Kamala Takes on the Filibuster

this means. Just a few days ago, Kamala Harris said in an interview to Wisconsin Public Radio that she supports ending the Senate filibuster in order to pass nationwide abortion legislation. So we used to have basically a nationwide rule for abortion that was laid down in Roe versus. Wade and then subsequently planned Parent versus Casey, that basically said abortion

is legal throughout pregnancy. Since Roe was overturned, individual states can pass their own laws restricting abortion however they want. Harris wants to pass a nationwide law, a normal statute passed by Congress, majority of the House, majority in the Senate. President signs it, reinstituting basically a federal standard for all abortion regulation to permit abortion very broadly. It'll override all of the current state laws that are on the books

limiting abortion. So in Texas abortion is illegal. This would purportedly override Texas's law. Now to do it, Harris realizes she would need to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, and that's what she's going to do. So let me explain what the filibuster is and what its function is. Now, we know kind of the basic rule for how you pass laws in Congress, majority of the House, majority of

the Senate, President signs it. But over time, over the centuries, then this isn't part of the Constitution itself, but it's a tradition. It's a standard for how business in Washington gets conducted that sort of grew over time. It's a Norman or a convention that has some importance to it and that people have for decades thought had value until Democrats of last four or five years started to really want to pursue their short term goals, which is the

filibuster rule. So the House and the Senate are two different kinds of things. They're two different kinds of entities, they reflect different kinds of values. The House is supposed to be reflective of the immediate will of the majority of the Democrat the majority of the American people in a more democratic way, a more genuinely democratic fashion. It's a democratic institution, meaning it's supposed to be kind of

like a microcosm of the country as a whole. All of the hundreds of members of the House of Representatives get put to re election every two years, so within a two year stretch, the makeup of the House of Representatives can wildly change. There are so many members of the House of Representatives that debate gets limited. Everyone only has a certain amount of time that that's sort of

internally how the House of Representatives is governed. House of Representatives is a bit more ruckus, a bit more wild and crazy, subject to the wins of day to day political turbulence. The Senate, though, is something different. Even though senators today are directly elected by the people of the states they represent, that wasn't in the original design of

the Constitution as it was ratified in seventeen ninety. As it was ratified in the seventeen eighties, the original idea for senators was that they would be elected by the state legislatures, so there was a kind of a distance between US senators and the states they represented. Senators were thought to represent the states more so than individual people. In a sense, they were responsive to the state legislators who put them in office. Now, over time that changed.

The constitution got amended such that people, individual voters elect their US Senators. But the Senate is still kind of a different institution from the House. Its members have very long terms of office. They're in office for six years. The Senate doesn't have as much turnover year over year as the House of Representatives does. It has fewer members, and debate in the Senate is allowed to go on

theoretically forever. There's no limitations on debate. The sent of views itself as this great deliberative body, and that's kind of its character. Its character is different from the House of Representatives. It represents different kinds of values, the importance the priorities of the states as individual entities. Every state gets two members, doesn't matter if you're California or Wyoming,

you get two members. And what developed over time in the Senate was again this idea that you can theoretically debate forever. Well, what happens when you know Robert Bird or strom Thurmond come up there and they start filibustering, which means talking and talking and talking and talking and debating and debating and debating just as a dilatory tactic, as a way to delay and prevent a vote on something. Well.

You Eventually, the Senate came up with this concept of invoking cloture cloture c l O t U R, which means the closing of debate. So as long as sixty of the one hundred senators vote cloture, you can stop debate and you can vote on something. Well, that became sort of the way to advance legislation effectively. What it means is that in the Senate, to advance most pieces of legislation in the Senate, you can't just pass it with a fifty vote plus a tiebreaker or a fifty

one vote majority. You need sixty votes. Now, there are certain budgetary things for which this isn't true. The budget reconciliation process allows you to pass things with just a simple majority fifty votes. And that's how, for example, in the Trump in the first Trump administration, that's how the tax cuts were able to get pass. A lot of stuff was able to get passed by getting it shoved

into the budget reconciliation process. But for the most part, especially with like controversial pieces of social legislation, like this idea of passing a nationwide abortion law, you need sixty votes, not fifty. Now, this could change if the Senate changes its own internal rules again, this sixty vote cloture thing, this is an internal Senate governance rule. If the Senate wants it can change its rules and say, well, to invote culture, you actually need fifty five votes, or to

