Senate GOP Is Breaking Its Promise

At the start of this 113th Congress, the Democrats had a chance to change Senate rules and insure that the filibuster would not continue to be abused -- making it necessary to get 60 votes to pass any bill, instead of the 51 votes it is supposed to take. But the Republicans, as they did in the 112th Congress, promised not to filibuster everything as they had done in the past -- and the Democrats fell for that promise once again.

One of the things they had promised not to filibuster was sending a bill to a conference committee with the House of Representatives -- where the two legislative bodies hammer out differences in the bills they have passed, and come up with a compromise bill that both bodies can pass. Several teabagger senators are now breaking that promise (namely Cruz, Lee, and Rubio).

Both the Senate and the House have come up with budgets for the coming year -- but neither budget could pass the other legislative body. It is necessary that a committee be formed to negotiate a budget acceptable to both the House and Senate. But the above-named senators (and some others supporting them) are now saying they will filibuster the forming of this committee unless the Senate Democrats agree to provisions they have already defeated when the bill was passed in the Senate.

This is a clear violation of the promise the GOP senators made to keep the filibuster rules from being changed back in January. I don't blame them though. I blame the Democratic senators who were stupid enough to believe the Republicans -- who have time and time again proven they cannot be trusted. This same thing happened in the last Congress. When are the Democrats going to learn? How many times must they be conned by the Republicans before they do something?