Georgia’s Republican U.S. senators both opposed the end of 60-vote filibusters for most nominees, a fight they said was merely Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trying to distract people from the struggles with the new health care law.
“What he’s done here is just change the whole dynamics of the Senate,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “And instead of caring about legislation that’s important to the American people, what he’s now done is made it an awful lot easier for additional disasters like Obamacare to get passed — because that’s where this is headed. It’s limited just to judges, but we know where it’s going.”
Sen. Johnny Isakson lamented a Senate that could be forever changed.
“It’s the saucer that cools the spilt coffee out of the hot cup,” Isakson said. “It’s the backstop where you can stop to take a pause, to take a deep breath. It’s a body that has continuity because it only turns over a third, a third, a third over a six-year cycle. And what you do by changing the rules of the Senate and taking away that ability to be thoughtful and deliberate is you end up with a Senate that can be a runaway Senate as much as you can have a House that’s a runaway House. And that’s not good for the country.”
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