block majority votes on every nominee and every significant piece of legislation, now including wall street reform. even though that doesn t get talked about anymore, don t lose sight of this. everybody keeps acting as though this is normal. it s not, this is not normal. the constant ever present, always on filibuster has never happened before in the history of our country. this has never happened before in the history of the senate. how democrats will respond to the always-on filibuster in the case of wall street reform remains to be seen. will democrats manage to win over some republican votes? would they, could they use the reconciliation procedure to get around the filibuster like they had to do on health reform? nobody yet knows for sure. procedurally it is not at all clear what happens next. as i said, there s never been a case in american history where every single piece of legislation is filibustered. we ve never done this before. but substantively, it is important to keep in m
everything. they are using senate rules to blo block majority votes on every nominee and every significant piece of legislation, now including wall street reform. even though that doesn t get talked about anymore, don t lose sight of this. this is not normal. the constant ever present, always on filibuster has never happened before in the history of our country. this has never happened before in the history of the senate. how democrats will respond to the always on filibuster in the case of wall street reform remains to be seen. will democrats manage to win over some republican votes? would they, could they use the reconciliation procedure to get around the filibuster like they had to do on health reform? nobody yet knows for sure. procedurally it is not at all clear what happens next. as i said, there s never been a case in american history where every single piece of legislation is filibustered. we ve never done this before.
elections, republicans have become a finely-tuned filibuster machine. see how the number of filibusters sky rockettes there in 2007? that s the voice of the republican minority. just since president obama took office republicans have filibustered the stimulus, the tobacco regulation, extending unemployment benefits, health reform of course you know what? actually, it s pretty much everything. do we have a scroll of that? yeah. as far as we can tell, republicans have filibustered every major piece of legislation since president obama took office. the only major actions we ve been able to come up with that weren t filibustered were the nominations of the president s cabinet secretaries and the nomination of supreme court justice sonia sotomayor. that s because cabinet secretaries and supreme court nominees rarely if ever get filibustered. but never say never. another supreme court nomination coming up this summer. procedurally, this is the reality in the senate. republicans are filibus
see how the number of filibusters skyrockets there in 2007? that s the voice of the republican minority. just since president obama took office republicans have filibustered the stimulus, the tobacco regulation, extending unemployment benefits, health reform of course you know what? actually, it s pretty much everything. do we have a scroll of that? yeah. as far as we can tell, republicans have filibustered every major piece of legislation since president obama took office. the only major actions we ve been able to come up with that weren t filibustered were the nominations of the president s cabinet secretaries and the nomination of supreme court justice sonia sotomayor. that s because cabinet secretaries and supreme court nominees rarely if ever get filibustered. but never say never. another supreme court nomination coming up this summer. procedurally, this is the reality in the senate. republicans are filibustering everything. they are using senate rules to