re: #215 Dark_Falcon

For all intents and purposes these days, the cloture vote is the vote on the bill. Non-budget items now need 60 votes in the Senate. And Harry Reid didn’t say no to ‘poison pills’ he said no to any changes. For Republicans, to have voted for cloture would have been to effectively vote for the bill and given the way Reid was playing the game, they could do that. If Reid wants to introduce separate bills, let him do so. This was a political move by both parties.

No, Dark. You cannot say that voting to allow a vote is the same thing as voting for the bill. I have no idea how the GOP has managed to get this meme to stick so much. Especially since they were enraged by this very concept not so long ago.

This makes me very sad.

I am in favor of bills that aren’t allowed to be amended out of committee in the first place. I hate the whole amendment process. It leads to more waste, and more neutered bills, than anything else. A bill on child labor suddenly has five thousand other aspects to it.

The fillibuster was not meant to be used on every bill. You are saying that it was. This is wrong. It is not what the founders intended, and it does not work.