This afternoon, in advance of the snow apocalypse that is supposed to consume eastern Virginia, the Senate will come into session and Democrats will seek to do what might appear to be against the rules: take over the place.
After 2011?s Senate races put the body at 20-20, Democrats said Republicans should share power because the voters had elected equal numbers of senators from each party. They said power-sharing would be only fair, and they even sued over some of those issues. In the end, the Democrats largely failed — Republicans used then-Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling’s vote to organize to hold the majority and push through operational rules and committee assignments that benefited the Republicans.
Republicans now say those rules were supposed to stay in effect for all four years of this Senate term, and that a two-thirds vote is needed to overturn them. But Democrats are unlikely to care. Taking power and control of committees won’t necessarily help Democrats entice the Republican-led House to approve Democratic agenda items, but it would allow them to thwart conservative legislation coming from the House.
I’ve been told there are ways around the two-thirds rule and we’ll see if Democrats employ them. I strongly suspect they will, and that after some throat clearing, Dick Saslaw will have his majority leader name tag back, and committee gavels will be in Democratic hands.
If you are so inclined, you can watch the floor proceedings here.
And as I’ve written before, this puts Medicaid expansion back on the table.
The betting window (purely for entertainment purposes) is open on whether the 2014 session goes into overtime.
