Klobuchar calls for eliminating Senate filibuster to protect abortion rights
Source: CNN
By Chandelis Duster,
(CNN)Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar called for immediate action from Democrats in the wake of the US Supreme Court allowing Texas' restrictive abortion law to stand and said the filibuster should be abolished in order to codify abortion rights protections.
"Now and over the next years, we just will get nowhere if we keep this filibuster in place," the Minnesota Democrat, who has previously come out against ending the filibuster to address issues like voting rights and climate change, told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" Sunday.
"I do not believe an archaic rule should be used to allow us to put our heads in the sand -- to use Justice (Sonia) Sotomayor's words -- to put our heads in the sand and not take action on the important issues," Klobuchar said, calling the Texas law and the Supreme Court's response "an assault on women's health."
If Roe v. Wade were overturned, 22 states have laws to restrict abortion access.
Fourteen states plus DC have laws that protect abortion access without Roe v. Wade.
Note: Data as of September 1, 2021
Source: Guttmacher Institute
Graphic: Janie Boschma, CNN
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week the chamber would take legislative action when the House returns from recess and "bring up Congresswoman Judy Chu's Women's Health Protection Act to enshrine into law reproductive health care for all women across America." But even if a bill on the issue were to pass in the House it is likely to face hurdles in the Senate where Democrats hold a narrow majority and 60 votes are required to break the filibuster. There is no indication 10 Republican senators would side with them on the issue.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/05/politics/amy-klobuchar-texas-abortion-law-cnntv/index.html
msongs
(67,395 posts)ShazzieB
(16,370 posts)Amy's no fool, and she know how the Senate works. She's just sending a message about where SHE stands and what she's going to be/already is working for.
I've noticed that politicians (on both sides) do that kind of thing a lot. Even though they know a thing is going to be very difficult if not impossible, they believe there is value in making their position very clear to their constituents. I think they're probably right.
MurrayDelph
(5,293 posts)the way Republicans, until recently, used Roe v Wade: as an excuse for not actually doing the shit they had promised to do once they were elected.
"We'd really, really, like to , but we can't because of "
Mr.Bill
(24,282 posts)but you'd be giving every republican running for Congress or the presidency a hot-button issue to campaign on. And if they took over they would codify a federal ban on abortion. And they now have a Supreme Court that would support it. That's what needs to be fixed. Expand the SC now.
mopinko
(70,078 posts)they already have those votes.
Celerity
(43,316 posts)it is not happening
That's the problem. The "majority" we currently have in the Senate is doing little more than giving us control of committees.
Celerity
(43,316 posts)POTUS-forwarded nominees (unless they are blocked by Manchin, like Neera Tanden was), etc. But yes, on big reform issues, we are pretty well fucked atm, I do agree.
Dopers_Greed
(2,640 posts)This is like reason #12.
ShazzieB
(16,370 posts)Enough reason to do what?
Celerity
(43,316 posts)PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Celerity
(43,316 posts)There are 48 sponsors of the Women's Health Protection Act in the Senate all of them Democrats. The two exceptions are Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.
Two Republicans Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have a record of supporting abortion rights.
FBaggins
(26,727 posts)Two Democrats who claim to be "pro life" obviously aren't going to consider defending Roe to be a valid reason to get rid of the filibuster.
Two pro-choice Republicans might very well vote for a given bill responding to TX's folly, but they certainly aren't going to kill the filibuster to make it happen.
The voting rights appeal at least makes tactical sense. This one is illogical.
GB_RN
(2,347 posts)Has said hes very pro life. I wouldnt count on him supporting any changes to the filibuster for this, if he hasnt voted to change it for HUGE Democratic agenda things like voting rights.
I AM NOT disparaging him, just restating his own stated positions.
ancianita
(36,023 posts)majority rule democracy will go down over an archaic rule that maintained minority rule in the Senate.
KPN
(15,642 posts)every thing!
monkeyman1
(5,109 posts)moscow mitch like's it & that's the best damn reason to trash it !
BlueIdaho
(13,582 posts)And not a single reason to save it.
Lucky Luciano
(11,253 posts)MurrayDelph
(5,293 posts)He'll wait until the Democrats try to use it.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Slammer
(714 posts)McConnell didn't trust Trump and pointing at the filibuster was a convenient excuse to use whenever he needed it to keep from going along with every harebrained idea which entered Trump's head.
Can you imagine the hell McConnell would have gone through with Trump as president if the filibuster hadn't existed?
I mean, it would have been funny watching McConnell squirm. But it wouldn't have been fun....
Rollo
(2,559 posts)On the one hand, it can help protect the interests of the minority against the sometimes destructive interests of the majority. On the other hand, it can help protect the interests of the minority against the sometimes destructive interests of the majority.
It's an old conundrum: how to elect a moderate majority that is essentially filibuster-proof, while at the same time avoiding polarizing the electorate to the point where division is the order of the day and nothing of substance gets accomplished.
