Tag: senate filibuster
When Worries Haunt Jim Clyburn, It's Time To Fear For  America

When Worries Haunt Jim Clyburn, It's Time To Fear For  America

When I interviewed House Majority Whip James Clyburn in 2014 about his memoir Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black, the South Carolina Democrat was confident in America’s ability to find its way, no matter how extreme the political swings might appear at any given time.

“The country from its inception is like the pendulum on a clock,” the congressman told me. “It goes back and forward. It tops out to the right and starts back to the left — it tops out to the left and starts back to the right.” And remember, he said, it “spends twice as much time in the center.”

I have always appreciated Clyburn’s wisdom, his passion, and his commitment to his constituents. But most of all, I have admired the optimism of this child of the South, who grew up hemmed in by Jim Crow’s separate and unequal grip, yet who believed in the innate goodness of America and its people. Clyburn put his own life on the line to drag the country — kicking and screaming — into a more just future.

He was convinced, I believe, that no matter how off balance America might become, the country would eventually right itself.

A lot has changed since that afternoon, when he sat at a long table, signing books and chatting in the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina, right beside his beloved wife. Emily Clyburn, a passionate civil rights activist, died in 2019, though Clyburn often references her wise words.That optimism, however, has lost its glow.

Clyburn’s worries drove our conversation in July 2021, the second of two times he was a guest on my CQ Roll Call “Equal Time” podcast. The topic was voting rights, and Clyburn had opinions about the Senate procedure that would eventually stall legislation to reform those rights and restore provisions invalidated by a Supreme Court decision in 2013.

“When it comes to the constitutional issues like voting, guaranteed to Blacks by the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, that should not be filibustered,” he said. And about restrictive laws being passed in states? “I want you to call it what it is. Use the word: nullification. It is voter nullification.”

“This isn’t about just voting; this is about whether or not we will have a democracy or an autocracy.”

With those remarks in the back of my mind, it was still startling to hear Clyburn last week on MSNBC, talking about his GOP House colleagues, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, and their waffling about complying with subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack.

When asked if the government and Capitol Hill could “be fixed,” Clyburn, known for his philosophical “this too shall pass” mantra, instead replied, “I don’t know.” He talked about threats to undermine democracy and said the country is “teetering on the edge.”

And that was before the shooting in Buffalo that claimed the lives of ten beautiful Americans doing something as routine as Saturday supermarket shopping. African Americans were targeted by an 18-year-old who wore his “white supremacist” label like a badge of honor in a heavily plagiarized racist screed, a man whose stated goal was to “kill as many blacks as possible.”

Is it any wonder Clyburn’s optimism has been waning in these times?

Among Clyburn’s current House colleagues sits Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the number three House Republican, whose Facebook ads echoed the “replacement” conspiracy theory swallowed hook, line and sinker by the Buffalo shooter. “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” was one message shared by the once moderate congresswoman, who replaced Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney in House leadership.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) has said many Americans believe “we’re replacing national-born American — native-born Americans — to permanently transform the political landscape of this very nation.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), someone you can always count on to say and do the very worst thing, has co-signed the near nightly rantings of a Fox News host, once tweeting, “Tucker Carlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America.”

While most Republican House members skirt the edges of the most incendiary claims, you don’t hear them loudly denouncing or disavowing them.

The accused Buffalo shooter was straightforward in his intentions as he found heroes in the racist and conspiracy-driven murderers who have cut a hateful swath through Norway, New Zealand, El Paso, Pittsburgh and Clyburn’s own home state of South Carolina, at places of worship, whether they be church, synagogue, or mosque.

The problem is much deeper than the availability of guns, and it didn’t surface in just the past few years, though the Obama family in the White House woke those uncomfortable with an evolving country and President Donald Trump cannily dug into a “Make America Great Again” slogan that looked back, not forward.

