End the individual hold and change the filibuster

[Nancy Waterman]

The Dems have one chance to do it or there will be hell to pay.
Americans won't understand that procedural rules are stalling things.
They will just see the results.

One chance: January 4

This will also allow nominations to go through the Senate. One chance.

[Hawkowl]

1. Agree 100%

This is the absolutely last chance to avoid complete disaster.

[scheming daemons]

2. How are we going to do that? We need 67 to change Senate rules!

Please explain.

[DrToast]

4. No we don't. The Senate sets the rules at the beginning of each session. You only need a majority

[Occam Bandage]

3. Too late for that shit.

That's exactly what the Dems needed to do back, oh, around early 2009. As it stands now, we won't get a single thing passed so long as the Republicans can hold a unified bloc in the House. The Senate is the least of our concerns.

[DrToast]

5. Is the world ending tomorrow?

If it was a good idea in 2009, then it's a good idea today.

[cascadiance]

6. I think there might be time for one or two decent bills to go through the House NOW...

during the lame duck session, that the new Senate should be able to pass and get Obama to sign. As I've said in other threads. I think we all need to work on this immediately NOW so that we can start on some constructive efforts and push the House to do it. If they respond and do a good job, it might be able to rescue some of their political careers for later (at least those that are worth anything to us!).

We've got basically a little over a month to get some things decent passed that most Americans can appreciate and look back at later to measure us as a potential majority party again when 2012 rolls around.

[starroute]

7. I don't believe you can carry bills over that way

Anything that hasn't been enacted by both houses when a session of Congress ends has to start over from scratch. That means it's not possible to pass something in the House now and the Senate later, because it all gets reset.