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In 2005.
Joining us now is Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico. Sen. Udall,
Thanks very much for coming on the show tonight. It's nice to have you here.
Great, Rachel. It's good to be with you on the show.
Let me ask you about the 2005 versus today
scenariou that I just laid out, because I have been confused about this.
Democrats were convinced the Republicans could kill
the filibuster with just a majority vote. They were so
convinced
that they caved on a lot of the issues the Republicans wanted them to cave on.
Now, Democrats, many of them don't seem to beleve that they could get rid of the
filibuster with a majority vote. Do you think that's right?
What has happened, Rachel, is we have gotten ourselves into a terrible
box.
And this is what the box is. First of all, we've put into the Senate rules
the provision that -
the rules in the Senate will
continue from one Senate to the next.
So that's one. And the second provision is
you can only change the rules
in accordance with the rules which require 67 votes
So here, we have a box that we've created,
and we can never get our way out of it, because we don't have 67 votes.
Right. My way out of it, Rachel, is very simple,
and we go back to the framers. We go back to the Constitution, Basically, what we
say is in Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution,
it says
that each House, the Senate
may
determine its rules of its proceedings.
So at the beginning of every Congress by majority vote,
we are able
to determine our rules
so the kind of abuse that you're talking about that has occurred
we can consider that. We can look at it and we can decide as a group
51 of us, if we have the political will to step forward. We decide
we're going to change the rules
and the reason you change the rules is to make them work better
for the American people, to get the things done the American people sent us
here to do.
Is that procedure that you're talking about for changing - potentially, at
least considering changing the filibuster rule
with a 51 senator vote. Is that the same thing the Republicans were
proposing doing when they were threatening what they called the
nuclear option back in 2005?
Well, the big difference is, the nuclear option was applying to
judicial nominees only. And so they were objection to what was happening
on the filibuster with judicial nominees. And they were talking
about doing it
in the middle of a Senate
session
The difference, I think, between
my proposal and what they were proposing then
is that
at the beginning of the Congress is when you adopt the rules. That's what the
House. I served 5 terms in the House. The very first thing we
would do at the beginning of every Congress is adopt
those rules
and then those rules serve throughout that particular Congress.
In this case that you're talking about, the nuclear option - in the
middle of the Congress, they were trying to change the rules in midstream to
apply to judicial nominees.
What I'm starting is a movement
within the Senate now
to say at the beginning of the 112th Congress,
the first order of business
ought to be adopting rules for the 112th Congress
and under the Constitution, and the way the faramers saw it. We can do that with
a majority vote.
Let me aks you to take
the politcal temperature on this for us a little bit in Washington. I'm
sure you've done that already when you considered introducing the
But I feel like I'm hearing something I'm hearing it
from David Axelrod in the White House and from Vice President Joe Biden and
from colleagues of yours, including Sen. Kaufman and Sen. Menendez
and yourself, Sen. Stabenow earlier on this week, on the show.
A number of senators and people who ought to have a lot of influence in this
debate, like at the White House and the president of the Senate
the Vice President
all expressing real concern about the filibuster situtation and an
interst in potentially changing this. Do you feel like there is momentum in
Washington to finally do something about this instead of just complaining about it?
I think there's momentum in Washington. I think the more
people discover
how the rule has been abused. I mean, if you got back to
1960 on major pieces of legislation
the filibuster was used about 8 percent of the time.
You come up to our time period now, 2007 to 2009
and we're talking 70 percent of the time on major legislation
the filibuster being used.
And so when people find out
this isn't a real filibuster, it's a threat of filibuster,
it's a shadow filibuster,
many times we're in a quorum call
a rather than actually forcing
a member of the
party that wants to filibuster to get up and
talk about
what it is they oppose. I mean that's the one thing we've removed from
the rules.
It used to be in the Senate
That if you were filibustering
you stood up.
There was a physical dimension to it, that you
when you became exhausted you would have to leave the floor. That was the idea of the
filibuster. Now it's a threat it's a procedural device. It's used as a weapon
a partisanship. And so what I'm hoping to do to have a discussion this year, call
all of my fellow Senators together and say we can't get the
rules that worked for us, that worked for the American people
and that moved us down the road to getting things accomplished rather than using
the Senate rules to block
what the American people want us to do back here.
Sen. Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, thanks very much for joining us
tonight. Filibuster isn't the easiest thing in the world to talk about. But the
more people learn about it, the angrier they get about it. Appreciate your help tonight, sir.
Absolutly, Rachel. Thank you very much.