invote cloture, you just need fifty one votes. To close debate, you just need fifty one votes. Kamala Harris announcing that she will push for the Senate to get rid of the filibuster rule to pass abortion legislation represents that the Democrats have this sort of there's this imbalance, there's this imbalance between the two parties as relating to how far

they are willing to go to accomplish their goals. Harris, when she was in the Senate and was in the minority back in twenty seventeen, talked about how all the philibuster rule in the Senate's so important now as she's facing the prospect of, well, maybe I could be elected president and maybe the Democrats would have a majority in the Senate. In the House, maybe we should break the philibuster rule and the way the Democrats have done it

is so dishonest. Basically, this happened during the Biden administration. The Democrats had this. They had two pieces of legislation I think one was this Voting Standards Act, where basically they wanted to export all of California's election law, ballot stuff, how you're early voting ballots, ballot harvesting all that. They wanted to export all of California's voting laws to the whole country, you know, getting rid of voter id et cetera.

And so oh, this is so important, this is so important that we should get rid of the We should get rid of the filibuster rule in the Senate. We should get rid of the sixty vote threshold in the Senate. Just for this though, really to for that is that so important a thing. It's about the right to vote. Everyone has the right to vote. Some states have different kind of standards for like how you do these things.

You're acting like if someone doesn't have the ability to do you know, no id early mail in without you know, needing absentee ballot like like the idea that all these voting conventions that we that nobody used circa twenty twelve, that that was the core of the American right to vote, and if you don't support it, then you don't support the right to vote, which is which is absurd. So they were willing to get rid of the filibuster for that. Of course, they're willing to get rid of the philibuster

for the sake of reinstituting Roe v. Wade by different means. Now, when this was tried early in the Biden administration, when there was Democrat majorities in the House, the Senate and Biden in the White House. Now, the problem for the Democrats was it was a fifty to fifty Senate with Harris as the tiebreaker and Joe Manchin, the Democrat senator from West Virginia, and Kirsten Cinema, the Democrat senator from Arizona.

They both agreed that the philibuster rule was important. They both said, listen, we can't get rid of the philibuster rule just for this. If we get rid of the filibuster rule now for this, then Republicans will get rid of the philibuster rule. When they someday come to power and they will crush us. We can't. We're not ready as a country for the kind of winner take all

style politics that would then ensue. We would basically become We could then wind up becoming almost like a parliamentary system, where like, for example, in the UK, the UK is basically imagine if the country was just governed by the House of Representatives or some kind of weird combo of the House or the House in the Senate. In a

parliamentary system, it's kind of winner take all. Once one party or coalition of parties gains power and picks their prime minister, they have the votes to get their entire agenda passed so they can reshape the whole country, you know,

like that. And what Cinema and Mansion have been arguing from the Democrat side, and they were the only ones when Biden was trying to get that voting rights bill passed, and then later when he was trying to get this same bill that Harris is talking about to basically reinstate nationwide legal abortion. They were trying to get those two bills passed. Forty eight out of the fifty Democrat senators

senators were okay with abolishing the filibuster. Oh, just for that though, just for that, just for this, because it's so important if you get rid of the filibuster, just for quote the things that are important, and you can talk yourself into everything being that important. I mean, Oh, you don't think veterans are important enough to break the philibuster for Oh, of course, we love our veterans. Oh you don't think healthcare is important enough to break the

fill Oh, yes, healthcare is so important. I mean once you basically, once you take that step, it's over. Once you take the step of we have a filibuster rule in the Senate except for things that the party in power thinks is really really really important, then you don't have a filibuster rule anymore, and the minority party will never be able to block anything that the majority wants to do. So the president. Clear Now, Biden was always wishy washy about this because Biden, well, first of all,

because how mentally with it is Biden. But secondly, Biden's whole career in the Senate for thirty plus years and his entire time as Vice president, he always was upholding this kind of Senate conventional Democrat wisdom. The filibuster was always,

in his eyes important. When George W. Bush had Republican House, Republican Senate, and himself in the White House, Senator Biden was ranting and raving about how important the filibuster rule is and how terrible a thing it would be if George W. Bush tried to pack the Supreme Court and all these sort of basic governing conventions that we hold to in America. The hour, you know, the Romans would call this the most majorum the way of the ancestors.

