There is a small group of Senators working to build critical mass to reform the filibuster for the next Senate. The catch is that it can ONLY be voted on on January 5th when the next Senate convenes. After that, rule changes will be subject to supermajority requirements brought on by, you guessed it, the filibuster.
It is important to note that the reforms being proposed will NOT eliminate the 60-vote requirement to end debate. They will just require actual debate until cloture is invoked rather than simply filing an objection with the Clerk. To those concerned that we won’t like it when we’re in the minority I would submit that we SHOULD be expected to justify our delays as well, so as one Senator put it, “the American people can judge whether you are a hero or a bum”.
Let’s see if Senator Kerry, or even Senator Brown who is more junior and thus less beholden to tradition, will come on board.
While cloaked as a ‘new fangled reform’ this proposal is actually a restoration of the filibuster as it is traditionally understood. I have probably been one of the lone voices arguing, ironically enough, that lone voices should be heard every now and then in our public debate and that a dictatorship of the majority would corrode our public discourse. Remember there was a time when the filibuster was the only tools progressives had to fight regressive majorities on civil rights, womens rights, opposition to war, supporting labor, and supporting single payer healthcare. When great men from our own Daniel Webster and Charles Sumner to Wisconsite LaFollette and Oregonian Morse were able to swing the tide in their favor, or at least go down fighting for what they believed to be right. Yet they had to give speeches, they had to use the only tool a Senator ought to use, oratory, rhetoric, and forensics, to convince their colleagues they were right. Simply shouting ‘filibuster’ and thus forcing every minor procedural vote to grind to a halt and come to 60, disrespects the original intent of this process, it disrespects the voters, and it disrespects and harms the country. This reform should appease filibuster critics while also preserving the institution from the gross abuse it has endured and will endure at the hands of Mitch McConnell.
I’m in favor of the current proposal, but I’m also in favor of reducing the requirement for cloture motions to a simply majority.
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p>If this was accomplished, it would in no way result in a “dictatorship of the majority.” We would still have a bicameral legislature and a President with a veto pen. We would also have the courts and the states, both of which allow the political losers on the national level to try and achieve their policies that way.
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p>Heck, this system would still be a lot less majoritarian than Britain, which is nevertheless a free country with a pretty healthy political discourse.
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p>And I’m not sure about the point about the filibuster being used as a tool by progressives. How did progressives use the filibuster to advance the cause of civil rights? In contrast, it has been conservative minorities that have historically made the greatest use of the filibuster.
Robert’s Rules, probably the most common manual of parliamentary practice in this country, requires 2/3 to move the previous question. I think requiring a supermajority to cut off the rights of members is reasonable.
I wish we were reducing the number down from 60 — even 55 would be helpful — but at the very least this will force the opposition to explain why they’re filibustering to the American public. If they’re right, the American public will rally to their side and they’ll win more often than they lose. If they’re wrong, the American people will mount incredible pressure to end the filibuster… and at least know what’s going on. More often than not, those kinds of filibusters will fail.
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p>This will bring more accountability to the system, and will force the system to be more democratic. If Kerry votes against filibuster reform, I won’t vote for Kerry.
I have never voted for Kerry and have absolutely no regret over it.
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p>Onto the substance, I would agree that reforming cloture votes would also be a substantial step forward. Actually the filibuster has had a mix record of being used by progressives and southern conservatives, my point is the tool by itself is non-ideological, just that sometimes it has helped defend unpopular ideas that were good, and many times unpopular ideas that are bad. The fact is there should be a device in a democracy that defends unpopular ideas and forces the individual Senator to exercise freedom of conscience and agency beyond what his/her party wants. So these reforms are sensible. Reducing it to 55 seems less reasonable to me, but I would be in favor of limiting the filibuster to certain important pieces of legislation and forcing most business to attain a simple majority.
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p>In a Democracy, 1 person shouldn’t and can’t be able to stop the majority. Saying a single senator should be capable of doing that in order to improve a democracy is nothing but doublespeak, or at least cognitive dissonance.
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p>I’m okay with a filibuster that slows things down and allows the majority to become better informed, but can’t outright block things — thus, if morality and the law is on the side of the person filibustering, they may win the day (and vice versa) — but I’m really not okay with a system that allows a few legislators to outright block the majority. I’d accept the proposed reform to the filibuster, making it so people have to again stand up and speak in perpetuity until one side backs down, but only because that’s an improvement over the status quo.
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p>I don’t think the swiss-cheese solution is going to be one that works for us. How do you pick where those holes are going to be? If you’ve seen states that require a super majority to pass budgets, you’ll note that’s a disaster. I’d be very opposed to that.
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p>Limiting the filibuster to only certain areas of lawmaking is going to create certain areas in which the filibuster becomes an almost guarantee, and that those areas are held hostage to everything else in government.
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p>The bottom line is this: The founding fathers never intended the filibuster to exist — and these were people who had the foresight to recognize that there were certain areas which required super majorities. Nominations and ratifications, for example, require one. To overcome the President’s veto requires one. These were sensible solutions meant to act as checks and balances for everyone else. If they thought the filibuster would have been one of them, too, they would have included it in the constitution. They didn’t, and for very good reason. The filibuster is a disaster to this country at this point, an absolute disaster.
Without concrete counter-examples to back up your point about the “non-ideological” nature of the filibuster, I’d argue that the filibuster always — by its very nature — has a clear tendency towards conservatism. Occasionally this can work in the progressives’ favor — by blocking the repeal or chipping away of previous liberal victories — but generally speaking, the filibuster works for the opponents of change. That, in turn, helps political conservatism.
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p>Also, there are devices in our democracy that help advocates express and defend unpopular ideas. The fact that there are so many entry points into our system (the House, the Senate, the President, the bureaucracy, the courts, the states, local government, the media, etc., etc.), unlike much more centralized European democracies, means that unpopular ideas have several places to be heard. The filibuster, on the other hand, can and has been used far more often to defend bad ideas than to introduce new ones.
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p>Finally, building off my last point, what examples are there of the filibuster being used to “defend unpopular ideas that were good”?
After you lose your super-majority, you NOW want to change the rules.
Gerrymandering is sure going to be interesting this year.
Olver vs. Neal in a primary? Sounds good. Fleitman beatin the “winner” sounds better.
Wesley vs. McGovern? Bring it on!