An accurate reading of history might have taught the shooter that scapegoating African Americans for his own emptiness and rot is not new, and that online conspiracies crumble when bombarded with truth. But many of the same people dismissing Saturday’s planned killing spree as the aberrant act of a disaffected and deranged “youth” would replace real history with rose-colored propaganda in the nation’s classrooms. Many Americans could use an education when polls show a third of them — and nearly half of Republicans — buy into the “replacement” lie.

It was the ugly truth, not fantasy, when President Joe Biden on Tuesday became counselor in chief, a role I’m sure he wishes he never had to play. When he and first lady Dr. Jill Biden traveled to Buffalo, the president blessedly took the time to note each individual — beloved wives and husbands, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters — emphasizing the humanity a shooter wanted to erase.

“In America, evil will not win, I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word,” he proclaimed.

But when it’s stoked by the rhetoric of fear and blame of the other, hate too often finds a way.

Maybe that is what’s haunting Clyburn, hero and longtime fighter, because he has seen so much. Now, when democracy is at stake, where will the pendulum stop?

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, and The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is currently a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.

Rand Paul’s Anti-NSA-Spying ‘Filibuster’ Lasts 10½ hours

Rand Paul’s Anti-NSA-Spying ‘Filibuster’ Lasts 10½ hours

By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Whether it was technically a filibuster or not hardly mattered Wednesday, as Sen. Rand Paul seized the Senate floor to fight renewal of a controversial domestic surveillance program by doing what he has come to do best: talking.

At 1:18 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, Paul (R-KY), the libertarian-leaning presidential contender, stood at his Senate desk before an otherwise empty chamber and began to speak out against a National Security Agency spying program that will expire at the end of the month if Congress fails to act.

“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,” Paul said as a few tourists in the gallery looked on. “That time is now.”

The 52-year-old Kentucky senator wrapped it up at 11:48 p.m., his speech clocking in at 10 1/2 hours. His aides had said he planned to hold forth until he could talk no longer, but the outcome didn’t quite match his 13-hour filibuster in 2013 against the Obama administration’s drone program.

It was uncertain whether his maneuver could be accurately described as a filibuster, whether it would do anything to shut down the domestic surveillance program, and whether the talk-a-thon would result in any meaningful delay of Senate business, which is the traditional definition of the legislative tactic.

Though civil libertarians heralded Paul as a hero, skeptics dismissed his move as symbolic at best, largely aimed at boosting fundraising for his nascent presidential campaign.

Paul’s speech came as Congress raced against a June 1 deadline over what to do about an NSA program that collects and stores records of Americans’ telephone calls.

The House overwhelmingly approved a measure last week that reins in some aspects of the surveillance program by requiring the government to rely instead on the phone companies to keep the data, which would then be accessible to the government only with a court order. But the Senate’s Republican leadership under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky opposes the House measure and wants to extend the NSA program as is.

Paul rejects both approaches and advocates ending the program entirely. Though few of his fellow lawmakers are willing to go that far, a steady stream of senators from both parties joined him on the floor in support of restraints on domestic surveillance.

If Congress fails to extend the program in the coming days, the NSA will have to begin shutting down its data-collection process by Friday, according to a Justice Department memo sent to lawmakers on Wednesday.

Though the program would not technically expire until June 1, the NSA would need to start the process to close it down sooner “to ensure that it does not engage in any unauthorized collection” of phone records, Justice Department officials warned.

FBI Director James B. Comey has said in recent days that congressional inaction would put at risk other crime-fighting tools the bureau needs to fight terrorism.
He said the current NSA program allowed the FBI to get court orders for data on individual suspects, and to conduct surveillance of so-called lone-wolf suspects who are not linked to foreign terrorist groups — both of which would be barred if the program ends. Losing those tools, Comey said in a speech Wednesday at Georgetown University, would cause “a big problem.”

Paul’s maneuver Wednesday has little immediate effect on the spy bill itself, instead interrupting proceedings on an unrelated trade measure that is a priority for the Obama administration.

The trade bill, which would give Obama broader powers to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership and similar accords, is scheduled for a vote Thursday, and it was doubtful that Paul would talk long enough to stop it.

