Throughout the past few months, we have been chronicling how Republicans have been apathetic to the underlying vices of the highway bill (S. 1813).  They basically told the Democrats in committee that they have every intention of passing the Senate bill; they just want a provision approving the Keystone pipeline as part of the agreement.  As any negotiator that lacks the credulousness of a toddler understands, once you take your bargaining chip off the table, the other side has no reason to give in.  Since Republicans have guaranteed Democrats that the tax and spend highway bill is too big to fail, Democrats will wait them out until they agree to jettison the Keystone provision.  And that is exactly what is happening.

Take a look at these quotes from The Hill:

Republicans are pressing for approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a final House-Senate transportation bill but appear unlikely to draw a line in the sand that jeopardizes the infrastructure legislation.

While the proposed Alberta-to-Texas pipeline is a top GOP and oil-industry priority, Republicans might have incentive to keep the matter unresolved, enabling them to continue using Keystone as a political weapon during the campaign season. [...]

“The overall Republican conference position is not to sink the conference report over [Keystone XL], however, as keeping that issue alive through the elections is also acceptable,” an oil industry source told The Hill.

Let’s be straight: the Keystone pipeline should never be used to pass bad legislation.  It’s just humorous to watch these guys capitulate on their one line in the sand.  As we’ve noted before, there are numerous problems with the underlying bill:

• Taxpayer Bailout of Private Pensions: As part of an oblique effort to raise revenue for the faulty highway trust fund, the Senate bill allows corporations to put less money into company pensions that are backed by the taxpayer-funded Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).  This would increase net profits for corporations, and by extension, generate $7 billion more in taxes to Uncle Sam.  In addition to serving as a convoluted way to fund the tenuous highway trust fund, it will also expose taxpayers to future bailouts of the PBGC when it becomes clear that the pension plans are underfunded.  [read more on this at the Heritage Foundation].
• General Fund Transfer: Just hours before the Senate bill was brought to a floor vote on March 14, Barbara Boxer slipped in a manager’s amendment that contained a provision (section 40313) authorizing a $5 billion general fund transfer to the highway trust fund.
• Nanny-State Enhancement Mandates: James Inhofe, the Republican architect of Boxer’s transportation bill, promised Republicans that the bill offered flexibility to the states for spending their infrastructure dollars, exempting them from the 10% “enhancement” mandates.  Well, the manager’s amendment appears to have vitiated that agreement.
• Other Top-Down Mandates and Anti-Free-Market Policies: There are sundry provisions that impose eco-fascism, establish anti-growth “made in America” mandates, discourage private sector investments in infrastructure, and offer giveaways to Big Labor.
• New Bureaucracies: The bill expands the size of government.  According to the Washington Letter on Transportation, as cited in Ken Orski’s Innovation News Briefs, the bill creates a new National Endowment for the Oceans, Coasts and Great Lakes, which will be housed in the Department of Commerce. It also provides for a seven-year reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a green program of the National Park Service within the U.S. Department of the Interior.
• Big Brother: The bill mandates that every new motor vehicle beginning in 2015 be equipped with a recording device designed to store data related to vehicle safety.
• IRS out of control: The bill grants authority to revoke passports of those who owe more than $50,000 in unpaid taxes.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of this 1676-page bill.  It also serves as a stark reminder why we should not lock up authority for all transportation responsibility in Washington.  This is not a bill we should support in any shape or form – Keystone or no Keystone.

According to a press release issued Tuesday, the NLRB chief stated:

“We continue to believe that the amendments represent a significant improvement in our process and serve the public interest by eliminating unnecessary litigation,” he said. “We are determined to move forward.” [Emphasis added.]

As the NLRB’s ambush elections were established without a proper quorum, the NLRB may end up simply re-voting on the issue using a quorum comprised of President Obama’s constitutionally-questionable recess appointments.

That re-vote could happen within a week or two, according to Industrial Relations Professor Gary Chaison.

According to the NLRB’s press release, in the two weeks that the Board’s ambush election procedures were in place, there were “about” 150 election petitions filed.

Given that there were 1595 elections in all of 2011, the 150 election petitions filed over the two-week period indicate that unions are relying on ambush elections in order to target more unsuspecting employers, and it’s easy to see why:

Unions win 87 percent of elections held 15 days or less after a request, a rate that falls to 58 percent when the vote takes place after 36 to 40 days, according to a February report by Bloomberg Government. [Emphasis added.]

