LogFAQs > #949925423

Suprak the Stud posted...

I mean, yes, Bernie Sanders is the chair of the budget committee.

Actually he isn't!

And while McConnell caved on the organizing resolution, I don't think he had as of the time of your post! He only did so like two hours ago! (And I don't believe they have voted on it yet so Republicans still chair AFAIK)

IDK if you knew, but as I explained in an earlier post somewhere (last topic?) that given that this Congress started at the beginning of the month, before GA, the Senate began at 51R - 48D (Loeffler was still serving as her appointment lasted until Warnock was sworn in; Perdue's seat was vacant.) Accordingly, the committees were formed under Republican control and chaired by Republicans. When Warnock, Ossoff, and Padilla were all sworn in on January 20th to make it 50-50, Schumer became Majority Leader... but absent a new organizing resolution to adjust the committees to reflect the new reality, they were still chaired by Republicans because that's how they were originally set up at the beginning of the month.

What McConnell has been doing the past few days is obstructing the organizing resolution, effectively filibustering the consequences of the election. Literally, even, at one point he tossed out a filibuster threat on the organizing resolution. He was demanding that Democrats agree to enshrine the legislative filibuster or else he wouldn't agree to an organizing resolution. The entire play was ludicrous and quite frankly I believe the Dems should have killed the filibuster right then and there to pass the organizing resolution because refusing to let the majority actually chair the committees should be absolutely unacceptable - and this was showing actual results. Graham, for instance, refused to schedule hearings for Biden's AG nomination/Garland, so it was literally holding up some Cabinet appointments. However, Manchin wasn't playing ball with the rest of the Dem caucus here. It's possible he'd change his tune if this dragged on even longer (it's sometimes hard to remember it literally hasn't even been a week) given that literally this was keeping Manchin himself from assuming chairmanship of a committee but as someone who has soft-defended Manchin in the past on similar lines as you, and for the fact that he's always been there when it mattered, this was extremely disappointing to me.

Now, McConnell caved here so this fight is over, but consider me unsatisfied with how this all played out in terms of how things will go moving forward. I'm still going to wait and see, but I'm a bit more pessimistic now than I was before.

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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?