If Paul were to speak until past midnight Wednesday, he would cause only a minor delay in a procedural vote on the trade bill.

As his filibuster two years ago did, Paul’s speech prompted a robust debate — not on spying or drones, but on what exactly constitutes a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”-style filibuster.

The answer, it turns out, is subjective. “Whether a filibuster is present is always a matter of judgment,” wrote the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in a 2014 report to lawmakers.

For Paul, though, there was no doubt about his intentions.

“I’ve just taken the Senate floor to begin a filibuster of the Patriot Act renewal. It’s time to end the NSA spying!” he said on his Twitter account.

He appears to have determined that the political rewards of holding true to his civil libertarian sensibilities overpower any risks he faces as a presidential candidate trying to appeal to a wider swath of Republicans and other voters who may not support his actions.

But perhaps in an effort to avoid antagonizing his Senate colleagues, Paul carefully timed his protest for Wednesday, when it would fill a lull in proceedings and not delay important votes on the NSA program or the trade bill, which leaders hoped would happen on Thursday before Congress adjourns for the holiday break.

Several senators joined Paul on the floor as early reinforcements, giving the senator a chance to rest his voice while they asked questions that sometimes lasted for 30 minutes or more. Otherwise, he paced at his desk, flipping through an old-fashioned three-ring binder of notes, and kept talking.

After his 2013 filibuster, which temporarily blocked the confirmation of a new CIA chief, Paul complained that he had not properly prepared, and should have done a few things differently, including wearing more comfortable shoes.

On Wednesday, he sported sensible-looking soft-soled dress-casuals.

(Staff writer Richard A. Serrano in Washington contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Screenshot via

For Senate Leaders, Conflicts Take A Personal Turn And Play Out In Public

For Senate Leaders, Conflicts Take A Personal Turn And Play Out In Public

By David Lightman, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Four minutes after the Senate returned from its Fourth of July recess this week, Harry Reid laced into Mitch McConnell.

Senate Republican leaders were throwing a “temper tantrum,” Reid told the Senate. Their conduct was “outrageous.”

Once uncommon, it was another ugly yet routine day in the dysfunctional United States Senate. Reid and McConnell can barely stand each other.

Their feud echoes America’s political mood: Polarized. Angry. Untrusting. And it’s a key reason Congress doesn’t work.

Routine spending bills are caught in the maelstrom, stalled in a standoff that could trigger another showdown in September over funding the federal government. In one pivotal dispute, Reid is making it harder for McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, to pass a proposal that would help would his state’s coal industry.

Also hanging in the gridlock: the highway trust fund, which might run out of money as soon as next month, and talks to help the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs.

Traditionally, Senate leaders take the lead in ending these conflicts. Yet Reid, the Senate majority leader and Nevada Democrat, and McConnell, the minority leader, have met just once since December. They instead engage in public, often personal spats on the Senate floor. And their exchanges feature bile-rich dialogue rare in modern times from the chamber’s most powerful figures.
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The political journeys of both men hardly seemed destined for such opposite directions. Congressional leaders usually reach these jobs because they’re consensus-builders adept at accommodating the disparate interests of a broad political party, and often had to endure hardship and conflict to succeed and survive politically at home.

McConnell, 72, spent his early years in Alabama, overcame polio as a child and moved as a teenager with his family to Louisville. He was a student of the Senate from an early age, interning during college for one Kentucky senator and later working as an aide for another.

He won his seat in 1984, by four-tenths of a percentage point at a time that fellow Republican Ronald Reagan was taking the state by more than 20 points in his landslide re-election. In four subsequent re-elections, McConnell’s won more than 55 percent only once. This year, he’s engaged in another too-close-to-call struggle, against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state.

