Dear Alan Grayson, the Senate is not the House.

Daily Kos reports:

Alan Grayson launched a web­site over the week­end for peo­ple to sign a peti­tion to Harry Reid to change the rules of the Sen­ate. The new rule would require only 55 votes to invoke clo­ture instead of 60.

And Michael Cohen at Politico wants Democ­rats to reform the fil­i­buster to require just a sim­ple majority:

Solu­tions to the fil­i­buster prob­lem exist; what is lack­ing is polit­i­cal will. One pro­posal — offered, iron­i­cally, by Lieber­man — would require 60 votes on the first motion to end debate but pro­gres­sively draw the num­ber down to 51 on sub­se­quent votes. The num­ber of votes needed to end a fil­i­buster could be decreased, as was done in 1975, when it was dropped from 67 to 60. Rules requir­ing unan­i­mous con­sent could be mod­i­fied to require a higher num­ber of objec­tions to stop Sen­ate proceedings.

Obvi­ously, nei­ther of these peo­ple read Ezra Klein, who last week reminded read­ers that it takes 67 votes, not 51, to do that. The Sen­ate, my friends, is not the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. A sim­ple major­ity does not rule.

One pos­si­ble tac­tic would be for Harry Reid and Democ­rats to cheat and stop enforc­ing the rule, a la Sen­ate Repub­li­cans in 1995 with regard to PAYGO. The blow­back from that strat­egy, how­ever, would prob­a­bly be absolutely unman­age­able. As Klein con­cluded, we’re stuck with it for the forsee­able future.

23 November 2009 – 9:10 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (173)