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Comment by ejstronge | Hacker News Reader

Is there a senator who is filibustering this bill? It seems that there were 59 yes votes and four absences - how many nays are there, and who is obstructing this bill?

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Bernie decided to just not vote even though his vote would have changed the outcome.

You have to admit its on brand - just talk - never getting anything done or passed...

It’s a strange vote. I mean it’s completely bipartisan. And a couple on either side and an independent abstained. Guess there was some good horse trading.

How is it strange? It is completely consistent with "My way or the highway, No Compromise attitude"

Not that strange. McConnell knows all the votes before allowing a vote on anything. Then he lets any R in sensitive states vote YAY up to <59 votes.

Please don't spread falsehoods. Bernie's vote wouldn't have mattered unless he voted in favor of the bill, in which case the bill would've passed.

An absent vote is the same thing as a nay vote in the Senate. To pass this amendment it requires 60 affirmative votes, of which there were 59.

So, if the Bernie voted “yes” (which is consistent with his usual political alignment), then the amendemnt would have passed, right? If yes, then how do you derive “his vote wouldn’t have mattered” from this?

Can you explain how this is consistent with his political alignment? Because Bernie Sanders (regardless of how you feel about him) has voted consistently against increasing the surveillance state. Hence why his vote wouldn't have mattered, because it would've been a NAY vote and NAY votes don't have any affirmative power.

The vote is on a plan to REQUIRE a warrant. If he'd voted, he would have voted YEA, to pass this bill requiring a warrant, because he does not want to increase the surveillance state (on that we agree!)

It's "yea" for requiring warrants, and "nay" for warrantless surveillance (which is somehow the law of the land now? When did I miss this??)

Actually, this is an amendment on a bill to reauthorize expired warrantless surveillance programs, so a yes vote is a vote to make warrants for certain searches a condition for reauthorize broad authority for warrantless dragnet surveillance.

I suspect Bernie's abstention is because he thinks reauthorization is equally unacceptable with or without the condition.

Procedurally, he could vote yes on the amendment and still vote on the bill, and there's an argument that not doing so is making the perfect the enemy of the good (or at least the barely decent the enemy of the mildly less oppressive of two oppressive options), but it's kind of hard for me to get mad at Sanders for not collaborating in putting lipstick on this particular totalitarian pig of law. One can maybe rationalize the USA Patriot Act in the context of it's time, it's much harder to rationalize the USA Freedom Act’s deliberate after-the-fact authorization of much of the illegal blanket surveillance that went beyond what the original Patriot Act authorized, and it's far harder to rationalize the current reauthorization of the combination, with or without minor tweaks.

See my other response. This makes a lot more sense when you consider this to be a reaction to a separate amendment to the Patriot Act which is meant to explicitly authorize warrentless surveillance of a user's internet history.

He could have voted yes on the Amendment and still voted no on the bill.

I think you're misreading what happened here. The vote that failed would have required a warrant for something that does not require one today. It would have added a hurdle to law enforcement's access to user browsing histories.

Assuming Bernie would have voted YEA on this, we're all wondering why he didn't vote at all.

My take is a little more nuanced. I believe this still needs to get approved back in the House. If this amendment had passed, the Patriot act renewal would have been more palatable when it gets there, and moderate democrats would have had a much harder time rejecting the bill there. I just can't imagine how the house could possibly pass the legislation that the Senate just approved.

In this context, it wasn't as critical of a vote. I wouldn't be surprised if Schumer allowed the vote to happen today while Sanders was absent to drum up some extra support for Biden.

The Patriot Act is getting renewed in the House with or without this amendment.

You're right, I'd confused FISA with the Patriot act

I do wonder why Bernie didn't vote (and why some people voted against this), but it's also possible that it wouldn't have mattered.

The real voting is often done at the party whip level. If McConnell knew Bernie was going to show up and vote, it's possible that another Republican would have voted nay.

Of course he would have voted in favor, why do you assume he would side with the corrupt elite against the general public when his entire platform is the opposite.

Oh, I see my mistake now. I was getting this confused with the earlier story we had on the McConnell measure which is a separate amendment to allow for the warrentless searching of internet history explicitly. This seems to be another separate amendment in attempt to cut off the McConnell amendment.

I suspect it's because Bernie opposes 215 renewal with or without the amendment.

I doubt this. It makes no sense to not vote for the amendment irrespective of your vote for the larger bill. In other words, Sanders could vote yes on the amendment and no on the bill.

It could make sense to vote against watering down the bill if you think the watered-down version is more likely to pass. This amendment could be the opposite of a poison pill (a "spoonful of sugar"?)

The bill will pass either way. Now it just passes with worse privacy properties for regular Americans.

Bernie hasn't voted yet since the senate reconvened May 4th. There has been no explanation that I'm aware of for why he isn't voting.

https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/S000033/vo...

The president must be at least planning on obstructing the bill, since the only reason they'd need 60 votes would be to overcome a veto.

If we treat the absences as very wimpy nay votes, and lump the 2 independents in with the party they caucus with (both Democrat), then the party breakdown looks like this:

Democrats: 35 yea, 12 nay, so ~75% in favor. Republicans, 24 yea, 29 nay, so ~45% in favor.

The 59 yea votes consisted of 35 Democrats (King is independent but caucuses with the Democrats), and 24 Republicans. I'm much more interested in why it failed to pass, so I'll refrain from listing the yea votes for brevity.

The 4 absent senators were 2 Democrats (Sanders is independent but caucuses with the Democrats), and 2 Republicans:

Alexander (R-TN) Murray (D-WA) Sanders (I-VT) Sasse (R-NE)

The 37 nay votes were from 10 Democrat and 27 Republican senators:

Barrasso (R-WY) Blackburn (R-TN) Blunt (R-MO) Boozman (R-AR) Burr (R-NC) Capito (R-WV) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Collins (R-ME) Cornyn (R-TX) Cotton (R-AR) Feinstein (D-CA) Fischer (R-NE) Graham (R-SC) Hassan (D-NH) Hyde-Smith (R-MS) Inhofe (R-OK) Johnson (R-WI) Jones (D-AL) Kaine (D-VA) Lankford (R-OK) Manchin (D-WV) McConnell (R-KY) Perdue (R-GA) Portman (R-OH) Roberts (R-KS) Romney (R-UT) Rubio (R-FL) Shaheen (D-NH) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Tillis (R-NC) Toomey (R-PA) Warner (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wicker (R-MS) Young (R-IN)

Unless I’m mistaken, you’d need 66 votes to override a veto - the number 60 is for overriding a filibuster

No. First it has to be brought to the floor (not automatic) in each house with quorums present. It then takes 2/3s vote of members present in both houses.

The minimum to override in the Senate would be 2/3 * 51 = 34 votes.

What? the Senate has 100 members+VP, whats 51?

The VP would never even vote in an override.

51 is the minimum for a Senate quorum [1] (the VP isn't a member and wouldn't count) and you need 2/3s of members present after the Senate is quorate to vote for an override. The vote itself has to be quorate since it will require a roll call to establish the count. There are a lot of procedural rules+hurdles. You don't just need 2/3s of 100.

[1] https://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/quorum.htm

> The president must be at least planning on obstructing the bill, since the only reason they'd need 60 votes would be to overcome a veto.

The veto override requires a 2/3 majority. The 60-vote threshold is required to end a filibuster.

You're right, I was jumping to conclusions that it would be vetoed. In that case I have no idea who was filibustering it, assuming that's why they needed 60 votes. I would love to know.

Where did you get this information? I tried to figure it out myself but was unable to find a source.

Sorry, I should've provided the link: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...

Danke!

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