Apparently everyone loves Monica Bertagnolli, Joe Biden's pick to run the NIH. Even Bernie Sanders likes her. But Bernie is miffed at Biden over some trivial issues related to drug pricing, so he's blocking her appointment.
The impasse is just one of several Biden has encountered with respect to his nominees....Biden’s pick to run the Labor Department, Julie Su, has seen her nomination founder for five months amid skepticism from a trio of senators. Nominees for both the Federal Aviation Administration and Federal Communications Commission withdrew this year after it became clear they couldn’t win confirmation. In May alone, Biden lost two judicial nominees. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), meanwhile, has singlehandedly halted the promotions of around 250 military officers, resulting in vacancies across the Pentagon.
I'm really sick of grandstanding senators who revel in personally grinding routine government business to a halt over their petty beefs and moronic pet peeves. Filibusters are bad enough, but unanimous consent is worse: it makes a running mockery of democracy by allowing a single person to jam things up even if the other 99 want to vote. It's long past due for the Senate to put an end to this idiocy.
The other 99 can in fact still vote, but they have to go through regular order.
The issue isn't so much with unanimous consent but the fact that regular order takes FOREVER.
The Constitution allows the Senate to make its own rules. Turns out this is a really bad idea for a body made up 100 people who see the next President of the United States staring back at them in the bathroom mirror every morning.
+1
Isn't it true that if you don't have a unanimous consent rule you end up with something like the House Rules committee? I've grim memories of the HRC in the early 60's when it was controlled by Southern conservatives who killed civil rights legislative. JFK had a big fight to limit their power, but it took LBJ and time to really change it.
Now the Rules committee can be under the control of the Speaker, as it was for Pelosi, which means legislation gets written out of the speaker's office, and committees have lost power.
My bottom line--is any way you go there are tradeoffs.
LBJ was not very powerful when he was in the House, and as president he'd have had very little leverage over something like that, So I don't think he had much to do with neutering the House Rules Committee. I've read the massive Robert Caro biography and I don't remember anything about that.
So, why would Charles Schumer, head of the Senate in the absence of the Vice President, Kamela Harris, ever ask for unanimous consent? He knows who's going to vote each way. He knows who the holdouts are ... and has some ability to buy them off, at least in the case of Bernie.
Senator "Potato town" is something else, unfortunately. Republicans may mouth words about "supporting the military", but when it comes down to cutting their own throats on the abortion issue, they'll go for that straight razor every time.
Schumer doesn't ask for unanimous consent. The Senate rules require it.
In Iowa Republicans are literally working on raping your children,
https://preview.redd.it/9jxcu8ruwjbb1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=06449af9499824f12ab37f4d47bdad1cb5d84f1d
I don’t know. It’s pretty clear that the next republican administration will be a shit show of massive proportions. Whether that’s in 2025 or later, it’s coming. Dysfunctional government will seem like a blessing.
One senator could kill this rule by invoking it on everything possible.
Oh, you beat me to it! Of course, once elected to the Senate, I guess no senator actually wants to give up that little bit of power.
Philip Bump posted about the voting shifts, about an hour ago. Look for the Google Sheets file link. Good stuff.
Very VERY OT
It appears that the Christopher Wray Testimony before the House did not go as the GOP{ had hoped for.
He literally destroyed several major GOP talking points about election integrity and FBI investigations and so on. The lamestream press is reporting it this way as are a few other sources.
Interesting situation.
But I do believe Wray is "done" as Director.
How's he done? He's appointed by the President; I don't think Biden has any bone to pick with him.
The president does not hold hearings and publicly berate Directors of any agency.
Biden did not appoint Wray.
When Biden wins re-election it might be time to put a Dem in that position.
Why? Well, I believe the Freedom Caucus, MAGA groups are on borrowed time.
I can hope,can't i???
Sorry to stomp on your dream, but I don't think out-and-out replacing a sitting FBI director is quite Biden's thing. He's more a normal-procedures kind of guy. OTOH Wray's tenure ends by 2017 so it would be interesting to see whether a second-term Biden might break the mold and actually nominate a D.
Made more sense when there were only 26 senators. To keep at same proportion, it should now take 4 senators to object to "unanimous" consent. All the Senate rules are stupid anyway- it should run on majority vote, like all other legislative bodies in the world.
The issues related to drug pricing are far from trivial. Anyone says otherwise is lying outright. I mean, god forbid we on the left should use tactics available. Centrist like Drum finds all of this inconvenient. Too bad. Good for Mr. Sanders. Trust he's taking the lead for Biden as he has since the election. Somebody has to.
How do you feel about Tommy Tuberville denying unanimous consent an military promotions till the military adopts some of his pet policies about abortion?
Seriously, every Senator running for election or re-election needs to be pressed on changing the rules. They are norms and they've been abused for far too long.
Same with the filibuster. Both are arguably unconstitutional. You can't have rules that violate the text of the role of the Senate.
American voters don't care about this sort of process issue in large enough numbers for it to matter. I'd bet that well over 95% of them couldn't tell you what "unanimous consent" is.
At last, the political revolution we were promised...
Bravo Zulu, Sen. Sanders...
If I were a senator I would deny unanimous consent routinely till the unanimous consent rule was abolished.