Category: US Senate

Sen. Amy Klobuchar faces down GOP barrage on voting rights act

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Republicans decry “false narrative” in push to guarantee ballot access. 

WASHINGTON – The debate over a massive federal voting rights act erupted in tense exchanges Wednesday as Sen. Amy Klobuchar faced withering GOP criticism that the changes would cause chaos and undermine states’ rights.

The Minnesota Democrat, a lead sponsor of the For the People Act, said at a hearing of the Rules Committee she chairs that the measure is essential as GOP legislators in states across the country have drafted more than 250 measures to restrict voting access. She pointed to the chaos of hourslong waits at polling places, new limitations on early voting and new restrictions on who can cast mail-in ballots.

“The bill simply tries to make it easier to vote,” Klobuchar said. “The For the People Act is the best chance to stop the rollback of voting rights.” Continue reading.

Pandemics and gun violence are real life, not ‘theater’

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And the word is not the insult Rand Paul and Ted Cruz seem to think it is

Perhaps Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky needs a refresher course on the meaning of the word “theater.” His GOP colleague Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas could listen in.

The former recently initiated a verbal brawl with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease specialist who has been providing information and advice to guide Americans dealing, along with the rest of the world, with a deadly pandemic. The latter accused anyone proposing the consideration of gun restrictions, in light of two horrific mass shootings in the space of a week, of “ridiculous theater.”

Now, I realize the term “theatrical” can be used as an insult hurled at someone accused of exaggeration, but what is happening in America is a fact. So let me offer my own definition: “Theater” is the thrill of escaping from it all in a darkened hall with a group of strangers, to see and hear professionals act or sing or dance, and to be uplifted by the experience, if only for an hour or two. Continue reading.

The militarization of society is trapping us in a paralyzed republic

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The Republicans in the US Congress insist it’s a constitutional Second Amendment issue. The Democrats insist it’s a commonsense safety issue. The press corps, which prefers binaries as a matter of professional convenience, frames the question just like that, as a tension between the right to bear arms and the right to peace. As long as that framing holds steady, there’s no way for the conflict to be resolved (which is, as I mentioned Monday in an unrelated context, exactly how the press corps likes it).

This framing is useless. How is a free republic supposed to react in good faith to bloody massacres like the one last week in Atlanta and the one this week in Boulder, Colorado,1 if the conflict between diametric rights is forever deadlocked? Well, the answer is obvious. It does not. It is paralyzed. It has been for going on two decades now. A problem of democracy cannot be solved democratically even as the problem continues killing wholesale. It’s no wonder many Americans have turned to military solutions to democratic problems, which, of course, make nearly everything worse.

We must concede this free republic of ours is not free. To be sure, some within it believethey are free—white men, for the most part, who make a fetish of stockpiling as many weapons of destruction as they can. But these people are not free. They are not only trapped by their own delusions, paranoia and fear, they are trapped in the same paralyzed republic the rest of us are trapped in. They are subject to the same risk of carnage, injury and death. The difference? They choose to make-believe they are free. Continue reading.

Senate panel dukes it out over voting rights

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Lawmakers on the Senate Rules Committee clashed Wednesday over sweeping Democratic legislation on voting rights and campaign finance and redistricting reform.

“This bill is essential to protecting every American’s right to vote, getting dark money out of our elections, as well as some very important anti-corruption reforms,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the panel’s chairwoman, said in her opening statement on the For the People Act. “It is about strengthening our democracy by returning it to the hands of its rightful owners: the American people.”

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the ranking member on the panel, argued against the legislation, saying it would “force a single, partisan view of elections on more than 10,000 jurisdictions across the country.” Continue reading.

Democrats plan to squeeze GOP over filibuster

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Senate Democrats are eyeing the next phase of the filibuster fight as they plan a series of tests to try to squeeze Republicans and sway their colleagues wary of changing the Senate’s most famous rule.

