SB 2017-062: New Senate Rules Resolution (Passed)

[Associate Justice PiT]

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[Associate Justice PiT]

(cont'd)

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[Associate Justice PiT]

(cont'd)

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Sponsor: PiT

     I hereby open the floor for debate.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This was written by NeverAgain largely, with myself and PiT contributing. I encourage the Senate to pass these rules quickly.

It brings the same changes in Article 11, that the House rules package a week ago did. Namely integrating the Vice President in accordance with the stipulations of the Constitution as pointed out to the point of frustration by Truman and others for weeks and months. This was the primary reason for my executive order in February as President, opening up the emergency slots to rules packages for the purposes of bring constitutional compliance.

This package also gives extra slots to speed up the processing of bills and the VP gets three slots to whittle down the backlog of bills.

Finally, it gives the PPT the responsibility of appointing a Deputy PPT in order to ensure there is no lapse in Senate administration.

[NeverAgain]

This is a much-needed bill. A lot of the current rules are defunct, and only applied to the Senate of yesteryear, allowing for confusion, and even containing some unconstitutionalities. I'd ask the Senators to please read over it, and make their own comments. This correlates a lot with the House Rules, which were just passed, in the matters of establishing Committees and the duties of the Vice President.

A major section that I'd ask the Senate to view is Article 8, which establishes the clear rules on how impeachment trials, mandated that the Senate presides over by our constitution, will go about. Because it is constitutionally mandated that it takes "two-thirds majority in the Senate" to convict, and 2/3rds is the same as a simple majority, Art. 8 Sect. 3 allows for any member to object and require a 3/4ths majority before moving to a final vote. Meaning five Senators will be needed to proceed to a conviction.

Anyways, I will leave this to the chamber to discuss! If you have any questions, I am here, along with the worthy duo of PiT and Yankee. I also want to thank both Yankee and PiT for their exceptional help in crafting this great step forward for the chamber.

[Lambsbread]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this bill. It addresses some errors that are in desperate need of fixing, and I support these changes.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I like how this resolution appears to delegate more responsibilities to the Vice President.  That is a job which I think is traditionally given very little direct powers or responsibilities, and I think these new rules signal a desire to change that as well as better facilitate cooperation between the chambers.  And I'm happy to see the new requirement for bills to have a sponsor, so that we don't end up debating zombie legislation or fall into the same holes we did with the abortion bill.

I would like to know how much information this 'Activity Tracker' would include.  Is the Vice President supposed to update it every time a chamber switches from general debate to voting on amendments to final votes and the like?  I can see that being rather tedious when a simple thread title change should suffice.  Apart from that little detail, I have no qualms about this package and I look forward to voting on it.

[LLR]

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Grammatical edit + removal of a bad clause that will only be used for partisan gain (and is very unclear)

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Good point, though the Dean may want to pass on the responsibilities of the role if real-life issues are a concern. I would propose:

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     Would you accept this as a replacement for your current amendment, Senator LLR?

[LLR]

Yeah, that's fine by me

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Senators have 36 hours to object to the amendment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I like how this resolution appears to delegate more responsibilities to the Vice President.  That is a job which I think is traditionally given very little direct powers or responsibilities, and I think these new rules signal a desire to change that as well as better facilitate cooperation between the chambers.  And I'm happy to see the new requirement for bills to have a sponsor, so that we don't end up debating zombie legislation or fall into the same holes we did with the abortion bill.

I would like to know how much information this 'Activity Tracker' would include.  Is the Vice President supposed to update it every time a chamber switches from general debate to voting on amendments to final votes and the like?  I can see that being rather tedious when a simple thread title change should suffice.  Apart from that little detail, I have no qualms about this package and I look forward to voting on it.

It is this:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=260022.msg5556788#msg5556788

Yes, it can be tedious at times, but it is only way that avoids bills from getting lost, amendments getting lost and so forth. It also provides a convenient means by which you, the members, can click on all the active threads and thereby ensure that every bill has action going on and not just sitting for weeks and months. Just clicking on bills from the AFG board, is a great way to overlook stuff. If you have a list, linked with the activity occurring, you know where you have to vote on each bill, by looking in one place.  