It's not necessarily something that's etched into American law, but this is the inherited wisdom we have received for how we should govern in a way that provides stability. Biden believed in all that stuff, but is now the figurehead for a Democrat regime that is so desperate to make sure that babies can legally be killed in Texas that it's willing to break all convention to make it. So. This is the biggest issue I think that nobody's talking about, and when we return, I want to talk about why

aren't Republicans talking about the same thing. Next on the John Girardi Show, Kamala Harris announced that she is willing to get rid of, or push for the Senate rather to get rid of the filibuster rule, which is their normal sixty vote threshold to pass big legislation, most kinds

of legislation in America. In Congress. It's not that you need a majority in the Senate, that's the constitutional standard, but within the Senate's internal rules, basically you need sixty votes to advance it, you need sixty votes to end debate on the subject, which effectively means you need sixty votes to pass most kinds of legislation. This is kind of a damp and moderating tool that basically means, hey, unless there's pretty broad consensus, we're not going to pass

really big time significant national legislation. And Democrats have expressed this willingness to get rid of the filibuster rule, at least for the sake of passing a nationwide abortion permission, basically a nationwide law to shut down all of the state laws regulating abortion right now. But that's the thing is, the Democrats' standard seems to be, we support the filibuster. We always support the philibuster. When we're in the minority,

we support the filibuster. But unless we want to pass something really important that we really want, which effectively means they don't support the filibuster. Now, this is real, revealing a kind of imbalance in political will. Democrats are willing to go to this extreme to get stuff done that they want to do. Republicans are only willing to go this far though. Republicans are not willing to touch the

philibuster rule. All these Republicans are on the record now, in fairness, all these Democrats were on the record just a few years ago. That doesn't stop them from being totally inconsistent and hypocritical. But Republicans have been, you know,

pledging allegiance to the filibuster. I wonder if Republicans should start saying, hey, if that's the way they're gonna play, maybe we need to play by those rules too, because I don't think you want to be the second person to try to pass legislation in the Senate without the philibuster. You might not get the chance. Here's why, let's suppor it's a doomsday scenario for Republicans this upcoming November fifth, Harris wins. Democrats take the House, Democrats somehow take the Senate.

I don't know that that's really possible, given kind of the map and the layout, and the certainty that Republicans will pick up at least two seats. There are two Democrat seats that Republicans are certainly picking up. But okay, let's say something crazy happens and Democrats get all three. If Democrats get all three House, Senate, White House, they could pass a law to make Guam a new American state. Guam is very liberal. Gwam would pretty much guarantee two

additional votes in the US Senate for Democrats. They could pass a law to make Puerto Rico and DC into new American states. They would be pretty left wing. Each one would give the Democrats two more votes in the US Senate, probably a couple more votes in the House of Representatives too, And those are the easy ones. Why couldn't you know, you know, let's get the California legislature involved.

Let's be creative here. Let's create a state of northern California in a state of southern California, and we'll chop it up so that Fresno has the least amount of influence. The San Luquein Valley rather has the least amount of influence humanly possible to ensure that it's two states both with massive Democrat majorities give Democrats. And by the way, this is also giving Democrats more electoral College votes. If you make Puerto Rico a state, Puerto Rico gets to

vote in presidential elections. Puerto Rico, so you know, gets electoral College votes, extra couple of electoral College votes for Democrats every time. Every new state you create gives them more electoral College votes. They can do that, right. That's how you create a new state. Basically, to create a new state, all you need is a vote by Congress authorizing it, and a vote by whatever existing state might

be impacted. So if you wanted, like, for example, if you wanted to create a new state out of like southern Oregon and northern California, you need a vote by the California legislature, the Oregon legislature, and you need a vote in Congress. But again, if you get rid of the sixty vote threshold in the Senate, that's more doable. So that's what I'm saying is Republicans are all saying, oh no, we would never break the philibuster rule. Well,

if Democrats are willing to break the filibuster rule. Is it that crazy to think they would break the filibuster rule in such a way as to give themselves permanent majorities to vote for themselves a more or less permanent majority. The Republicans would then never be able to be in the majority. Again, I think Republicans need to really seriously consider maybe we should be the ones to break the filibuster first, because you don't want to be the second party.

You might not get the chance to be the second party when we return the insane renovation at the California State Capitol And how much exactly is it costing us? Next on the John Girardi Show. This weird thing has developed in Sacramento regarding the use of non disclosure agreements by members of the California State Legislature in their negotiations regarding pieces of legislation, their interactions with different people lobbying with them for legislation. Some of that information has become

protected by non disclosure agreements. The most significant example of this was when it was learned that a lot of the negotiations that took place over the fast food minimum wage law, which came into effect this past April, that a lot of the negotiations that lawmakers had with lobbyists lobbying entities about it was covered by non disclosure agreements.