With the union-appointees in control of the National Labor Relations Board, this week’s victory over the NLRB’s ambush elections may be short-lived.

_____________

“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com

Do-Nothing Democrats | Free Beacon
“Senate Democrats are poised to continue their impressive streak of budgetary negligence on Wednesday by unanimously rejecting as many as five different budgets, including the one offered by President Obama.”

Video Knocks Obama’s “Bureau of Womanhood Conformity” | LifeNews
“Today, the Susan B. Anthony List released its latest web ad entitled “Womanhood,” rebuking President Obama, his allies in Congress, and the abortion lobby for the ‘War on Women.’”

Walker speeds release of positive jobs data | JSOnline
“State officials said they show a gain of 23,321 jobs (public and private) between December 2010 and December 2011, which represents Gov. Scott Walker’s first full year in office.”

Chris Matthews Is Dumb | Big Journalism
“… after relentlessly mocking how well Governor Sarah Palin would hypothetically do on “Jeopardy,” Matthews made a king-size fool of himself in reality [video].”

Morning Bell: President Me | The Foundry
“President Obama insinuated yesterday that if you don’t support his policies, it’s not due to philosophical differences, but because of his name. Answering a question on The View about tight polls, he said: ‘When your name is Barack Obama, it’s always going to be tight. Barack Hussein Obama.’”

Have Unions ‘Occupied’ the Occupiers? by Rick Berman

spruik (sprook): verb To make or give a speech, especially extensively; spiel.
(via Dictionary.com)

Pete Hegseth – Decorated Combat Veteran, Executive Director of Vets for Freedom, U.S. Senate Candidate, Patriot

Pete Hegseth, who is running for the GOP endorsement for U.S. Senate in MN, was kind enough to sit down and provide his valuable time for an interview. In the interest of time, I edited the interview down, but was careful to keep the core of his answers.

Some of what Pete has to say:

His insight into current GOP legislators, with good words for Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint and Paul Ryan. :22

How he wants to be a Senator that doesn’t go there to be popular or go along and get along 1:45

A reminder that social issues matter and we won’t hide from them, but this election is about jobs and the economy. Period. 2:00

How the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, our founding documents, still matter today. 3:00

His greatest accomplishment(s) – as much insight as you need into this man’s character. 4:33 (Don’t miss this!)

Why he is the best choice to gain the endorsement and face Amy Klobuchar in the fall. 5:59

I hope you’ll choose to support Pete Hegseth at the MN state GOP convention and beyond.

Pete for Senate Website

I mean, yes: we’ve had it noted that Obama only racked up 59.4% of the West Virginia primary vote; 80.9% of New Hampshire’s; and 79.2% of North Carolina’s. But here are some other primary race vote totals, thus far (all via The Green Papers): Rhode Island, 83.4%. Louisiana, 76.5%. Alabama, 80.8%. Massachusetts, 81.2%, Oklahoma, 57.1%. To give you a baseline… if you remove places like American Samoa or Guam, if I read this right in 2004 George Bush never dipped below 89.5% (Idaho) of the primary vote in states he won and 79.6% (New Hampshire) in states that he didn’t. Other states of note in 2004, to give you an idea: Alabama, 92.8%. Kentucky, 92.5%. Massachusetts, 90.6%. Rhode Island, 84.9%.

I note the Bush comparison not to make a direct one – I do not think that we can really quantify the respective partisan enthusiasms of 2004 Republicans and 2012 Democrats. I do bring it up because it’s becoming clear that the Democratic voters in various states are getting restless. Or perhaps ‘volatile’ is a better word; while most of the Democrats voting in protest in the primaries will vote for Obama in the general, they’re generally not showing that they’re particularly happy about having to do that. And unhappy voters just… vote.

I would be interested to see how the media will report this if the trend continues, but unfortunately I don’t live in the alternate universe where mainstream media sources provide that kind of analysis on Democratic candidates.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I really do want to caution people about reading too much into these numbers; a lot of these states have long histories of using the primaries to spout off. But if it’s legitimate to talk about North Carolina and West Virginia and New Hampshire, then it’s legitimate to note that the additional examples of Massachusetts and Rhode Island and Louisiana suggest that this is all not a series of unfortunate coincidences, or however that phrase goes.

