The Hill News

Unprecedented obstruction in the U.S. Senate remains the largest factor in our inability to overcome the influence of corporate money in politics. It is impossible for progressive legislation to proceed if Republicans are able to harness Senate rules to do the bidding of corporate America. Thankfully, several recent developments have drawn attention to Republican obstructionism at the behest of extreme ideological interests. For all of these reasons, it is again time to take up the cause of rules reform in the U.S. Senate.  
 
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) infamously declared that his “single most important” goal was to make President Obama a “one-term president.” His playbook from the start of the Obama Administration was simple â€" to convince his caucus to obstruct anything and everything. As a result, 60 votes became the needed threshold for nearly every order of Senate business. And the Senate Republicans bullied our democracy w! ith the 60 vote club. They derailed energy and climate legislation, halted the DREAM Act, which passed the House while receiving 55 votes in the Senate, and blocked any debate on the Employee Free Choice Act, which passed the House with an overwhelming majority and garnered 59 votes in the Senate. Senator McConnell succeeded beyond belief in stopping our democracy from governing.  In fact, never before in American history had the U.S. Senate seen such levels of obstruction.

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