Chris White Tech Reporter August 12, 2020 11:20 AM ET
California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris said in 2019 that she would consider ending the Senate filibuster as president if Republican lawmakers refused to embrace legislation addressing what she and other Democrats believe is a climate crisis.
Harris, who was selected Tuesday as running mate on former Vice President Joe Biden’s Democratic presidential bid, made the suggestion during a CNN climate crisis town hall in September 2019 before ending her own run for president in December.
“If they fail to act, as president of the United States, I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal,” Harris said, referring to potential Republican opposition to climate legislation. (RELATED: Kamala Harris, Ocasio-Cortez Push For Climate Bills To Be Scored Based On How Much They Impact Black People)
Her remarks were the first time Harris expressed support for ending the filibuster, a procedural requirement that any legislation get 60 votes to end the Senate’s unlimited debate.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Democrats against weakening the procedure in August 2019.
“The legislative filibuster is directly downstream from our founding tradition. If that tradition frustrates the whims of those on the far left, it is their half-baked proposals and not the centuries-old wisdom that need retooling,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, wrote in an August 2019 op-ed for The New York Times.
Democrats would need to flip three Republican seats in the Senate to gain control of the chamber. They would also need 60 votes to win a filibuster-proof majority, which is unlikely given the map of Senate seats up for election. If Democrats cannot collect the requisite number of votes, then the GOP would still have the ability to block legislation unless the filibuster rules were changed
Harris backed the Green New Deal in 2019, which sought to aggressively cut carbon emissions over the next decade. The resolution, crafted by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for “10-year national mobilizations” toward addressing climate change.
A fact sheet published alongside the proposal said the plan would “mobilize every aspect of American society on a scale not seen since World War 2.” Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal would reportedly phase out fossil fuel usage within 12 years. Studies show the plan would come with a hefty price.
Americans could be forced to pay up to $93 trillion to implement the Green New Deal over a decade, the conservative-leaning American Action Forum noted in a study in February 2019.
Republicans in the Senate torpedoed the legislation in March 2019, while Democratic lawmakers called the vote a political stunt. The Republicans defeated the proposal 57-0, with McConnell calling the bill a socialistic ploy designed to kill the economy.
potus can’t do that. senate sets its own rules.
On 3 January, 2021 the new Congress is sworn in. Kamala will still be a Senator then regardless of whether she and Dementia Joe win. The inauguration is 20 January. If the Democrat-Marxists take the Senate majority and if Biden and Harris win in November, Senator Harris will be a powerful voice in the Senate to push a rules change to eliminate completely the filibuster for those 16 days until she resigns to be sworn in as President (because Dementia Joe will never be President even if he wins).
The Birg Collective is desperate for power. If they take the Senate and the White House, we are all really, really screwed. Websites like Anthony’s WUWT will become targets for cancellation in ways we don’t yet see, as the sinister Marxist-Democrat Borg collective assimilates all of Washington DC.
Borg, not Birg.
The Birg – Big Invasive Repressive Government.
Big, borg, same thing.
Note to Ms Harris,
Republicans already tried that GND thing and Democrats voted Present
GND=Bad Deal
It really amazes me how the Democrats are already trying to paint Harris as being a moderate.
Of course with a fully compliant media, they might be able to get away with it.
I am not ready to be assimilated, how about you?
and still, nothing to do with being potus/vpotus.
its, as you laid out, a senate item only.
bugged me earlier how so few took her to task for implying a potus can change senate rules. not that I was expecting much.
It would be nice if people running for an office understood what that office was.
Democrats seem to believe that their presidents should be allowed to be dictators.
A few days ago some Democrats were whining about how Trump was using executive orders to go around congress. To a man, these same Democrats were urging Obama to do the same thing just a few years ago.
Different rules, remember?
Just write the executive order, don’t worry if you have the authority to actually do it.
It will be fascinating to see if “Sleepy” Joe and “Horizontal” Harris can effectively manage the MSM, as will be necessary to win the US Presidential election.
First, will the issue of Kamala’s previous “romantic” relationship with then-married-but-estranged Willie Brown, a powerful political figure who was at the time Democratic Speaker of the Assembly for the State of California, be dragged through the news as was Donald Trump’s “womanizing” and speculated affair with Stormy Daniels? (ref: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/willie-brown-kamala-harris/ )
Next, it will fascinating to see how biased the MSM will be when it comes to reporting on this team’s claims on the true costs and socioeconomic impacts of AOC’s GND and eliminating future use of fossil fuels. Oh, and let’s not neglect their plans to “tax the rich” . . . maybe with Bernie Sanders appointed as Secretary of the Treasury.