Not surprisingly, all the relevant committee chairmen are either conduits for leadership or are even more liberal than leadership.  Here is a list of the chairmen along with their respective 2011 scores from Heritage Action:

As you can see, Paul Ryan and Darrell Issa are the only chairmen of important committees who are at least somewhat independent of leadership – at least on minor issues (they voted for the debt ceiling and omnibus).  For comparison, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy scored a 61%.  Most of the chairmen voted at or below that standard.

In general, most of the conservative insurgents are relatively new and have not accrued enough seniority to win chairmanships.  This is why it is so important for the Republican Conference to abide by the current term limit rule.  Under current rules, no member can serve for more than 6 years as chairman of a committee.  The kicker is that the years as ranking member count towards those 6 years.

As Roll Call reported last week, there are 5 chairmen who are term-limited at the end of the year; Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, T&I Chairman John Mica, Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus, and Science, Space and Technology Chairman Ralph Hall.  Also, David Dreier, the Chairman of the powerful Rules Committee is retiring this year.  Of those members, only Mica plans to ask for a waiver, while there is talk of granting Ryan an extension as Budget Chair.

Thus far, Republicans have been good about adhering to the term limit rule and denying waivers.  They should continue to do so.  No chairmen should be too big to fail.  Moreover, by extending the terms of the current chairmen, it will preclude conservative insurgents from moving up on the ladder.  I would welcome a Budget Chairman Scott Garrett in 2013.

Now is not the time to go wobbly on term limit waivers.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

Download audio here

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Dr. Larry Rosen to discuss his book on tech addictions, how to recognize them, and how to lessen any unhealthy dependency that we may have on technology.

We’re brought to you as always byStephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:
Buy iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us on Amazon
Dr. Larry Rosen

Follow Pej on Twitter
Follow Kevin on Twitter

The hosts and guests of Coffee and Markets speak only for ourselves, not any clients or employers.

There have been many studies out on the “tea party congress” and just how tea party it actually is. One study last year noted that 70% of candidates who went to Congress under the tea party banner were voting just like the Republican Leaders they ran against.

Probably one of the best places to get a sense of this is the Club for Growth. Why? The Club ignores social votes and focuses only on fiscal votes — spending issues more than anything else. The tea party candidates went to Congress not just to repeal Obamacare, but were really motivated by out of control government spending, bailouts, etc. Remember, it was Rick Santelli of CNBC on February 19, 2009, who predicted this grassroots army of activists would rise up and say enough to out of control government spending and bailouts. Santelli said, in part,

The government is promoting bad behavior. Because we certainly don’t want to put stimulus forth and give people a whopping $8 or $10 in their check, and think that they ought to save it, and in terms of modifications… I’ll tell you what, I have an idea.

You know, the new administration’s big on computers and technology– How about this, President and new administration? Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages; or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road, and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water?

…

We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.

Things sort of spiraled from there sending a wave of candidates to Washington embracing the concerns of the activists who showed up to the tea party.

They wanted to cut spending because of out of control debt, stop Barack Obama, end Obamacare, and they were willing to primary Republicans to do it. A number of Republicans lost. In some open primaries, the candidates who were supported by the GOP out of Washington went down in flames.

But what of the candidates who actually went to DC on a wave of tea party support. Turns out some of them were liars and a lot of them behaved like the pigs in Animal Farm with some of them deciding they were more equal than others.

The Club for Growth’s new study of this Tea Party Congress paints a rather depressing picture. You can see how the freshman of the Tea Party Class of 2010 preformed by clicking right here.

If you want a more in depth look at the Congress as a whole, one of the best places to go is Heritage Action for America’s comprehensive score card. What you’ll find is not much better there.

I’m afraid if the tea party is not much more successful in primarying Republican candidates and then having those guys practice what they preach, the GOP is within a decade of going the way of the Whigs.

Barack Obama has nominated Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for six years each. Senator David Vitter (R-LA — HAFA Score 85%) placed a hold on both men. They are creatures of Wall Street and, in the biggest red flag of the day, both Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have been pressuring Senator Vitter to drop his hold.

The issue here is bailouts. Mark Calabria notes the Federal Reserve has bailout powers, but it needs the support of five Federal Reserve governors. Stein and Powell are both in favor of the Federal Reserve continuing to bailout banks and other entities with little oversight.

