Politics

Delay Slayer

By Sunlight Foundation & Participatory Politics Foundation

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] has taken a lot of slack for not being a tough enough leader. But, when it comes to killing filibusters, Roll Call reports (via Political Wire) that he’s the toughest majority leader ever:

Since the beginning of the 111th Congress, Reid has won 90 percent of his efforts to cut off attempted Republican filibusters. Two former Majority Leaders — Bill Frist (R-TN) and Mike Mansfield (D-MT) — tied for the next best record of winning votes to end debate or invoke cloture; both Senators prevailed 63 percent of the time in the 109th Congress and the 94th Congress, respectively.

If the Senate continues at its current pace, Reid will set a new record if he is able to win just one in five cloture votes for the rest of this Congress. Sixty votes are needed to beat back a filibuster and invoke cloture.

This is mostly a result of the Republicans’ record usage of the filibuster since the Democrats took over Congress in 2007. The Republicans have filibustered all but the most routine of motions in the Senate, meaning that a lot of what has been filibustered was not controversial and that the Democrats had to get good at breaking filibusters if tehy wanted to do anything at all.

Full post as published by Open Congress on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).