With AOC as appointed czar for eliminating climate change™, what could possible go wrong?
“It will be fascinating to see if “Sleepy” Joe and “Horizontal” Harris can effectively manage the MSM, as will be necessary to win the US Presidential election.”
The Democrats don’t have to manage the MSM. The MSM is in the tank for the Democrats. The MSM is the propaganda organ for the Democrats. Joe and Kamala can sit back and relax knowing the MSM is going to run interference for them, and protect them from critcism, all the way to November 3.
“Websites like Anthony’s WUWT will become targets for cancellation in ways we don’t yet see”
I think that is what will happen if the radical Left wins. The radical Left is already out of control, and if they gain even more political power, there will be no stopping them. Power will go to the heads of these powerhungry people.
I don’t, btw, think the radical Democrats will win, unless we really do live in an Idiocracy, and I don’t think that is the case, but we may live in a half-Idiocracy, and if they get the majority, then it’s going to be tough getting control back from them.
They will rig the system like they are doing now, but if they win, then they will have even more power to rig the system and you can bet your bottom dollar they are going to do everything in their power to get and keep political power whether it be legal or illegal. Their illegal attacks on the system have plagued us for four years. Let’s hope the American people see through their lies and distortions of the truth and reject the insanity coming from the radical Left..
If they actually do this, all they’ll do is just move a bunch of states further along on the road to secession. They really ought to learn some history from original sources instead of the academic drivel that they’re accustomed to.
Exactly, but would you expect someone running for President to know what the rules are. Really?
I think it is not so much a reminder of what Harris ‘can’ do in a legal sense, but a reminder of where her stands in relation to industry.
Harris was just playing that regular game of saying and pledging things that she knew would not come up or go anywhere. It is considered a low cost pass with no consequences in this swamp game. I suppose it demonstrates “skill” at handling the crazies if you can award such points in the swamp. This is another reason what normal, rational people do not run for office or get any traction if they try. The upside down chess game is always being played.
The Borg Collective has selected its new Borg Queen, no doubt about that.
Dementia Joe is just a placeholder.
If Dementia Joe does win, they’ll 25th Amendment him as soon as the Electoral College results are accepted in Congress on January 6th. Then the Borg Collective will have their Queen installed on January 20th.
Until then, Queen Kamala will become the primary campaign talking head. Joe can’t even read from a teleprompter without gaffing.
“Joe can’t even read from a teleprompter without gaffing.”
Neither can Trump, but for different reasons.
That’s because Trump often chooses to go off script and speak off the cuff (regardless of what you think about what he says when he does so) rather than rely solely on a teleprompter. Joe seems to be incapable of speaking off the cuff any more – at least not while using coherent sentences (“You know, the rapidly rising, uh, um, uh, in with uh, with uh, I don’t know, uh,”, “you know, you know, the thing”)
Well, for sure, America does not need, nor has any use for a ……. Queen Kamala, ….. because, to wit:
the author
Filibuster has been codified in 1806 as a constitutional lawyer like Barack Hussein Obama should know. It was called “The Soul of the Senate”, protecting the minority. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) started to emasculate it in 2013.
Democrats want to rule with an iron fist whenever they have a majority, hoping to make that majority permanent. That’s the way Germany went in 1930s.
Yes, the Party that gets away with taking out a number of elected opposition members (Alaska) to get the Senate vote tally to work with DOJ hit teams and taking all the stacks of FBI files on the elected opposition members to the Clinton White House and planting special ops members in the agencies never sleeps, but the biased media knows exactly when to go to sleep and look the other way. We are not so different from the thugocracies–we just take longer to work the system here to the same ends. Those pesky founding fathers made it so cumbersome compared to Marx, Lenin, and Mao.
The filibuster-clotures rules set in the Senate is only a rule set and changed by the Senate. The constitution makes very clear that House and Senate each sets their own rules.
What Harry Reid did in 2013 was nuke the filibuster, a rule that had largely been left unchanged for over 200 years. Democrats are desperate for power since the Bush Jr years and his defeat of Al Gore and John Kerry.
Against warnings from Republicans that they would regret it, the Democrat majority then removed the confirmation process for lower court judges and executive branch appointments from the filibuster cloture rules. Democrats opened the door to the next filibuster rule change which was McConnell and the Republican majority removing the filibuster rule from Supreme Court nominations. They did that in April 2017 when Democrats tried to use it to block Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Speaking of Bush v Gorebal, Hellaries first involvement with the disruption of the smooth transition of power was removing all the w’s from the white house keyboards. That was just a prank, but what came from the fake Russian dossier she and the DNC commissioned, that amounted to treason.
Agree
“but what came from the fake Russian dossier she [Hillary] and the DNC commissioned, that amounted to treason.”
