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Should the filibuster be eliminated, or merely "reformed"?
The Senate Democrats are starting to get serious about reforming the Senate rules to make the chamber slightly less idiotic. One of the changes they are thinking about making is forcing the minority who wants to filibuster a bill to actually speak continuously on the Senate floor. From the Huffington Post:
[Sen. Jeff] Merkley said that he first pitched filibuster reform to Reid in the summer of 2007, while he was being recruited as a candidate. The plan he put forward in 2011, he said, has been significantly revised.
The critical component, though, is a mechanism that would force senators to physically take the floor and speak in order to maintain opposition to legislation. The effort to end a filibuster is called a cloture motion. Under the proposed rules, if a cloture vote failed to win a simple majority, the bill would be killed and the Senate would move to new business. But if it won a majority — though less than a supermajority of 60 — the bill would remain on the floor for any senator who wished to opine on it. If at some point no senator rose to speak, after given several chances to do so, a new vote would be called — and only a simple majority would be needed to pass it.
This is definitely an improvement over the current system where a small minority can easy veto anything in the Senate, at least this way they need to be really committed to stopping it. Depending on how this provision is designed, it could even theoretically only make it possible for the minority to greatly delay a vote rather then to stop it, because of the two speech rule.
That said, having making important decisions based on how long some old senator can stand and talk is a horrifically stupid way to run a country. The best way to fix the Senate is to allow laws to force a simple majority vote, just like the Constitution intended. We already have the House, the Presidential veto, and the Courts to serve as a check on the Senate. There is zero reason a small minority in the least representative legislative chamber in the free world should effectively have a veto, even if it is made harder to use by forcing them to talk all day.
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Can anyone answer my question? What state Senate has a filibuster? Zero, right?
The filibuster was intended to be a tool to slow something down if a Senator, who is intended to have a fair amount of power, wants to bring to public,s attention to an important issue. It has it’s usefulness.
Making a Senator actually have to use his oratory prowess to sway an outcome is closer to what the framers had in mind. Mindless obstruction is nihilism and has to end.
“… the current system where a small minority can easy veto anything in the Senate”.
How small of a minority? 11% of the country’s population – those in the 21 least populous states – should exercise veto power over the other 89% [2009 figures].
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/10/29/our-third-karpian-moment/
Mindless nihilism is the GOP’s mantra these days.
The filibuster was never intended to exist. The possibility was only accidentally created during a foolish attempt to clean up the rules.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Reid has talked tough before, but then cowers every time the GOP barks.
There are more people living in Queens (one of the 5 boroughs of N.Y.C.) than in the entire State of Wyoming. Yet one of their 2 Senators can bring a judicial appointment to a screeching halt. If that isn’t nuts, I don’t know what is.
Wait a minute. Senators like to talk. So……
It would be entertaining if it didn’t have such dire consequences. The GOP is reaching a zenith of morphing into something new. By 2014 we’ll know what that is. In the meantime, pop some popcorn and get comfortable on the couch.
It’s a good start.
Of course, this begs the question, Why do states need two legislative houses in the first place? Does any state allow two senators from each county, so rural counties with low populations get a “balanced” representation with an upper house?
yes, change the rules. that will memorialize Mitch McConnell as the most obstructionist senator who ever lived !
The term “mcconnell” or “to mcconnell” will become part of the lexicon, as in:
“hey, don’t mcconnell every good idea this group has”
“that asshole mcconnell-ed the whole group!”
“hey, don’t mcconnell that joint”
Actually, I’m old enough to remember when that actually had to happen. They’d get up on the floor of the Senate and say or read ANYTHING… The phone book, the recipe for their grandmother’s shoo-fly pie, ANYTHING. And there were no breaks. If some Senator needed to take a piss there had to be some other Senator from his party there so he could yield to him. They had cots in their offices, and would show up on the floor dragging sheets with them if they were called. I really, really, REALLY want to see the Republicans have to do that. A real, honest-to-God filibuster is 24/7, no breaks. With, you should pardon the phrase, the whole world watching. Bring it on!
Majority rules, no filibustering at all. A call for the question should always be in order and a simple majority ends debate.
The hold-the-floor requirement won’t work, at all. It will only make the filibuster a more useful tool of obstruction. Not only will the filibusters be able to tag-team the holding of the floor, and so continue the filibuster forever, other business can’t be done while they hold the floor. So the filibuster still works on individual bills, but now it also makes it possible for the obstructing minority to hold everything else the Senate might want to do hostage.
We’re not seeing more filibusters, and more consistent use of filibusters, because the rules no longer require the filibusters to hold the floor. The majority actually can still make the filibusters do that, hold the floor, but they never do, precisely because of this effect that making them hold the floor has on all of the Senate’s business, that it gives the obstructionists control of the Senate calendar.
We’re seeing the filibuster used for the first time as a means to impose an effective 60 vote requirement for the House because we’re seeing for the first time a minority willing to abuse rules in ways they were never intended, and a majority equally determined to let them get away with it. I’m not convinced that there is any great advantage in allowing the minority even the power to delay any vote, but if there were, it’s not going to ever again be served by the filibuster. To serve in that role, as a means to allow the minority to impose a delay on only the rare vote it finds truly intolerable, requires the minority to have forebearance and self-control, to not imagine its every whim and slightest inclination is an “extraordinary circumstance”. The present Seante minority simply cannot be trusted to behave that way. They aren’t behaving that way.
The only reform of the filibuster that makes any sense would have to be carefully drawn to insure that it permitted the minority to only delay a bill, not kill it because it lacks a supermajority. And keeping the power to delay from becoming effectively a power to kill, the number of times it can be used must be limited, or it will be used on everything the Senate does, every time the Senate tries to do it, to the point that the Senate can do nothing until it gives in to the blackmailers who would control its schedule if allowed unlimited filibusters of even the delay variety.
Forget about Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Or, rather, remember that in that movie, the filibuster is the hero. The hold-the-floor requirement would not only make the obstructionists more powerful, it would make themn look like heroes while they’re at their nefarious work.
Sometimes, it doesn’t suck to be so old :) I remember it also, but never with CSpan. I think it would be an instant ratings hit. America could tune in and see how stupid their senator is.