So when that came out that a lot of these negotiations were sort of and there were other allegations about shadiness in those negotiations, like the bizarre Panera Bread exception. So for some reason, the twenty dollars per hour fast food requirement wasn't going to apply to certain kinds of

fast casual places that had an oven. And then oh, it comes out one of Governor Newsom's very good friends who lobbied Governor Newsom's office about this, is this, you know, gazillionaire guy who is an owner for a ton of Panera Bread franchises. And then Gavin Newsom comes on and says, oh, no, this definitely applies to Panera Bread. And even though the law clearly doesn't apply to Panera Bread, doesn't seem to

anyway that people who were trying to investigate this. Reporters were trying to investigate this found that a lot of these negotiations were people couldn't talk about them because they were covered by non disclosure agreements. So non disclosure agreement is a contract basically saying, if you need to keep silent about this, and if you don't, then this penalty, you know, this civil penalty will result. And naturally a lot of people retorted to this by saying, hey, this

is blowney. State lawmakers shouldn't be parties to non disclosure agreements about how they came up with legislation. If lobbyists are lobbying our lawmakers to pass laws that are governing all forty million of us, this is not the kind of thing that should be covered that a non disclosure agreement should be allowed to govern. You're going to completely eliminate any kind of transparency in government if you allow

such a thing. So Vince Fong, who Vince Pong is now a member of the US House of Representatives, but back earlier in the year, he was still a member of the California State Assembly representing Bakersfield. Vince Fong after that story, broke introduced a bill basically to ban NDAs between government officials and lobbyists. It was AB two sixty five to four. The bill failed on a party line vote in the Assembly Elections Committee, and it was basically

a party line vote. The two Republicans on the committee supported it, and none of the Democrats did. Most of the Democrats didn't even vote on the thing. Now, which is such a gutless thing that happens in the California legislature. Sometimes people will just not vote on something in the California legislature. But the way the rules work in the state legislature, which is different from Congress, I believe, is

that for something to pass in the California legislature. For something to pass in the California legislature, you need a genuine majority, not just a majority of everybody who's there voting. So if there are let's say seven people on a committee, you need four yes votes on something for it to advance. It doesn't matter if if only five members of the committee show up and you get three yes votes, that

thing doesn't pass. So what often happens in the Assembly is that a legislator doesn't want to vote yes on something, but he also doesn't want to vote no, so he just does not vote. But not voting is the exact same thing as voting no. So you have these Democrats who cly want to keep having non disclosure agreements for their negotiations with lobbyists, but they also don't want to be on the record saying no, I oppose, no I

support non disclosure agreements. They don't want to be on the record saying that, so they just didn't vote, which is it's a real coward move to try to pretend that you're not responsible for something in the eyes of voters when you genuinely are. So. Vince Fong's bill to ban non disclosure agreements between lobbyists and state lawmakers that failed. That failed on a party line vote. Now Fong got to move on to greener pastures in the halls of Congress.

But we are still left with this bizarre situation of in California with our state legislators, people just protect themselves with non disclosure agreements in legislative lobbying. Well, here's another thing protected by non disclosure agreements, the capital ANX project. So when you go to Sacramento, there is the old historic California State Capital building. It's beautiful building. It's a lot smaller than you'd think. City Hall in San Francisco

is actually i believe, bigger, bigger, taller. It's a fairly modestly sized thing. And attached to the California Capital was the Capital was slash is the capital ANX. The ANX is where all of the state lawmakers had their individual offices. So when I would go to Sacramento to lobby on some abortion related bill, I would always stop by either Jim Patterson's office, or maybe I'd go by Shannon Grove's

office or whoever. All eighty members of the California State Assembly and all forty members of the California State Senate had their offices there, and so they you know, it would be a little office space where the member of the legislature would have his or her office, their chief of staff, and then they'd have cubicles and stuff for oh, this is this legislative director in this legislative aid, and this the communications person. Here's a scheduler, here's the secretary.

Blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, So the annex was where everyone had their offices. It was determined several years ago that this part of the building needed to be renovated, had to undergo a big, massive renovation and to the extent of basically is like almost completely demolishing it and restarting restarting it again from the ground up. So all of the lawmakers moved to a different state owned building

a couple of blocks away. They moved their office spaces, and they've been working on this massive construction project for years. It's taking them a long time, and you will be shocked to hear that the price tag has gone up from I think it was originally four Yeah, here's a report on it from a local Sacramento news outlet. The estimated price tag of the project swelled from four hundred and forty million dollars to one point two billion dollars.

What a shock that in California a massive state organized infrastructure project took way more to build than was originally into diticipated, almost like a high speed rail system or something. Now here's the story though, that a lot of these cost overruns have been protected by non disclosure agreements the California This is a story by Ashley Zavala, who's really one of the best reporters covering Sacramento. She works for

a local Sacramento area TV news outlet. The California legislature, she reports, has been using non disclosure agreements to keep most information secret about the planning and construction of a one point two billion dollar taxpayer funded building that will house the offices of state lawmakers, the governor, and the

Lieutenant governor. Following a three month long investigation in a series of legislative Open Records Act requests, her news station KCRA Channel three in Sacramento, the NBC affiliate, learned project leaders required more than two thousand people to sign the NDAs, including several current and former state life lawmakers, government officials, dozens of state employees, and hundreds of other consultants, contractors, architects,

construction and utility workers. For the last six years, the NDAs have served as legally binding contracts ordering those involved in the Capital Annex project to keep confidential a broad range of information, while threatening legal action against those who don't.

Various legal experts told KCRA three they were alarmed by the development, noting taxpayers and voters are entitled to the information while it is legal, Some state lawmakers and experts said the use of NDAs like this should be banned, with the information protected under NDAs. The estimated price tag for the project swelled from four hundred and forty million dollars to one point two billion dollars. It's been three years since the legislature provided an update on the project.

The small group leading the effort, Joint Rules Committee, has used environmental litigation as an excuse to keep taxpayers in the dark about the project overall. The committee most recently refused to provide KCRA Channel three bid information to prove that the millions it secretly spent on Italian stone work was the most affordable project was the most affordable option for taxpayers. The stone work is just one small aspect of the project. How exactly project leaders are spending taxpayer

money overall is mostly unknown. So they've basically so here. They've got this massive construction project that I'm not sure. I guess I didn't know all the issues involved. I always thought the Capital Annex looked fine. I mean, it was not as pretty as the actual Capital building itself that it was attached to, and it was clearly more a product of the seventies than when it was made. But I thought it was fine as buildings go. It seemed to look pretty nice. I always thought the offices

were fine, the air conditioning was good. I don't know. But they demolished this thing. Then you have a bunch of people who got angry with how the Capital Annex thing was going. They sued using state environmental law, you know SIQUA. They sue using SEQUA to stop this, which is hilarious when liberals use their own tactics against each other. So we've got this billion plus dollar project for our state capital. We've had no update on why or how exactly.

The costs have skyrocketed by almost three x, and we've got over two thousand, almost two almost twenty one hundred people who've signed an NDA to not let anyone know what's going on with the project. That one's allowed to say. None of the contractors, none of a bunch of the lawmakers, contractors, all these people involved with redesigning the capital annex. Nobody is allowed to talk publicly about what's going on for this project that the public is funding. No more NDAs

in state lawmaking. Someone ought to come up with a ballot initiative to that effect. This is ridiculous. When we return a fortunate turn for Fresno State as NLV, UNLV's quarterback quits over nil money, the first of many such disputes, I think. Next on the John Girardi Show, Matthew Sluka, the starting quarterback for the UNLV football team, which was having a very good year. UNLV is undefeated. I believe

they were ranked number twenty three in the country. So, you know, for a mid major team to crack the top twenty five, that's pretty significant. Having a great year their quarterback, and they're playing Fresno State on Saturday. Their quarterback just announced, effective immediately, he's quitting the team. Why, well, what's happening right now in college football is we've adopted this new thing where players can be paid compensated for

their use of their name, image, and likeness. And this kid was apparently his take on this is that, Hey, I was told I was going to get paid one hundred thousand dollars to be the quarterback. I haven't been paid. That's why I signed up to be quarterback here in a UNLV. I'm out anyway now. It's kind of a he said. She said, Uh, the offensive coordinator told me I'd got one hundred thousand. He never said that terrible contract. Oh, no one ever agreed to anything on paper. One, it'll

make it easier for President State to win. But two, this is the first of probably a lot more to come as far as contract disputes for college football players. That'll do it for John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk