Given that 2009 and 2010 really weren't that long ago, one would like to think Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would remember them. It was, after all, just one Congress ago.
And yet, McConnell has begun arguing that White House officials have been "trying to pretend like the president just showed up yesterday, just got sworn in and started fresh. In fact, he's been in office three years. He got everything he wanted from a completely compliant congress for two of those three years."
This is a popular claim in Republican circles. It's also demonstrably false. As Sahil Kapur explained, "It was McConnell, after all, who led Senate Republicans in serial filibusters -- a record-setting number -- successfully thwarting large chunks of Obama's agenda."
Perhaps a visual will jog the Minority Leader's memory. Here's a chart Brian Beutler put together a while back showing the explosion in the number of filibusters.
TPM
The Senate keeps an updated table, charting cloture votes by Congress over the last nine decades, using three metrics: (1) cloture motions filed (when the majority begins to end a filibuster); (2) votes on cloture (when the majority tries to end a filibuster); and (3) the number of times cloture was invoked (when the majority succeeds in ending a filibuster). By all three measures, obstructionism soared in 2009 and 2010 as Republican abused the rules like no other party in American history.
Consider this tidbit: cloture was invoked 63 times in 2009 and 2010, which isn't just the most ever, it's more than the sum total of instances from 1919 through 1982. That's not a typo.
The result was obvious: several key measures sought by the White House were defeated, despite the large Democratic majority, while many other proposals were watered down to generate super-majority support.
McConnell has to be aware of this -- it served as the foundation for his larger political strategy.
Consider:
* In March 2010, McConnell explained his decision to try to kill health care reform from the outset, regardless of merit or Democratic compromises, by demanding unanimous Republican opposition: "It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out." It's a dynamic that made compromise, quite literally, impossible.
* Soon after, McConnell explained the importance he and the House GOP leadership put on "unify[ing] our members in opposition" to everything Democrats propose, because unanimous Republican disagreement would necessarily make Democratic ideas less popular. "Public opinion can change, but it is affected by what elected officials do," McConnell conceded. "Our reaction to what [Democrats] were doing had a lot to do with how the public felt about it. Republican unity in the House and Senate has been the major contributing factor to shifting American public opinion."
* In August 2010, McConnell said he'll only consider negotiating with the White House if they agree to accept center-right proposals, with no exceptions, even if there's a Democratic majority.
* In October 2010, McConnell conceded on the record that defeating the president in 2012 is his "top priority," above literally everything else.
The Senate Minority Leader carefully crafted the most obstructionist agenda in modern American history, and he exploited it to great effect. For McConnell to pretend otherwise is simply dishonest.
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It can be said by the most credible source one can find - McConnell is expressing idiocy! One merely need look at his idea of a majority - 60% - and see the man's just not right!
He's a political animal akin to the jackal, yet he continues to resemble a turtle! -Kevo
Meanwhile Boehner got 98% of what he wanted in the debt limit strike. That said, Obama's successes have been rather remarkable, not just because of the Congress of No, but also because of all the states with Republican governors who have worked so hard to thwart prosperity by cutting back on public employees, refusing infrastructure funds and imposing invoking anti-immigration policies.
Yes, McConnell is, for lefties, a distressing figure in US politics, but he's only playing the game the way the rules are set-up. We may wish for good-faith and sportsmanship, but if we really want those things, then we need rules that favor them. The current rules are just terrible, if the John Rawls veil of ignorance principle is the guideline. Sweat the big stuff. McConnell is just a very little man.
Mitch "the Turtle" McConnell is THE MOST selfish person in Congress, and that's saying something, considering the Congress over the last few years!! Not to mention that he's a liar, an obstructionist, and bordering on being a traitor to the American people!! What's also extremely apparent is that he represents a bunch of bigoted sheeple that can't see, that a vote to continue keeping him in office is a vote against their own (& our) best interest!!
Then it stands to reason that the GOP got EVERYTHING it wanted in the first six years of the decade. And that is what led us into the recession...correct?
This is what I meant when I criticized Benen yesterday for using the word "unsettling" to describe the latest Someone saying Something Divorced From Reality. It shouldn't be unsettling anymore: it happens every day. Often, multiple times a day.