Yes it did, and does.
Until 1975, the filibuster-cloture bar was 2/3 of the Senate, or 67. In 1975, the Democrats held 62 Senate seats and changed the rule to the present 60 in order to be able to pass their agenda.
I have never been in favor of such a rule, mainly because it is used as an excuse to stop legislation from a full Senate vote thus putting Senators on the record. This excuse allows Senators to act as if they were for or against something without actually having to vote on it.
Of course I am also against the 17th Amendment which really screwed up our government by making the selection of Senators an election of the people. It needs to be repealed.
Fully agree about the 17th Amendment. Needs to go.
On a lighter note, many foreigners only know of the filibuster from James Stewart’s 23 hours and 15 minutes effort in “ Mr.Smith goes to Washington”(1939) and Bob Hope’s delightful 3 day take off of the filibuster in “ Louisiana Purchase” (1941).
In an otherwise forgettable movie, Bob Hope drolly assures us (while reduced to reading “ Goldilocks and the Three Bears”) that he has the express permission of James Stewart for the filibuster.
Sorry for that trivial distraction.
Speaking of going off script. Some of the best moments in Hope’s movies came when he started ad libbing. Robin Williams was pretty good at ad libbing as well from what I’ve read.
I just hope enough Americans can get past the systemic racist hate of an orange male promoted by the media and the political left ever since Trump announced his candidacy.
Rabid diversity (and exclusion) dogma is a progressive condition, but people are waking to the not so nuanced racism, sexism, and other Marxist (i.e. class-based taxonomies) underlying its quasi-religious (“ethical”) foundation. Another not quite wicked solution. #HateLovesAbortion
If we could just develop an electrical generation system that could run on “Orange Man Bad” as the fuel supply, then the U.S. would be all set and we could even build out the grid in Africa!
Americas economy does well, not necessarily because it is more advanced than other nations but because it has a huge inbuilt advantage with its very low energy costs that benefit consumers and industry.
The green new deal will likely increase costs considerably, making your businesses less competitive and taking money from the pockets of consumers.
Energy itself is also likely to be less reliable. All in all good news for your competitors but bad news for American prosperity
Tonyb
Plan A was direct redistribution via things like the Green Climate Fund. Trump said F that.
Plan B is to cripple the US to get the same net effect. I sure hope the voters say F that. Mostly, I hope they know enough to know to say F that …
If the Demoncrats get mail-in voting, the voters don’t matter. They’ll just print as many votes as they need.
America’s advantages included both abundant afgirdable energy and other resources as well as freedom for innovators to do their thing, start a business, and maybe get rich. Plus greater social mobility due to a generally less rigid and entrenched class system than in older countries. Progressives seek to eliminate all of these.: make energy scarce and expensive, stifle innovation with ever growing government, punish success, and entrench a class system based on ethnic and gender chastes and fealty to approved ideas. America was nice while it lasted.
Is Kamala Harris one of these “jail the climate sceptics ?”
Do you mean like this?
https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/03/10/attorney-general-lynch-looking-into-prosecuting-climate-change-deniers/
I think she’s more of a “jail anyone who doesn’t agree with me” kind of person.
In other words, a typical progressive.
History teaches how the Marxist-Democrats, employing fascist tactics would proceed.
the first few years are suppression and marginalization by violence if needed. The Cancel Culture would gain access to full powers of the federal government, where today, they only control a handful of State-level Attorney Generals, like NY and California, Massachusetts.
Once DOJ was engaged in a full court suppression, as we’ve seen from the NY State AG, then the next step after afew years are the “re-education centers, the the full on Gulags where remaining hard-core dissidents will be sent.
The Democrats under FDR’s progressive leadership had Japanese-American US citizens interned in some pretty bad places. They were not “garden spots,” as all were in isolated remote, desert areas. Anyone think about “escaping” into the harsh desert would face formidable odds.
My first scenario I dreamed up is.
Average citizens protest Kamala stealing presidency.
Good police captain refuses to quell protest.
Police captain not only sacked but jailed.
It will go down hill from there.
Peaceful protest is a right in the First Amendment.
But throwing bricks, blocking active roads and streets, looting, destroying property, assaulting police, shining lasers in their eyes is criminal violence and needs to be dealt with harshly by local police allowed to do their job.
It’s a sad commentary on how the left has corrupted our culture, that as soon as one hears the word “protest”, one starts thinking about mobs throwing rocks and breaking things.
Kamala is definitely an authoritarian.
Kamala said not long ago that if she were elected president she would give the Congress 100 days to fix the gun laws or she would do so herself through Executive action.
Of course, Congress makes the laws but that doesn’t seem to have dawned on Kamala. Obama set a bad example for her..
I mean the question is simple. How, for crying out lout, can one expect a safe flight and a good landing with a visibly incapacitated captain on an unrealistic flight-plan plus a first officer who religiously hates fuel availability ?
Comment of the day!
Roger, Roger.
Over, Unger.
And stop calling me Shirley.
How quickly the “Green New Deal” became the hue and cry of the Progressives to capture the far left eco loony votes. And to think it was introduced by a rooky ex bartender Representative who was more a laughing stock than taken seriously. The power of the MSM to introduce and control any narrative they want is, and has been, a Conservative problem for decades. The Progressives played the long game by slowly controlling/buying the MSM right under Conservative noses. Thank God for the internet. If we don’t watch out they will control that as well and if you don’t believe it just look at search engines and social media. Only the naive believe they want an even playing field.
the left are so sure they are right that they believe the ends justify the means: they don’t pay much attention to history, which is interesting, cos if they win, there will be no history anymore – year zero. look to china for their desired future: no religion, no history, no individuality.
surely most americans now see the democrats as a wrecking ball?
You just described the Star Trek creation affectionately named The Borg Collective. Welcome to the future if we let them win.
I think Harris is the MOST far-left of them all. Including Bernie and Warren. And the most dangerous. The media gonna spin it BIG time that she isn’t. And will never cover all the “skeletons” in her closet. Let’s hope enough of us traditional democrats can see though that.
She’s also a fine example of the “parasite class”. Never having produced anything of value. Living off of us productive people.
This morning George StepOnTopOfIt referred to her as being someone from the moderate wing of the Democrat party.
well if the unbiased journalist George Snuffleupagus said it, it must be so.
There is a crisis all right. Not a ‘climate crisis’, that ficticious construct of the left, but a very real mental health crisis of in particular Democrat politicians.
I’m puzzled at this woman being called ‘leftist’ as regards renewables issues…
Here’s what some members of the UK’s ‘rightist’ party propose:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/13/moderate-tories-join-greens-to-call-for-fossil-fuel-car-ban-by-2030
and that’s the day after Boris, its leader, proposed that UK foreign aid would fund no more coal or oil projects in future…
The so called Green deal seems to me to be no more than things which are actually planned, being built or have been in use for some time in the UK and EU…???
what is considered politically left and right in the UK isn’t the same as in the US. Some of what the UK considers to the right is far out on the left in the US and vice-versa.
In Europe, Socialists are considered conservative.
“The so called Green deal seems to me to be no more than things which are actually planned, being built or have been in use for some time in the UK and EU…???”
There’s a reason why the economies of UK and EU are collapsing.
Absent covid, the EU’s economies weren’t collapsing
They weren’t doing well either. Their ability to generate wealth for anyone except those who ran the country was pretty much non-existent.
Griff, I would consider all political parties in the UK as being on the Left. Some are less crazy than others, but all are on the Left. They all want to social engineer everything in sight and they all think CO2 needs to be regulated.
Conservatism = Personal Freedoms, including freedom from the government Nanny State.
California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris said in 2019 that she would consider ending the Senate filibuster as president if Republican lawmakers refused to embrace legislation addressing what she and other Democrats believe is a climate crisis.
The President is incapable of doing any such thing. Only the senate has the power to end the Senate filibuster. And as long as the Republicans hold enough votes in the Senate, even if she became president (due to Dementia joe stepping down) she would be unable to get the Senate to do it. To end the filibuster, the Senate needs to either
1) change the text of rule 22. Ending debate on a resolution to change the Senate’s standing rules requires the support of two-thirds of the Senate to agree to ending debate on the proposed change (neither party has the required number of votes for that).
2) “the nuclear option” – this is a more complex kabuki dance of “raising a point of order” to get a ruling that establishes a new precedent and requires only simple majority votes (which currently the Dems don’t have) – this is how the rules were changed by Harry Reid in 2013 (and further modified by Cocaine Mitch in 2017) in regards to appointments to cabinets and courts.
From the article: “Harris, who was selected Tuesday as running mate on former Vice President Joe Biden’s Democratic presidential bid”
I was hoping Joe China would pick Rep. Maxine Waters as his running mate, but Kamala is almost as nasty and off-putting as Waters, so she would have been my second choice.
Commala has a nasty disposition which will become evident as the campaign goes along.
I spelled Kamala’s name as “Commala” in order to help Joe China pronounce her name, He has mispronounced her name several times in the last few days, even doing so when they got together for their first appearace together yesterday.
This is like watching a very bad movie.
What did Kamala know about Jussie’s racist hoax and when did she know it?