6-10-08 by dugan
The Senate was barely in session today when Republican leaders used a parliamentary maneuver to cut off all debate on a pair of bills to get oil and gasoline prices under control and encourage renewable energy. By threatening a filibuster, which takes 60 votes to overcome, the friends of Big Oil said "No" to regulation of speculative energy markets, "No" to taking back some of Big Oil’s billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, "No" to making oil companies fork over a fraction of their wildly rising record profits to help pay for clean energy development if they won’t do it themselves. The maneuver was executed by the same folks who wanted in 2004 and 2005 to ban filibusters forever, at least on votes over judicial nominees.
Here’s what the then-GOP leader, former Sen. Bill Frist, said back then: “This filibuster is nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority.”
Now the minority is different, and it’s using the filibuster on every energy bill proposed by the majority, even though six Republicans broke ranks to vote "Yes" on today’s bills. It’s amazing what tens of millions of dollars in oil lobbying can buy in Congress.
The only blessing of the bills’ quick death is that it hastens votes on individual parts of the bill that will be submitted separately, including new rules and regulations on out-of-control energy trading.