You served in several of my Senates, Scott. You should know the value of this.

The VP's responsibility extends only to the VP administered slots (3 for House, and 3 for Senate once this passes), Cabinet confirmations and compiling lists of passed legislation from both chambers, so he can carry out his constitutionally mandated role of handing bills that are in between the chambers and sending bills to the President, when they have passed both houses.

The PPT and Speaker handle the activity tracking for the rest of their respective chambers.

This brings tangibility to the role of the VP, which would otherwise be that of a messenger between the chambers and the President. If it is publicly displayed, you can see the VP is accomplishing his tasks and the VP can see his responsibilities right in front of him. Any other way of doing it, would likely lead to the VP drifting back into the back ground like what happened last Summer and Fall.

[Anna Komnene]

I'm concerned about this:

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I assume this is meant to refer to the same bill but been amended?  It could give a lot of power to the PPT and Speaker, especially since they seem to be able to choose whoever they want to serve on the committee with them.  I'm not saying I think PiT would abuse this, but who knows who might be PPT in the future.  Plus, doesn't it conflict with clause 5 in the same section?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm concerned about this:

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I assume this is meant to refer to the same bill but been amended?  It could give a lot of power to the PPT and Speaker, especially since they seem to be able to choose whoever they want to serve on the committee with them.  I'm not saying I think PiT would abuse this, but who knows who might be PPT in the future.  Plus, doesn't it conflict with clause 5 in the same section?

The problem here is Clause 5 is in the Constitution Verbatim. It might be possible to halt that process while a conference takes place though.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I would be fine with just scotching that. It's unlikely the two chambers would just coincidentally pass similar bills; I expect most such incidents would fall under the situation covered under Clause 5.

[Anna Komnene]

Okay introducing amendment.  9.2 seems to be another version of 11.3.  As far as the meetings go, that's fine with me (not really sure they need to be required but might be good), but I don't like the idea of holding votes without everyone present.  IMO, all bills should be voted on by the whole House or Senate in a public thread.  If people decide that its time to vote in the meeting, the PPT or Speaker can just open the thread to vote on the government election board and let everyone vote like normal.

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[Associate Justice PiT]

     I will accept this amendment as friendly. Senators have 36 hours to object.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Amendment S5:3 has been adopted. There is still about 16 hours left to object to Amendment S5:6.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     S5:6 is also adopted. I encourage Senators to look it over again and make sure everything in it is acceptable. This is an important resolution to pass, so let's not delay it any more than is necessary to craft a good bill.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would appeal to the Senators in the name of reason, that while I understand the desire perfection, this Senate is like the SS Poseidon facing a tidal wave of incoming House bills and unless PiT and Goldwater get these slots and soon, it is going to get flipped over and sunk.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I am proposing an amendment to Article II, Section 3:

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     Senators have 36 hours to object.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I would appeal to the Senators in the name of reason, that while I understand the desire perfection, this Senate is like the SS Poseidon facing a tidal wave of incoming House bills and unless PiT and Goldwater get these slots and soon, it is going to get flipped over and sunk.

     I do agree, and with this in mind I will be using the objection period for this amendment as a last call for Senators. If there are no more amendments proposed when this amendment is adopted, I will open a final vote.

[Anna Komnene]

Maybe I'm just being low energy here, but am I the only one that thinks having potentially 15 threads open at once is a lot?  We could end up seeing bills that Senators are less interested in falling through the cracks.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Maybe I'm just being low energy here, but am I the only one that thinks having potentially 15 threads open at once is a lot?  We could end up seeing bills that Senators are less interested in falling through the cracks.

     This is a good point, but I would note that this kind of thing is already a problem. One of the things I do as PPT is scanning through the older threads (up to a week or so) to make sure that threads don't fall through the cracks.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The PPT doesn't have to fill the slots all the time.


I have been keeping 8-10 empty in the House.

But having them to clear out the backlog is essential.

We cannot have bills bouncing around in the void for months waiting action.