Griper Blade: Geez Dems, Settle Down

After the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the normally rational -- if exuberant -- Rep. Barney Frank lost his damned mind.

"I am hopeful that some Republican senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform," Frank said in a statement. "Because I do not think that the country would be well served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the senate rule which means that 59 are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of this process."

So Frank was saying that the House shouldn't accept the Senate version of healthcare reform, that we should start over with Republican input (because that worked so well the last time), and that we ought to do something about the abuse of the filibuster.

On that last argument, Frank is right. The use of the filibuster by the Republican minority has been unprecedented. Changing the rules wouldn't be. Originally, it took two-thirds majority to invoke cloture, but this was changed to the current three-fifths in 1975. There is nothing barring changing the rules again and the change would only require a simple majority... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]