Reid, 74, grew up in the hardscrabble town of Searchlight, Nev. His father was an alcoholic who committed suicide at age 58, and the family never had it easy. Reid became a boxer whose coach was Mike O’Callaghan, later Nevada’s governor. Reid worked as a U.S. Capitol Police officer to help pay for law school, and back in Nevada was elected O’Callaghan’s lieutenant governor at age 30.

Reid lost his first Senate bid, in 1974. Twelve years later he won the seat with 50 percent of the vote, and was re-elected in 1992 with 51 percent. In 1998, Reid barely survived, winning by 428 votes. In 2010, he fought off a strong challenge from tea party favorite Sharron Angle, winning with 50.2 percent.

In Washington, Reid and McConnell largely shunned the media spotlight, instead crafting reputations as deal-makers and vote-counters. Reid easily won the election among his peers to be the Democratic leader in 2004. McConnell smoothly ascended to Republican leader two years later, also winning an open spot.
___

Seasoned pros, the two showed early signs of a traditional leadership relationship. They talked often, usually face to face, and helped craft deals that allowed major legislation through Congress such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which helped save the financial industry in 2008, and aid to the ailing auto industry.

“Behind the scenes, in the places where cameras do not record our discussions, as we have to have, we are not only friends but determined partners in the legislative process,” Reid told the Senate on Jan. 12, 2009.

Eight days later, President Barack Obama took office, and the Senate’s tone changed.

Obama quickly pushed costly new government programs that rankled Republicans, such as the $787 billion stimulus for the economy, a sweeping plan to combat climate change and a vast overhaul of health care.

By the time Obama got to health care, McConnell was marshaling forces for an extraordinary campaign to block it. Though in the minority, he could use the threat of a filibuster to deny Reid the 60 votes the majority would need to proceed.

McConnell’s procedural tactics helped force votes during snowstorms, after midnight, and in one case 20 minutes before dawn on Christmas Eve.

McConnell was proud of his tactics. He was playing rough, but by the rules.

Reid fumed. He saw McConnell as defying tradition. Sure, you push hard, but you don’t make people come in on Christmas Eve, not when you know the bill is going to pass anyway.

Nor do you use those procedural tactics on what should be routine matters, such as letting a president appoint lower-level federal judges as long as they were legally qualified.

By last summer, Reid was moving toward an extraordinary step.
___

He took the pulse of Senate Democrats about changing the rules to curb the minority’s power.

Newer members such as Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon were adamant. The old traditions were stifling. Republicans were playing hardball, and Democrats had to play the same game. “The American people want this institution to function,” Merkley said.

Veterans such as Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., balked. The idea being floated — allowing 51 votes to cut off debate in many cases instead of 60 — might make Senate life easier for Democrats in 2013, but in a few years Republicans could have control and much more power.

Reid was losing sleep.

He usually went back to his condominium in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington and relaxed watching baseball. He liked the Washington Nationals, which had the pride of Las Vegas, outfielder Bryce Harper, as their up-and-coming star.

Even baseball couldn’t distract Reid now. He was torn. McConnell would probably relent on the judges, but the Senate was looking dysfunctional and little was getting done.

McConnell, though, showed no signs of relenting. McConnell plays the Senate like a poker player. His face, his tone, his demeanor betray nothing. Even after all these years, Reid found him hard to read.

Reid grew consumed by the fight.

Last July 11, after the opening prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, Reid rose to his front-row podium, his glasses slightly crooked.

He recalled that McConnell had pledged to “work with the majority to process nominations.”

Reid stared straight ahead, his voice barely rising. “Those were his words. Those were his commitments. Those were his promises,” he said. “By any objective standard, he has broken them.”

It was an extraordinarily personal criticism, rare in the modern Senate. McConnell stood across the aisle, with his expressionless gaze.

“What this is about is manufacturing a pretext for a power grab,” McConnell said.
___

On a Monday night last July, Reid called a meeting of all senators in the Old Senate Chamber, on the second floor of the Capitol. Last used regularly in 1859, it was the site of historic debates over slavery and territorial expansion.

