!) Still, the majority of experts now believe Obamacare is at least partly responsible for the slowdown. They think it is encouraging permanent, structural changes in medical care—the kind that will generate more and more savings over time.
The slowdown's effects are largely invisible. They take the form of premium and tax increases that people will never have to pay. But the effects seem very real—and, if so, they constitute a bona fide policy success, the kind that even many experts once doubted was possible. It may not show up in the polls. But it will show up in people's wallets.
More politics and policy below the fold.