Franken’s Rule Change Would Put Burden on 41 Senators FilibusteringBy: David Dayen - FDL
Thursday January 6, 2011 11:26 am
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Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has put a new twist on the Senate filibuster reform effort. He’s a cosponsor of the Udall/Merkley/Harkin plan to change the Senate rules. But he added a one-page tweak to the rules that would place the burden more on the entity doing the filibustering than the entity trying to break the filibuster. Here’s the entire change:
SECTION 1. AMENDMENT TO THE STANDING RULES OF THE SENATE.
The second undesignated paragraph of paragraph 2 of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate is amended by striking ‘‘And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn’’ and inserting ‘‘And if that question is decided in the affirmative and there are not negative votes by more than two-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn’’.
What that means is that, instead of needing 60 votes to break a filibuster, you would need 41 votes to sustain it. This would actually be somewhat meaningful. There have been multiple instances where the majority has been unable to get one of their people back to Washington in time to break a filibuster, or where one Senator had passed away. Think about the entire several months when Franken was still fighting out the election in Minnesota, and the Senate had a 59-40 split. Under these rules, the majority wouldn’t have needed another Republican to break filibusters; it would just have had to stop one of its members from shifting to the other side.
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More:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/01/06/frankens-rule-change-would-put-burden-on-41-senators-filibustering/:patriot:
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