Senate Republicans will likely have to cloture Democrats on every bill for the rest of the session, according to State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur).
Senate Republicans met for a caucus meeting on Thursday during a recess and proceeded to invoke cloture to limit debate and filibusters by Democrats on six Republican bills, which would normally take hours to pass due to Senate rules on debate.
Orr said on Huntsville radio WVNN's "The Dale Jackson Show" on Friday that cloture motions would probably have to be used on every bill for the remaining seven days of the legislative session.
The practical effect of a cloture motion is that it limits debate on legislation to about 45 minutes. The Senate's filibuster rules allow for lengthy filibusters and other procedural delays commonly used by Democrats to kill or water down Republican legislation.
"We knew this day was going to come, and it came quite frankly a day sooner. We were thinking next week, but there was a bill filed that triggered one of the Democrats, the leading Democrat, and it was going to be filibuster day, and that was that. We knew what we had to do. We've got more bills to pass that are going to be controversial, so I would say we are probably looking at cloturing every bill. I would say every bill henceforth will be a cloture vote. Every motion, concurrence, all these different items of business that we have to tend to, which means lots of legislation is going to die. I think we'll just gut it out day after day after day for the remainder of the session," Orr said.
He continued, "They don't want to speak. They just want to block and if that's the intent, they just want to block and kill the legislation that's being put forth, fortunately the people of Alabama have given us a supermajority enough to have the cloture votes and we'll used the tools that we're given as the supermajority and sit them down."
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