something's start passing like the past bill with 50 votes or 51 wants rather than the supermajority, so he has been very effective. the cost has been very high for the senate. broken." " oneave a caller, our first is john, republican line, or on with ira shapiro. go ahead. i have tood morning, disagree with the blame at mcconnell's seat when you look at what harry reid did to the senate and put the's filibuster was an play -- he disaster for the country because he would not pass any budget. he stonewalled both the democrats and republicans when president obama was trying to get biggs passed. he has been eight unmitigated disaster and his chickens are coming, to roost. guest: you are making the point that many republicans to make. i don't believe senator reid was a successful leader and the mcconnell team failed the senate 2005 in and to all thousand seven, and reid was at the leader trying to an act a program of an elected president and reelected president. mr. mcconnell only had to oppose and he did with great effectiveness. if you look back on the way other minority leaders have fu

has the ability to go through the nomination process, the committee process but it requires a supermajority to get past the motion to proceed. and what the senate has done is they basically said, we're going to require a cloture vote on these nominees where historically once out of committee they would bring it to the senate floor. they would require an up or down vote. you say it's part of the toxicity that's been going on for some time. i think that's the point we're trying to make. it hasn't been going on for some time. this hasn't been the tradition of the united states senate to do what they're doing right now under senator schumer. it has not happened. the numbers i went through. we faced, again, four times the number of cloture votes in 14 months than the last four terms, last 16 years of the first term of a presidency. this is not what historically been done. reporter: it's a reflection, for example, when obama was in office and the republicans said they would make it their prime concern not to pass any legislation that obama favored, don't you see that as part of the problem? marc:

but it requires a supermajority to get past the motion to proceed. what the senate has done is basically said, we're going to require a cloture vote on these nominee, where historically, once out of committee they'd bring it to the senate floor and require an up or down vote. you say that's part of the toxicity that's been going on for some time, that's part of the point we're trying to make. this has not been the tradition of the united states, to do what they're doing right now under senator schumer. it's not happened. the numbers i went through, we face four times the number of cloture votes than the last 16 years of first term presidencies. this is not typical. it is a reflection of, for example, when obama was in office and republicans said they're going to make it their prime concern not to pass any legislation that obama favored. don't you see that as part of think problem? marc: i think part of the challenge is the american people got so frustrated with the way washington worked they elected an outside to help fix et. we're trying to shed lig

you'd have to have supermajorities in the congress, maybe a constitutional convention. >> it's been donehibition. >> sure, that was to undo the -- it just seems like the kind of thing where if you can't even pass a bump stocks ban here in congress, how are you ever going to get a constitutional convention or supermajority, three quarters, you know, in congress, to do anything like this. it's an interesting idea. i don't understand how it could ever possibly happen. >> it's a conversation for those who missed it started by former supreme court justice john paul stevens, retired. he wrote an op-ed in "the new york times" calling for the repeal of the second amendment. san antonio spurs coach gregg popovich also reiterated the same thing. very articulate, educated man, not just some basketball coach. it's interesting, though, because some might say this is doing the right a favor, doing the nra a favor, making this now the litmus test. see what they want to do -- they want to take away your guns, they want to repeal the second amendment. and enhancing the importance of getting another repub

we did yesterday, is we pulled back on a blunt instrument law, dodd-frank, that was done with a supermajority, mr. president, by the way, that was totally ineffective and got the opposite results of what they really wanted. those entities did nothing -- the small banks and community banks did nothing to cause the 2008 and 2009 crisis. but since dodd-frank was enacted, mr. president, over 1,700 small banks primarily have gone out of business. 1,700. many because they were unable to cope or afford to comply with the 2,319 pages and 390 new regulations imposed. let me say that again. 390 new regulations were imposed by dodd-frank. my goodness. these small banks had nothing to do with the crisis of 2008. many of these banks were community and regional banks that actually support small businesses on main street, give small businesses needed capital, and sponsor little league baseball parks. i grew up in a little league baseball park that was sponsored by the three banks in my hometown. my father was a board member of one of those small banks. i remember those days. they were involved in the commun

redrawn so the republican legislature then adopted, still under the control of the republicans with supermajorities in both houses, adopted written criteria. the objective of which was to preserve the partisan advantage they had created in 2011. they specifically said in the written criteria that this would be a partisan gerrymander. they directed the map drawers to use political data, meaning how districts voted in 20 state-wide ewilkeses between 2008 and 2012 and draw the districts to maintain the existing 10-3 republican advantage and they did that. in january a three-judge district court and 204-page opinion which i will commend to your reading, found that this was a deliberate partisan gerrymandering that violated not one, but four separate provisions of the constitution. it violated the first amendment. the court found that effectively what this was was viewpoint discrimination and under established supreme court law, neither states nor the federal government can demonstrate-- can discriminate between people based on their political beliefs, their political viewpoints about any particular iss

i mean it take as 2/3 supermajority to change the rules in the senate. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is on record on multiple occasions democrats and republicans don't want to make those changes changes if you're ox is being gored today, it might be somebody's ox tomorrow. the republicans are basically 50 senators. 51 senators but john mccain is out. that doesn't help republicans in near term. in terms of line-item veto, would you have to amend the constitution. they have tried that before. there is a problem in the constitution that says this isn't the way that a veto is supposed to work. the power of the purse resides with congress, and this would upend that. david: rush limbaugh once said, only thing that could separate trump's base from donald trump is donald trump himself. media will not do it. a lot of people today wonder whether the president has done that. it is interesting to see chad pergram -- nobodying gets inside the beltway like you. melissa. melissa: backlash over facebook. the social media company is attempting to do damage contr

despite that prior bipartisan support, they have failed to achieve a supermajority to pass it. i'm hopeful the sense act will garner enough support to pass both chambers. what we're looking today to achieve is this, a very small but pro-environment industry that should not be a controversial or partisan issue. we want to hold this industry to high standards but to standards they can actually reach but for the e.p.a. emission extension that expires in 2019, current regulations discount the environmental remediation benefits this industry provides. my bill will help keep the coal refuse industry in business so local communities, economies and the environment will continue to reap the benefits. the people who live near coal refuse piles and all of the communities downstreams of these hazards expect us to find a solution. many workers at the endangered power plants are counting on us to protect their livelihood. we owe it to them to pass the sense act, including people like bill turner. bill's a ship supervisor at the coal refuse facility and worked there for over two decades. he l

such tool, allowing it to be deployed under limited circumstances and only upon approval of a supermajority of the financial stability oversight council. surely we should at the very least agree to preserve and strengthen the ability of our financial regulators to avoid grave threats and another financial crisis. before i conclude, i'd like to make one further observation. ten years ago today, few of us knew ahead of time that we would see an economy that would collapse into debts that we did not anticipate. our nation would literally recoil due to the recklessness and unchecked greed of too many on wall street. we should not forget that nationally, over 8.6 million jobs are lost between -- were lost between january, 2008, and january, 2010, with over 33,000 jobs lost in rhode island alone. if anything, the wall street reform and consumer protection act was a sensible and long overdue response to the reality that people are nowhere near perfect and cannot always be trusted to do the right thing. we learned in the hardest and most painful ways that certain safeguards are necessary. unfortuna