Harry Reid can bring these men to the floor any time he wants. The word in the Senate is that he is about to.

Conservatives in the Senate and outside the Congress are deeply worried that Mitch McConnell will cut a deal with Reid to undercut David Vitter’s hold. We potentially could delay the appointments until after the November election if Mitch McConnell will side with David Vitter and Senate conservatives by objecting to Harry Reid’s cloture motion.

Please call Senator McConnell’s office today and encourage him to stand with David Vitter and object to cloture on Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell. His office number is (202) 224-2541. Then call your own Senator at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to oppose Stein and Powell.

There is much hullabaloo in the media about John Boehner’s shot across the bow in the upcoming battle over the debt ceiling this fall.  Specifically, Boehner warned that he “will again insist” on the” simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase.”

The question is what Boehner means by insisting “again” on spending cuts greater than the debt ceiling increase.  Does he view the failed Budget Control Act (BCA), super committee, and sequester of defense spending as a success?  He has yet to denounce last year’s failure, so why should we look forward to a repeat performance?

The first step in remedying our debt ceiling strategy is to acknowledge the failures of the past.  When Republicans caved on raising the debt limit last year, we referred to the final Boehner proposal as a ground ball into a double play.  Not only did Boehner fail to secure any transformational downsizing of government in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, he actually stymied our leverage in future budget battles.  As we’ve noted, Mitch McConnell and House appropriators have already signaled that they will never cut one cent below the discretionary budget caps established in the BCA.  Hence, the BCA served only to lock in the record spending levels of the Obama-era.  The only real cuts that originated from that deal were the sequester cuts to the military that Boehner agrees we should now vitiate.  So how would he do things differently this time?

In retrospect, it would have been better to pass a clean increase of the debt ceiling and live another day to fight in future spending battles than to pass the BCA.  The BCA ruined our leverage for the next ten years as Democrats and Republicans alike refuse to spend below those statist levels.  Moreover, it has engendered a gratuitous schism in the conservative coalition by pitting spending hawks against defense hawks and forcing Republicans to go through the embarrassment of undoing their own scheme.  Finally, the deal failed to achieve the primary objectives of averting a credit downgrade and slowing the national debt.  The debt has increased another $1.3 trillion in the 9 ½ months since the debt ceiling was raised.  That’s about $5 billion per day.  After the hyped dollar-for-dollar cuts, there is not a single major program or agency that has been eliminated.

The irony is that the debt has increased so rapidly following last summer’s deal that we are already talking about the next debt ceiling battle.  Do we really want a repeat performance?

Going forward, there are only two options: A) Republicans can telegraph the message to Democrats that they will never raise the debt ceiling without prior passage of something similar to Cut, Cap, and Balance – and that they would be willing to go to the brink.  B) They admit that they are too scared to take this to the brink, and as such, agree to let Obama raise the debt ceiling.  There is no option C, which would repeat the mistakes of last year.  In other words, it is insane to tell the Democrats that you would never let the deadline pass, yet demand concession for the debt ceiling increase.  Once the Democrats know that the debt ceiling will invariably be raised, they have no incentive to play ball.  The end result will be another raw deal that is worse than doing nothing.  This has occurred time and again throughout every budget battle and it’s time we end this insanity.  We don’t need to hear the tough talk and bravado if there is no intent to carry through with it.

Boehner noted at his speech before the Peter G. Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit that “we shouldn’t dread the debt limit. We should welcome it.”  He punctuated that belief by calling the debt ceiling “an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction.”

Undoubtedly, the debt ceiling will provide us with yet another opportunity to expose the Democrats as the statist European-socialists who are apathetic to our debt crisis.  However, there are all sorts of actions; some are good and some are bad.  Grounding into a double play is worse than striking out.  Sadly, based on our painful experience from last year, inaction might be superior to the action that will evolve from the ranks of the consultant class of the Republican Party.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover “women’s health services” including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.

The quote above represents the reaction of one, small Catholic university to the DHS mandate that all health insurance plans pay for abortificants. Franciscan University of Stuebanville, boasts about 2,500 students. They don’t have Touchdown Jesus, but they did take 3rd Place in National Small College Rugby Organization Tournament. Such a small event would probably lead Mein Obama to scoff “How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?”

