Saxby Chambliss: “The United States Senate is the only place on the planet where 59 votes out of 100 cannot pass anything because 41 votes…”

“The United States Senate is the only place on the planet where 59 votes out of 100 cannot pass anything because 41 votes out of 100 can defeat it. Try explaining that at your local Rotary Club or to someone in the Wal-Mart parking lot or, for that matter, to the college freshman in Political Science 101. You can't, because the strange Senate math stands democracy on its head. Realizing that with the scrutiny of television, the people would not stand for such nonsense, the 'Old Bulls' of the Senate fuzzed it up. They made it subtler. These verbal gunslingers can now be forced to shut up, and the process and the Senate move along toward a vote if sixty members remove the cotton from their ears and vote for cloture. A cloture shuts off what is called a debate but isn't because it takes two sides talking to constitute a debate. The short version of this debacle is that the way filibuster is being used in the Senate gives the minority an absolute veto on just about everything. In fact, the U.S. Senate has become similar to the Security Council of the United Nations where one country can veto the will of a clear majority and castrate the entire process.”