As the House passes several big policy priorities, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is vowing that he will put the bills on the floor this year, setting up high-profile showdowns on President Biden’s campaign promises.

Democrats say the strategy is two-fold: It will make Republicans go on the record in opposition and could demonstrate to Democrats wary of reforming the legislative filibuster that much of their agenda will be stuck in limbo without reforms.  Continue reading.

Republicans put themselves in a box — after driving the nation into a ditch​

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Why, at this time of desperate need, does the Republican leadership refuse to put its fingerprints on legislation that relieves the American people’s suffering? Not one Republican in the entire US Congress voted for the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

If you scrolled through right-wing social media last weekend, you’d see the top news was not the increased pace of vaccination or the arrival of $1,400 stimmies. It was Joe Biden’s triple-stumble on the staircase to Air Force One. A particularly creative meme tweeted out by Donald Trump, Jr. interspersed video of the former president hitting golf balls, which then appeared to hit Biden in the head and knock him down. 

United behind obstructionism so extreme it overwhelmed the need to pass legislation when the GOP controlled both chambers of the Congress, Biden tripping and falling now counts as a Republican win. In fact, over the four years of the Trump administration, exactly one major piece of legislation was passed, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a big unwrapped present to corporations, but not to the American people. Instead, congressional Republicans have unified behind the bizarre theory that Congress must deliver cultural criticism and mean jokes about their colleagues. Continue reading.

Schumer sharply criticizes GOP on voting rights: ‘Shame, shame, shame’

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Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday sharply criticized new bills being offered by Republicans in dozens of states that would place limits on the ability to vote.

Schumer, testifying before the Senate Rules Committee on a sweeping elections reform bill, accused Republicans of trying to “disenfranchise” voters after losing the 2020 election.

“Shame on them. … This is infuriating. I would like to ask my Republican colleagues: Why are you so afraid of democracy,” Schumer said. Continue reading.

Conservative group escalates earmarks war by infiltrating trainings

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New videos of internal discussions on Capitol Hill about the public’s perception of earmarks are providing a window into Democratic concerns about reviving the controversial spending practice.

In a recent Zoom training for congressional staffers, a House Appropriations Committee aide tells participants that while “the optics” of a lawmaker steering an earmark to a campaign donor “look kind of bad,” the project could still be allowed under House rules so long as no family members are involved.

“I think what you’re saying is if you have somebody who’s building a [military construction] project, and his company contributes to your boss’s campaign, is that a conflict of interest?” Appropriations Deputy Staff Director Matt Washington told House staffers during the training. Continue reading.

‘Strom Thurmond disagrees’: Historians refute McConnell claim that filibuster has ‘no racial history’

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Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday made the sweeping claim that the legislative filibuster has “no racial history at all” and further insisted that historians don’t dispute his view—an assertion that historians immediately disputed.

“Strom Thurmond disagrees,” tweeted historian Patrick Wyman, referring to the late Republican senator from South Carolina whose 24-hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 remains the longest in U.S. history.

During a press briefing Tuesday, McConnell offered a full-throated defense of the filibuster amid growing calls by Senate Democrats to significantly weaken or abolish the 60-vote rule, which in its current form gives the minority party enormous power to block legislation. Progressive advocacy groups and some Democratic lawmakers have taken to describing the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” to denote its past use as a weapon against civil rights legislation. Continue reading.

‘Ridiculous theater’: Sen. Cruz’s pushback on gun restrictions epitomizes high hurdles

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Virtually every time there is a mass shooting in the United States, the debate quickly turns to whether this might be the one — or, in the case of the last week, the two — that will ultimately force major action on gun restrictions.

In many ways, it seems lawmakers have given up even pretending that might be the case.

The tragedies in Atlanta last week and Boulder, Colo., this week have spurred the expected and logical debate about what more can be done about making sure guns don’t find their ways into the hands of the kinds of people who committed these atrocities. And there is an attempt to have that debate. Continue reading.