Chuck Grassley: “the 2001 tax relief bill passed the Senate with 58 yeas. At that time, the Senate was evenly divided--50 Republicans and…”

“the 2001 tax relief bill passed the Senate with 58 yeas. At that time, the Senate was evenly divided--50 Republicans and 50 Democrats--with the Republicans technically having control because of the Vice President's vote. However, not every single Republican voted for that tax relief measure. Those 58 yeas included 12 Democrats, nearly one-quarter of the 50 Democrats sitting in the Senate at that particular time. If all of those Democrats had voted against the conference report, it would have failed. Clearly, it is ridiculous to say this was purely a Republican bill. Given the experience the Democratic leadership has had with cloture votes in the past few months, I would expect them to appreciate the necessity of working on a bipartisan basis in this body. This is the only political institution of our system where minority views are protected and must be respected because of no limit on debate, called a filibuster, and it takes 60 percent, a supermajority, to overcome a filibuster to get to finality. That is where Democrats were protected when they were in the minority for the last 6 years. This is where Republicans are going to be protected for the next 2 years--and hopefully no longer than 2 years--as a minority. It takes 60 votes to get permanent tax relief. The bottom line is, we didn't have the 60 votes in 2001 and 2003 for making these bipartisan tax relief plans permanent.”