The 2022 Congressional elections should tell us a lot about where this nation is headed. Hopefully it will be into the light, not into the void.
Celerity
(43,316 posts)The filibuster hurts only Senate Democrats -- and Mitch McConnell knows that. The numbers don't lie.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/filibuster-hurts-only-senate-democrats-mitch-mcconnell-knows-n1255787
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Cutting off debate in the Senate so legislation can be voted on is done through a procedure called "cloture," which requires three-fifths of the Senate or 60 votes to pass. I went through the Senate's cloture votes for the last dozen years from the 109th Congress until now, tracking how many of them failed because they didn't hit 60 votes. It's not a perfect method of tracking filibusters, but it's as close as we can get. It's clear that Republicans have been much more willing and able to tangle up the Senate's proceedings than Democrats. More important, the filibuster was almost no impediment to Republican goals in the Senate during the Trump administration. Until 2007, the number of cloture votes taken every year was relatively low, as the Senate's use of unanimous consent agreements skipped the need to round up supporters. While a lot of the cloture motions did fail, it was still rare to jump that hurdle at all and even then, a lot of the motions were still agreed to through unanimous consent. That changed when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and McConnell first became minority leader. The number of cloture motions filed doubled compared to the previous year, from 68 to 139.
Things only got more dire as the Obama administration kicked off in 2009, with Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Of the 91 cloture votes taken during the first two years of President Barack Obama's first term, 28 or 30 percent failed. All but three failed despite having majority support. The next Congress was much worse after the GOP took control of the House: McConnell's minority blocked 43 percent of all cloture votes taken from passing. Things were looking to be on the same course at the start of Obama's second term. By November 2013, 27 percent of cloture votes had failed even though they had majority support. After months of simmering outrage over blocked nominees grew, Senate Democrats triggered the so-called nuclear option, dropping the number of votes needed for cloture to a majority for most presidential nominees, including Cabinet positions and judgeships. The next year, Republicans took over the Senate with Obama still in office. By pure numbers, the use of the filibuster rules skyrocketed under the Democratic minority: 63 of 123 cloture votes failed, or 51 percent. But there's a catch: Nothing that was being voted on was covered by the new filibuster rules. McConnell had almost entirely stopped bringing Obama's judicial nominees to the floor, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
McConnell defended the filibuster on the Senate floor last week, reminding his counterparts of their dependence on it during President Donald Trump's term. "Democrats used it constantly, as they had every right to," he said. "They were happy to insist on a 60-vote threshold for practically every measure or bill I took up." Except, if anything, use of the filibuster plummeted those four years. There are two main reasons: First, and foremost, the amount of in-party squabbling during the Trump years prevented any sort of coordinated legislative push from materializing. Second, there wasn't actually all that much the Republicans wanted that needed to get past the filibuster in its reduced state after the 2013 rule change. McConnell's strategy of withholding federal judgeships from Obama nominees paid off in spades, letting him spend four years stuffing the courts with conservatives. And when Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was filibustered, McConnell didn't hesitate to change the rules again. Trump's more controversial nominees also sailed to confirmation without any Democratic votes. Legislatively, there were only two things Republicans really wanted: tax cuts and repeal of Obamacare. The Trump tax cuts they managed through budget reconciliation, a process that allows budget bills to pass through the Senate with just a majority vote.
Republicans tried to do the same for health care in 2017 to avoid the filibuster, failing only during the final vote, when Sen. John McCain's "no" vote denied them a majority. The repeal wouldn't have gone through even if the filibuster had already been in the grave. As a result, the number of successful filibusters plummeted: Over the last four years, an average of 7 percent of all cloture motions failed. In the last Congress, 298 cloture votes were taken, a record. Only 26 failed. Almost all of the votes that passed were on nominees to the federal bench or the executive branch. In fact, if you stripped out the nominations considered in the first two years of Trump's term, the rate of failure would be closer to 15 percent but on only 70 total votes. There just wasn't all that much for Democrats to get in the way of with the filibuster, which is why we didn't hear much complaining from Republicans. Today's Democrats aren't in the same boat. Almost all of the big-ticket items President Joe Biden wants to move forward require both houses of Congress to agree. And given McConnell's previous success in smothering Obama's agenda for political gain, his warnings about the lack of "concern and comity" that Democrats are trying to usher in ring hollow. In actuality, his warnings of "wait until you're in the minority again" shouldn't inspire concern from Democrats. So long as it applies only to legislation, the filibuster is a Republicans-only weapon. There's nothing left, it seems, for the GOP to fear from it aside from its eventual demise.
snip
no_hypocrisy
(46,080 posts)her vote to install Brett Kavanaugh.
This should be her vote.
PatrickforB
(14,570 posts)issue.
And, of course, forgive me if I ALSO mention healthcare in general...
H2Oart
(97 posts)I believe women's rights bill must originate in the house by being attached to the budget amendments. I hope Speaker Pelosi says no women's rights, no money.