Republicans Play 'Block and Blame' Game in Senate!

"The trend has been evolving for 30 years. The reasons behind it are too complex to pin on one party. But it has been especially pronounced since the Democrats' razor-thin win in last year's election, giving them effectively a 51-49 Senate majority, and the Republicans' exile to the minority.

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 "cloture" votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority's right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they've fallen short 22 times so far this year. That's largely why they haven't been able to deliver on their campaign promises.

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., forced an all-night session on the Iraq war this week to draw attention to what Democrats called Republican obstruction.

"The minority party has decided we have to get to 60 votes on almost everything we vote on of substance," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "That's not the way this place is supposed to work."

Even Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who's served in Congress since 1973, complained that "the Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before, and I've been here a long time. All modicum of courtesy is going out the window."

But many Republicans say the Senate's very design as a more deliberative body than the House of Representatives is meant to encourage supermajority deal-making. If Democrats worked harder to seek bipartisan deals, Republicans say, there wouldn't be so many cloture votes.

"You can't say that all we're going to do around here in the United States Senate is have us govern by 51 votes — otherwise we might as well be unicameral, because then we would have the Senate and the House exactly the same," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

To which Reid responds: "The problem we have is that we don't have many moderate Republicans. I don't know what we can do to create less cloture votes other than not file them, just walk away and say, 'We're not going to do anything.' That's the only alternative we have."

So it is a nice try to just 'blame the Democrats'.

As this article points out:

"Since the Democrats won their razor-thin majority back in 2006, the Republicans have now used the filibuster a record 80 times to halt any legislation offered by the Democrats. Even with the small majority of 51 to 49 that the Senate Democrats have today, it still takes 60 votes to pass a Senate bill that would also over-ride a possible filibuster or a presidential veto. Based on these numbers, the Republican Senate leadership has decided to only "rarely" allow any "moderate" Republicans to vote on the Democratic side of an issue, whether the legislation is good for the country or not. All the Republican Senators have to do today is open up the debate on the Senate floor and keep it going until the Democrats eventually give in and give up. This action virtually stops the bill in its tracks, and they then move on to other bills or new business.

As has recently become a routine in the Senate, the Senate Republicans, with the aid of a couple of conservative Democrats, successfully obstructed the passage of a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases. The measure fell 12 votes shy of the 60 votes needed in the Senate. It has since been pulled from consideration by the Democratic leadership.

Such action would normally strike a more depressing note if it had not become the Senate norm over the last 2 years. Republicans in the Senate have filibustered ~80 pieces of legislation in the current session of Congress. (This is an all-time record, and the session isn't over yet.) Not all of these attempts to block legislation have ended in success. A few bills actually have passed, but this latest rate of obstructionism has been historic, far surpassing the previous record of 62 filibusters."

But the Republicans control the Presidency, block legislation in the Senate, and the President has packed the Supreme Court with Conservatives.

Give credit where credit is due.

And give me a break, will you?