That's a pretty bad reason to not find it unsettling. If anything, that should make it *more* unsettling. You're actually letting yourself get used to unprecedented, undemocratic, and unamerican obstructionism? Stop doing that, or else you'll end up just letting it slip on by.
Steve,
Honestly, I can't remember what part of Obama's agenda was completely thwarted in the first Congress. Obviously, health care and fin-reg were watered down terribly, but you can't effectively rebut McConnell's point with a process argument about the number of filibusters. Remind me/us, what DIDN'T Obama get in the first Congress?
This article lays out several of the bigger things...
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/mcconnells-revisionist-history-congress-gave-obama-everything-he-wanted.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
@V V S - thanks for posting that link to jog the brain cells of those with very, very short memories.
Few thing the President wanted did not get passed. Many were "watered down" but that is what governing is. You start asking for more than you want because you have to have some give and take to work it through the process. There were very few things the President did not get that he championed.
More than 300 bills were asked for in the House that died in the Senate. That's probably a good starting point.
We have the same situation now. My question would be of those 300 which ones were championed by the President. He put his "political muscle" behind very few things, most of which he got. But your point is well taken.
The problem is that a majority of the electorate are low-information voters. McConnell knows this, which is why he's adopted this strategy. Even the Tea Party revolution was fueled by these voters. In the current environment, where the press allows such statements to stand unchallenged and un-refuted, these lies become accepted fact by the low-info voter. If the country is to avoid a takeover of both Houses of Congress and the White House by the extremists that have control of the GOP, then there must be an active effort to counter McConnell's lies.
Majority leader Reid has power to force a majority vote to change the rules on cloture and other fillibuster maneuvers that require more than a simple majority for passage of a Senate bill.
Two problems:
The reason why we don't have single payer is because there were not enough votes in the Senate to override Filibuster. The hope is that the GOP will honor the non constitutional rules for Senate filibusters allowing Democrats to block GOP bills they view as onerous.
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It's Pollyanna thinking Do we really think that if the GOP had control of the Senate that they will honor keeping the filibuster rule? It is pure fantasy.
@JohnMesserly
The Dems are afraid to change the filibuster rule because it is likely they will lose control of the Senate. If the Dems keep control of the Senate, then they can make the filibuster rule easier to break, to wit, 55 votes. Also, the can force the party filibustering the bill to literally stay on the floor of the Senate talking during the filibuster. Don't expect the Republicans to keep the filibuster rule. If they see that they will not have the votes to overcome a filibuster, they may change the rules when they control the White House and Congress. They will not want to change it if government is divided. The down side is that once they change the rules, they cannot go back to the old rules.
McConnell is doing a preemptory strike against the Dems and Obama. He needs to keep repeating the lie about the Dems controlling Congress for the upcoming elections. The Senate minority leader needs a message to tell the voters why the Republicans should be in charge because he sees Obama running against the Republicans in Congress who obstructed everything. The lie may work on some people who watch Fox, but it is not going to work on the rest of the voters because they know the truth.
A simple majority vote (nuclear option) may strike or restore these rules at any time.
Fossilized Senators against rule reform make their case as if they are defending some principle of the founding fathers had to provide a check on the tyranny of majoritarianism. That is nonsense. Nowhere in the constitution did the founding fathers provide that passage in the senate required 60 votes. Besides the partisan battles we have already described, what they are defending is a system where lobbyists have greater power to block any bill they do not like.
It is naive for any Senator to believe that the fillibuster rules will survive GOP control of the Senate. The GOP has honored neither the letter nor the spirit of the Gang of 14 agreement from 2005 regarding filibusters. It is clear that the GOP is interested in respecting tradition when the traditions favor their partisan objectives.
It is shocking how delusional that traditionalist Senate Democrats have been on the issue of Senate rule reform.
It was shocking that all the President proposed was reform regarding confirming judicial and administration nominees.
Sure hope Rachel addresses this again. I'm talking to many Progressive who think we had the ability to pass stuff in the first 2 years of the Obama Adm.
Some of the pseudo-left types seem to be pushing this nonsense.