The President has already eaten his negative press on this and deflected it by accusing Mitt Romney of marshalling the forces of iniquity in a war on women. Barack Obama has led recent college graduates to levels of unemployment that have caused periphery countries in the Eurozone to suffer economic collapse and require national bail-outs. He has been utterly oblivious to the fact that his policies have failed them like nobody else in America. If Georgetown or Notre Dame were to drop student Health Coverage, President Obama would only use this as an excuse to further demean the beliefs and values of religious Americans.

Yet the directors and the faculty at Franciscan University of Stuebanville can read laws and statistics. They know well that health care costs are a major driver in everything they do involving human beings. The university health center describes how the ObamaCare Law effects the costs of carrying the students.

Additionally, the PPACA increased the mandated maximum coverage amount for student policies to $100,000 for the 2012-13 school year, which would effectively double your premium cost for the policy in fall 2012, with the expectation of further increases in the future.

So let the law go in effect in 2014. Let’s see how holy they feel when the fines impact. Of course, people who can read laws and statistics have already gone to work on tabulating that. Here’s what many employers who cover large workforces believe.

Even after paying a penalty of $2,000 per employee, the companies stand to save $28.6 billion in 2014 alone by shifting employees to health insurance exchanges governed by strict federal standards. The companies stand to save more than $422 billion over the first 10 years of the law by doing this.

(HT: Fox News)

This suggests that anyone who can get rid of insurance plans for any reason saves a lot of money by dumping these costs onto the Government Exchange. This suggests that we haven’t solved our insurance problems at all. ObamaCare has successfully done is create a major example of “The Tragedy of The Commons.” Everybody’s insurance will cover everything politically desirable for free. Nobody will actually have to pay for it. This is how the Eurozone turned into its dysfunctional self.

Meanwhile, this post assumes that the Individual Mandate won’t get stricken down by the US Supreme Court. Won’t it be a pleasure to see how the US Government offers affordable policies that make political goodies like $3,000/Year of contraception available for “free”?

The Left Is Getting Clobbered On Twitter | PowerLine
“In the skirmishing so far, one perhaps surprising media advantage has become clear: the right is clobbering the left on Twitter.”

Blogger Confronts Newspaper that Stole His Article with $500 Invoice | PJM
“As both his editor and a peer in the new media world a sense of pride sweeps over me while watching Duane calmly, professionally LAY DOWN THE LAW and GET PAID”

The Facebook effect | The Economist
“But back-of-the-envelope calculations by Mr Sisney suggest that California might get a windfall of $2 billion over the current and coming fiscal years, and possibly billions more if the shares trade well.”

Air Force Eliminates Test Flights for New Light Attack Plane | PJM
“Would you buy combat airplane without knowing whether it can even fly? The guys on Pawn Stars wouldn’t do that — but apparently the United States Air Force will.”

Inside The Secret Miami Meeting Of George Soros’ Liberal Conspiracy | Free Beacon
“A secretive network of left-wing billionaires and their political operatives descended on the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Miami over the weekend to discuss strategy for the coming elections.”

The Left’s War on Wisconsin” from briansikma.

altiloquent (awl-TIL-uh-kwuhnt): noun High-flown or pretentious language.
(Via Thesaurus.com)

• Vice President Joe Biden, when he was Senator Joe Biden, happened to be a sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act. We’ll pass to one side for a moment the current (as in, this week) controversy over the latest iteration of the law – it’s up for reauthorization – to specifically note, again, that this was Biden’s baby, as it were.
• Charlie Wilson is known mostly for three things (four, if you count the fact that he’s often confused with the infinitely better Democratic Charlie Wilson from Texas); he was the former Congressman from OH-06; Charlie Wilson of Ohio is an admitted wife-beater; and Charlie Wilson of Ohio is unaccountably running for Congress again.
• Guess where Joe Biden will be stumping for the President, this week? That’s right! OH-06! Also OH-17 (Youngstown), but Thursday Biden will be making a speech Thursday at an auto dealership in Martin’s Ferry.

Which, as has been privately pointed out to me, leads to a fascinating set of questions. Will Charlie Wilson be making an appearance at this event? If Wilson does show, will we be treated to the spectacle of seeing the Vice President and sponsor of anti-spousal abuse legislation praise a guy who was a poster child for why we might have needed the legislation in the first place? If Wilson does not show, will the administration come clean about why the wife-beater wasn’t invited to his party’s own in-district campaign event? In either case, will the press bring up the inherent rhetorical contradictions that this entire scenario represents?

