Sunday, January 16, 2022

Who? Mitch McConnell???

"If my colleague tries to break the Senate to silence those millions of Americans, we will make their voices heard in this chamber in ways that are more inconvenient for the majority and this White House than what anybody has seen in living memory,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

The threat was an echo of McConnell’s 2021 promise to facilitate “a completely scorched-earth Senate” should the legislative filibuster be removed or altered. Hard as it may seem to believe, there are ways the already lethargic, dysfunctional Senate could be made even slower and more frustrating to both its members and a public that expects it to pass legislation. The question is whether McConnell would be willing to put in the effort to drastically raise the cost of doing business.

  MSNBC
Oh, I don't think there's any doubt that he would.
Denying Schumer’s unanimous consent requests would be the most obvious way for Republicans to punish Democrats for daring to bolster voting rights. Such agreements basically operate on the assumption that all 100 senators are totally fine with whatever action is being proposed, no vote needed. The most basic unanimous consent agreement can be used to insert items into the Congressional Record; the most complicated can line up weeks’ worth of legislative action in the time it takes to read out the agreement.

[...]

In the hellscape McConnell is describing, Democrats would have to cast endless votes on everything from when the session should begin to whether or not the clerks can skip reading the entirety of bills out loud to whether a newspaper article can be entered into the official proceedings.

[...]

Republicans could also force Democrats to maintain a quorum on the Senate floor for any business to be conducted. The Constitution says a majority of senators needs to be present to conduct business, but the rules are a bit more lenient. Instead, the chamber acts on the assumption that enough people are there — even if there are clearly only five senators hanging around the floor.

Instead, senators routinely “suggest the absence of a quorum” to buy time between speeches, allow for informal haggling and allow members to get from their offices to the floor. The clerk very slowly calls the roll but is usually cut off via unanimous consent before reaching the end of their list. If a quorum is determined to be absent, though, all business halts until at least 51 senators are present and respond to the clerk’s call.
And it's been very obvious this term alone that the Democrats need to do something about their numbers in the Senate. 50/50 is not a winning number. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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