Reader Elmer sends the
Corning Leader story [pdf] detailing Randy Kuhl's town meetings in the Corning area this weekend. A full list is available on
Kuhl's official site.
Kuhl continues active posting on his blog. Many of his latest
postings concern the speed of legislative progress in Congress. One factor in this speed is the use of what used to be called "filibuster threats" by the Republican minority in the Senate. Earlier this year, McClatchy
covered the greatly expanded use of delaying tactics by the Republicans, pointing out that the Senate was on track for a record number of cloture votes this year. To help understand the use of cloture, I've added cloture votes as a category of tracked votes on CongressDB. Here's
an example for a happy warrior. By my count, cloture has been invoked 48 times so far this year, which is more than the full session (two year) number for many recent Senate sessions.
Comments
In the senate, it takes two parties to avoid filibusters. Some of the blame may be due to the democrats unwillingness to find compromise positions.
I agree there's plenty of blame to go around.
What gets me about these criticisms posted to Kuhl's blog is that they are simply an effort to score political points by criticizing things that merited no remark from him when Republicans were in the majority. The pace of congressional progress has been glacial for years, and its definitely a major issue in our politics, but just using it as a cudgel to beat Democrats isn't going to accomplish anything.
Agreed - it seems that during my entire adult life the majority (no matter which party) is always saying that an issue should not be stalled by a filibuster and that it deserves a vote by the full senate. The minority (no matter which party) always has the opposite view. Sometimes I think that the parties truly deserve each other.