Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Ted Cruz’s Four Ways to Work Around a Filibuster

Joshua Roberts/Reuters
The Texas senator has some ideas about how the GOP can pass more bills with fewer than 60 votes.
Shortly after his speech to the NRA’s annual meeting Friday, Texas senator Ted Cruz took a few moments to speak to National Review about what Republicans can get done in the remainder of the year, and the options they have for working around the filibuster efforts of Senate Democrats.
[...]
NRO: You mentioned 50 votes a lot of times. The president has made it clear he’s fed up with the filibuster for legislation. Are you?
Cruz: I agree with the president we should end the filibuster. I didn’t used to think that. A few years ago, I opposed that. What’s changed is two things. Number one, the level of Democratic obstruction we’re seeing is simply unprecedented: They are filibustering everything — virtually every nominee, virtually every substantive piece of legislation. Number two, I no longer believe the Democrats will be bound by the filibuster: I think that if and when the Democrats take the majority, they will take away the filibuster in a heartbeat. It doesn’t make any sense for it to be a one-way constraint.
That being said, we don’t have the votes right now to end the filibuster within the Republican conference. We may have about half the Republicans who would support it, but there is a significant number that wouldn’t. So what I’m suggesting is, for the next six months, let’s focus on procedural vehicles that can’t be filibustered.
There are principally four: --->
Read the full article fom Jim Geraghty HERE.

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