No, wait, I know the answer to that last one already.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Hey, you know something? Bill Johnson (R, OH-06) STILL doesn’t beat his wife!

It is interesting to note that these short sighted leftists may be laying the table for an easy repeal of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and extending the Bush tax cuts.  Clearly, Republicans control of the Senate is within reach (see RCP analysis of Senate polls).  There is also a 50-50 chance that Republicans win the presidency.  Liberals are trying to get rid of the one tool they would have to stop Republicans from dismantling the Obama legacy of higher taxes and more regulation.

I have to imagine that some Republicans will want to take liberals up on the offer of ridding the Senate of the filibuster in January of 2013. 

First of all, many of the voices on the left are hypocrites.  Many of the same groups calling for filibuster reform, were defending the filibuster in 2005.  When it served the purpose of obstructing President Bush’s agenda in 2005, they were 100% for the filibuster (see here).

It is ironic that Common Cause is fighting for filibuster reform.  In 2005 they were singing a different tune.

Jonathan H. Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy writes in a post titled, Common Cause’s Filibuster Flip:

In 2005, Common Cause vigorously defended the filibuster when some Republicans proposed invoking the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster of judicial nominees.  From a 2005 press release: Common Cause strongly opposes any effort by Senate leaders to outlaw filibusters of judicial nominees to silence a vigorous debate about the qualifications of these nominees, short-circuiting the Senate’s historic role in the nomination approval process. “The filibuster shouldn’t be jettisoned simply because it’s inconvenient to the majority party’s goals,” said Common Cause President Chellie Pingree. “That’s abuse of power.” (Hat tip: Don Surber)

Now it seems that Common Cause supports the “abuse of power.”   I did a Google search to find the text of a Common Cause press release titled “Filibuster shouldn’t be tossed aside to convenience Senate majority” and it has been taken off the web site.

Also, it is a convenient myth for Klein and opponents of the filibuster to argue that “the filibuster was a mistake.” History does not prove this assertion to be true.

John Quincy Adams wrote in his memoir that the early Senate rejected a rules change that would have limited debate, because in 1806 Vice President Aaron Burr argued that a rules change was not necessary to end debate on a question.  According to the late Senator Robert C. Byrd’s in The Senate, 1789–1989, “Henry Clay, in 1841, proposed the introduction of the ‘previous question’ but abandoned the idea in the face of opposition.”  Byrd also noted that “when Senator Stephen Douglas proposed permitting the use of the ‘previous question’ in 1850, the idea encountered substantial opposition and was dropped.” According to Byrd, “An effort to reinstitute the ‘previous question,’ on March 19, 1873, failed by a vote of 25–30.” Byrd cited the following: “Between 1884 and 1890, fifteen different resolutions were offered to amend the rules regarding limitations of debate, all of which failed of adoption.” This is evidence that the filibuster was not an accident of history, yet it was an accepted practice that was validated by Senate votes.

James Madison wrote in Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 that one of the purposes of the Senate was to protect the people against the temporary feelings Members of Congress may posses.

In order to judge of the form to be given to [the Senate], it will be proper to take a view of the ends to be served by it. These were first to protect the people against their rulers: secondly to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.

Finally, the Constitution specifically delegates rule making authority to the House and Senate in Article I, Section 5, “each house may determine the rule of its proceedings.”  The filibuster is constitutional and the federal courts have no jurisdiction to litigate this political question.

To argue that supermajority votes are unconstitutional, is to ignore the many supermajority rules  as part of the statutory budget process, explicit rules of the Senate and tradition.  Today, the Senate will hold a series of votes on legislation to extend the life of the Export-Import Bank, and amendments to the legislation, with a 60 supermajority required to pass as agreed to by both parties.  This practice is commonplace in today’s Senate.

The Senate and House frequently have votes on matters that are subject to supermajority votes.  In the House, a suspension of the rule vote is a supermajority vote.  In the Senate there are 60 vote points of order, suspension of the rules and a supermajority to shut off debate are a weekly occurrence.

The big question is whether this full court press by the left is merely setting up a liberal talking point that Republicans are obstructionists or if this is a serious effort to set the table for changing the filibuster rule.