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The Senate, but not the House, has a filibuster rule. If a minority of Senators do not like a bill they can deny the rest a vote. It takes 60 percent of Senators to close consideration and vote. This is true despite the fact that it only takes 51 votes to pass legislation. Why is this?
What are some of the effects of Senate special rules? First since it takes a “super majority” to vote to allow a bill to be debated and voted upon, legislation that the majority of Senators (or the majority of Americans) want may never even get a vote.
I have carefully researched the Constitution and discovered that nothing in that document requires that the Senate have a “super majority” for anything other than overriding vetoes, amending the Constitution or Impeaching Federal officials.
How has the Senate become a barrier to legislation? Seems that the problem is their own rules – rules it invented itself. So, think about it Why would any Senator want to deny action on major legislation?
These actions give each individual senator a lot of power. This is power never intended in the constitution. This is power that attracts big money from special interest groups. This is the power that provides many thousands of dollars of “donations” to Senators who will agree to use the power to support the interests of big business, big banks, or big healthcare companies.
These special rules explain why our Congress accomplishes so little. Do most senators serve the people that elected them? I think not. I think that most senators serve the people who pay them – big businesses, big labor, big healthcare companies, and big banks, and they hide behind their own rules to keep this power. The “rules” have become more important than the people’s business.
I am embarrassesd for our nation that the Senate of the United States has reached such a low point in morality.
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Larry said,
December 14, 2009 @ 10:30 am
The party in power is afraid to change the rules because they may gain be the minority party and won’t want the majority to ram something down their throat simply because they have more votes. Do Senate rules trump the Constitution? Of course, nothing says the Senate can’t have rules. The Constitution is so non-specific that it really doesn’t say how the government will operate. There is no Cabinet in the Constitution and it doesn’t say how large the Supreme Court shall be.
Opa said,
December 24, 2009 @ 7:16 pm
Larry,
Of course you are right, there are many concepts not mentioned in the Constitution. So what? If any action or inaction results in lower civil rights, the courts can declare it not constitutional. If any such action prevents what we now need to secure individual rights, property, or liberty, then we are expected to fight the action and pass a law or ask for court interpretation.
The Constitution very carefully set up a system to protect rights and potential problems seen at the time it was first adopted. Among those ideas was the concept of balancing power. No state or group of states could take over power simply because they were bigger and had more population. To guard against total rule by the populous states, the Senate was created with each state having two votes. That lead to some balance. The large population states could pass a law that was harmful to the small population states, but it would be reversed in the Senate. Good idea – balance.
Now we have the Senate, already powerful for the small population states, inventing rules that upset the balance. The smallest 16 states with less than 20 percent of the population can prevent the biggest 26 states with over 60 percent of the population from acting for their people. This “abuse” was never intended. Majority rule is a rule for a reason. What we now have is the tyranny of the minority.
Keri Wyatt Kent said,
December 29, 2009 @ 3:55 pm
Hi
thanks for your kind review of my book on amazon. we are doing a blog tour (where bloggers post reviews, interviews, etc.) and I wondered if you would like to participate? We’d be glad to send you a book which you can give away to one of your readers.
thanks
Keri Wyatt Kent
author, Simple Compassion
Hotel executive said,
June 25, 2010 @ 4:42 am
The Constitution very carefully set up a system to protect rights and potential problems seen at the time it was first adopted. Among those ideas was the concept of balancing power. No state or group of states could take over power simply because they were bigger and had more population. To guard against total rule by the populous states, the Senate was created with each state having two votes. That lead to some balance. The large population states could pass a law that was harmful to the small population states, but it would be reversed in the Senate. Good idea – balance.
+1