Senator-elect Dan Coats (R-IN), who also served in the Senate throughout the 1990s, embraced reforming the Senate Rules in a recent interview with NPR:

SIEGEL: Republicans in the minority in the past couple of years have invoked the threat of filibuster a lot more often than was common when you were in the Senate in the 1990s. And I wonder: Do you think that it serves the institution well to require 60 votes for every issue of consequence since your party aspires to be in the majority within a couple of years? And wouldn’t Democrats do the same thing to every bill that your party wants?

Mr. COATS: I think what we need is the opportunity to debate and have an up-or-down vote on every issue. Filibustering the motion to proceed -that is, we can’t even go forward and talk about an issue without overcoming or without gaining a 60-vote majority for it – I would support removing that provision. I think the American people deserve to have the issues debated regardless of which side they’re on, so that they are fully aware of what their representatives and senators are voting for and voting against.

To be clear, the actual rule change that Coats pledges to support here is fairly modest. Present Senate rules permit senators to filibuster both the beginning and the end of debate on most bills. Coats’ proposal would eliminate pre-debate filibusters, but still give senators an opportunity to filibuster before a bill can receive a final up-or-down vote. Nevertheless, because the Senate’s rules also allow the minority to force up to 30 hours of delay every time a filibuster is broken, Coats’ proposal would be a meaningful step towards eliminating a minority’s power to delay virtually all Senate business into oblivion.

As Coats admits, his willingness to support any limits on obstructionism “would be a change of tactics from what’s happened in the past couple of years.” Since President Obama took office, right-wing senators like Jim DeMint (R-SC) have claimed the right to veto any legislation his office has not personally approved, and because the Senate’s rules require unanimous consent to get much of anything done, DeMint has largely gotten his way.

Although it normally requires 67 votes to change the Senate rules, there is a brief window next January where a majority of the Senate can reform the body’s rules. Were they to do so, they would have popular opinion on their side. A recent poll shows nearly two-thirds of voters want to scrap the filibuster, including a majority of Republicans.

Yesterday, Indiana’s Republican Senate candidate Dan Coats unveiled his job creation plan, and like the jobs plan released by other Republican senate hopefuls like Marco Rubio (FL) and Roy Blunt (MO), it is heavy on tax cuts and fearmongering about government regulation. Coats calls for permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, including those for the richest two percent of Americans that President Obama would like to see expire, as well as eliminating the estate tax and cutting the corporate income tax. But when asked about how much these massive cuts would add to the deficit, Coats freely admits that he has no idea:

He could not say what the fiscal impact of his proposals would have on the nation’s deficit, saying it would need more analysis. “I believe the effectiveness will far outweigh the costs,” he said. “Our hope is that we can come back with a budget neutral (plan) or savings.”

Coming back with a budget neutral plan may be Coats’ hope, but in order to achieve that he’s going to need draconian spending cuts or huge middle class tax increases, because the tax cuts he’s proposing will blow a serious hole in the budget. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy alone will cost $830 billion over ten years, and eliminating the estate tax is another $784 billion. All of this spending and borrowing will serve to benefit the richest two percent of the country. As The Wonk Room explains, Coats’ “jobs plan” is also short on steps that actually create jobs.

In January, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — who Glenn Beck says he loves — released his Roadmap for America’s Future, which would eliminate long-term deficits by essentially privatizing Medicare and Social Security and placing arbitrary, non-specific freezes on all non-discretionary spending. In an analysis of the plan, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said Ryan’s plan “would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals”:

The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households; eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest; and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the alternative minimum tax. At the same time, the Ryan plan would raise taxes for most middle-income families, privatize a substantial portion of Social Security, eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, end traditional Medicare and most of Medicaid, and terminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The plan would replace these health programs with a system of vouchers whose value would erode over time and thus would purchase health insurance that would cover fewer health care services as the years went by.

Though the Republican leadership have resisted embracing Ryan’s plan, hardcore conservatives are big fans. In an interview with The Weekly Standard yesterday, former Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN), who is seeking retiring Sen. Evan Bayh’s (D-IN) seat, said he wanted a Social Security and Medicare policy “along the lines of what Paul Ryan has proposed”:

Coats stopped by THE WEEKLY STANDARD this afternoon to talk about his campaign and said that he wouldn’t be running if he wasn’t determined to bring “structural change” to the federal government. Lamenting that Republicans had lost their way “doing earmarks as hard as the other guys,” Coats says now there’s no more time to “kick the can down the road” on the federal debt.

He recalls that during one GOP candidate forum this spring, the candidates were asked what specifically they would do to rein in federal spending. While other candidates suggested slashing the Department of Education or a 1 percent across-the-board spending cut, Coats told the audience that those proposals simply “wouldn’t put a dent” in the federal debt. What we need to do, Coats says, is implement entitlement reform “along the lines of what Paul Ryan has proposed.”

Matt Yglesias calls the approach that Coats is endorsing “the Ryan Ripoff,” saying that “in a nutshell” it means “much lower taxes for the rich, higher taxes for ninety percent of Americans, and no balanced budget. All in the name of balancing the budget!”

Following the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the “floodgates” have opened for enhanced corporate spending on elections. As ThinkProgress has reported, foreign-owned subsidiaries and foreign shareholders in American corporations are preparing to pour their resources into defeating and electing candidates of their choice.

While Democrats in Congress have already put forward proposals to develop clean elections, the GOP is largely championing the new status quo of limitless power for corporations. Guiding corporations into this new uncharted territory of election law, lobbyists and specialized law firms have stepped up to the plate. Among lobbying shops offering post-Citizens United assistance to corporate clients is a firm called King and Spalding, the firm of Indiana GOP Senate candidate Dan Coats. King and Spalding recently released a document promising to corporate clients:

New Opportunities for Corporations to Engage in Election Campaigns: [...] Citizens United provides corporations with the ability to engage in the political process in dynamic ways. [...] While not every corporation will want to buy advertisements that simply ask the public to vote for or against a candidate, every corporation should view the Citizens United decision as providing new tools to assist it in advancing policies and legislation that are in its shareholders’ interests.

As Zachary Roth reported yesterady, other firms are also pitching to clients to take advantage of the new system. K&LGates posted a similar document encouraging clients to seek their services in order to influence elections while avoiding “public scrutiny.”

Coats has come under fire for having lobbied for multinational corporations and financial institutions like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and AMGEN. But he’s also lobbied for foreign governments, including India and Yemen. For perhaps the first time in history, a candidate for Congress like Coats can harness millions, or even billions, of dollars in corporate electioneering from multinational corporations from all over the world. Given the fact his own lobbying firm is positioning itself to be a conduit for such spending, it’s a definite possibility.