They met privately for four hours. Levin warned fellow Democrats that they won’t always be in the majority. Afterward, Democratic leaders headed to Reid’s office down the hall, where they ate pretzel sticks and trail mix from the big tubs Reid has in his office. Changing the rules didn’t feel right.

They called McCain. He was still willing to deal, and he agreed to go ahead with several votes, including four executive branch nominees.

Reid’s security detail drove him home to his condo in a black SUV. There was no baseball on to relax him. Still, he slept soundly.
___

Tuesday morning, Reid took his usual half-hour morning walk near his home. He talked to McCain on the phone, then called other senators.

Just before the Senate was to convene at 10 a.m., McConnell left his office and marched down the hall on the Capitol’s second floor, past the big picture windows with their postcard views of the Washington Monument.

He made a left, then a right, then was in Reid’s office. He made a last-ditch offer: I’ll agree to the controversial nominee if you’ll make a public statement saying you won’t change the rules to weaken the filibuster. Reid said no.

Reid went to the Senate floor and praised McCain. McCain, in turn, praised Reid. Aware that he couldn’t stop it, McConnell publicly embraced the deal.

This wasn’t over.

Sure enough, in November, the test case came. This time it involved three D.C. Circuit Court judges and Rep. Mel Watt, Obama’s nominee for the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Republicans said he wasn’t qualified. Democrats saw an attempt to embarrass a popular veteran congressman.

McCain this time couldn’t help. Republicans found the judges too ideological and had serious qualms about Watt’s ability to run the agency.

Reid dug in. This time, some former skeptics such as Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), said go.

On the Senate floor, colleagues from both parties urged Reid to reconsider. By changing the rules, “we will have sacrificed a professed vital principle for the sake of momentary gain,” warned Levin.

Reid wouldn’t budge. “Can anyone say the Senate is working now?” he asked the Senate. “I don’t think so.”

The Senate voted 52-48 to change the rules to require 51 votes to limit debate on most judicial and executive branch nominees.

Outside the Senate chamber, McConnell ripped the move. “Democrats set up one set of rules for themselves and another for everybody else.”

The two men met in December and then not again until May 1, when they had a general discussion of issues in Reid’s Capitol office. That’s been it. They’ve spent the year battling.

___

Now the Reid-McConnell feud threatens the budget deal reached in the wake of last year’s shutdown of the federal government, and might plunge Washington back into fiscal brinksmanship.

The House of Representatives has been smoothly, quietly writing detailed spending plans this year, and the Senate was doing the same.

But last month Reid said he wanted 60 votes to amend some spending bills, instead of the usual 51 — after he insisted that most of Obama’s nominees not be subject to 60-vote rules.

McConnell sought a vote on his proposal to curb Obama administration plans to more tightly regulate carbon emissions from current coal-fired plants. The proposal would help his state’s coal industry.

Reid said McConnell’s plan was a major policy change and thus should need 60 votes for approval. McConnell had embraced the 60-vote rule to slow measures, Reid charged, so he should be subjected to the same approach.

“Since he’s been the minority leader, virtually everything we do around here has had a 60-vote hurdle,” Reid said. “That’s why we call it the McConnell rule.”

McConnell objected to the change of approach to amendments on spending bills.

Reid pulled the bill. Progress on spending stalled, and since the Senate plans to be out of session from Aug. 1 until Sept. 8 and the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, chances of passing any legislation looked grim.

Insiders thought one chance might be that tempers would cool during the nine-day Fourth of July recess that ended Monday. Instead, Reid apparently stewed through the break, and was eager to pounce the minute he got back to the Senate.

“Instead of saying their needless obstruction has hurt us,” Reid told the Senate as he spoke of the past and future, “the Republican leadership has responded with what can only be described as a temper tantrum.”

McConnell tersely offered his view the next day to reporters.

“We’d have a better chance of working our way through the bills that we need to pass,” McConnell said, “if we cut out the showboats and didn’t eat up time trying to score points for the fall elections.”

AFP Photo/Alex Wong

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