ringwiss

Good times.*

(* – no, I wasn't there back then, but the Senate was still that way when I started working there; AND (tbc) it was still that way when I left!)

This kind of legislative schedule ⬇️ is just unthinkable today. Multiple bills each day! Amendments! Conference reports! Working six days a week, convening at 8:15 am!!!

I don’t even mean that in the sense of breaking a talking filibuster. On the housing bill, they’re going straight to cloture as usual, with basically no actual debate and no amendments.

Exactly...

You would think that being able to consider nominations en bloc would have freed up that precious, precious floor time for proper consideration of legislation.

Even if Congress is not in session, since the House and Senate rules now allow vetoed bills to be received during adjournments/recesses.

Maine court upholds 65 new laws after governor misses veto deadline Maine's top court ruled on Thursday that the state's combative Republican governor, Paul LePage, had missed a deadline in July to veto 65 bills he had intended to block, and that those bills were now ...

Instance in which a governor did make that mistake:

No (or at least he didn’t go through with it).
The last time the president allowed a bill to become law without their signature was in 2016.
www.congress.gov/u/xgwsDWKp4l...

This was done by the Senate.

😁

The Senate has really desensitised me to this sort of thing. 🙂

These illustrations are very nice too.

Some great stuff from Byrd on the talking filibuster:

It's time for another edition of…
"How do these things end?"™

Today: What if the House passes a bill, the Senate agrees but with amendments, then the House agrees to the Senate amendments did but with amendments, and then the Senate agrees to all the House amendments to the Senate amendments…

1/

Once one house ignores this rule (by special rule or unanimous consent), all bets are off. This instance ⬇️ was apparently considered so scandalous that the page it’s on was omitted from GPO’s PDFs of Riddick’s.

🧾

Fun fact: If the House had sent this over in the form of a House amendment to a Senate amendment to a House amendment to a Senate bill, then no further amendments would be in order in the Senate.

I get the sense from all these discussions that for a lot of senators, the filibuster has nothing to do with the freedom to debate and offer amendments; they just think it should take 60 votes to pass a bill.

Not a novel sentiment, I guess.

Tabling amendments is breaking the filibuster now?

It makes no difference. This is certainly just a procedural thing; they could have picked any nomination to do it.

Theories:
1. Someone finally figured out that debate is technically not in order when there is no question pending.
2. They want to block senators from moving to proceed to another nomination or, more likely, to a previously entered motion to reconsider a cloture vote.

As far as I can tell, the most recent instance was, indeed, before my time.

Woah woah woah...
A motion to proceed to a nomination?!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these (live) before.

"I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but ah sod it he’s over there yes that one there”

The version of the rule originally reported by the Rules Committee would have required a two-thirds vote to agree to a nongermane Senate amendment!

TIL: In the House, from 1971 to 1974, a member could demand a separate vote on any nongermane part of a Senate amendment in the nature of a substitute to a House bill.

Expand the House! (without expanding the chamber)
hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1943...

The ROTOR Act