FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Contact: Bob Weiner/John Larmett 301-283-0821 or 202-329-1700

END SENATE “CLOTURE CLOG,”

ARGUE WEINER AND LARMETT IN ROLL CALL COLUMN;

RULE CHANGE NEEDED; “SYSTEM HAS FAILED”

(Washington, DC) – “It’s time to end the Senate’s cloture clog, regardless of who’s in charge,” argue former senior House and Senate staffers Bob Weiner and John Larmett. In a column today in Roll Call, Weiner, who worked in the Clinton White House for six years and on the Hill for Reps. Conyers, Rangel, Pepper, Koch, and Senator Kennedy, and John Larmett, who worked for Cong. McDermott and Sen. Gaylord Nelson, say:

“The Senate’s cloture rule requiring 60 votes defeats democracy. It lets public servants hide and obfuscate behind a parliamentary quirk never intended by the framers of the Constitution. It’s time to end or significantly change the cloture ruleand move to a true democracy so that the House and Senate equally represent the American people.”

They assert, “Democrats are right to scream Republican ‘obstructionism’, but so were Republicans right when they held the majority to scream Democratic obstructionism. Both sides use and abuse the rule when they are in the minority to create some super majority fantasy the public will not understand – and then blame the other side for not getting a legislative agenda accomplished.”

“There are already checks and balances, the only ones the Founding Fathers stated and intended: a presidential veto which Congress can override with two-thirds, the only supermajority specified in the U.S. Constitution; the Courts; and Elections. If Congress wants to restore Americans’ confidence in its work from the current all-time lows, they need to allow the system to work as common sense, the Constitution, and the framers dictate.”

“In last year’s campaigns, House Democrats promised to change the way Congress does business – and do it within the first 100 hours they were in session. With no super majority requirement, the House passed its entire agenda. Despite a majority, hindered by the super majority ‘cloture,’ the Senate has struggled all year just to pass a few bills. The American people get the feeling that the Senate is a train that never quite leaves the station.”

“Most Americans probably wouldn’t understand what the Senate is accomplishing with a rules change, but it could be the difference in getting bills passed.” Cloture has been invoked 57 times since May 2005, when the bipartisan “Gang of 14” and then the full Senate agreed to use it only in “extraordinary circumstances.” Say Weiner and Larmett: “The system has failed.”

“In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths, and it should change it again. If not an end outright, why not at least drop the requirement to 55 votes – necessitating just a little bit of extra consensus to end debate.”

Weiner is now president of a Washington public affairs issues think tank, Robert Weiner Associates, where Larmett is senior associate.

(Source: Robert Weiner Associates 301-283-0821)