Much has been written here over the requirement for 60 votes in the Senate to pass virtually any legislation more controversial than resolutions saluting mom and apple pie. Republicans are already hinting of using such procedural votes to block President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, even though there is at yet no vacancy. And we wonder how we will get that 60th vote, and what compromises a Senator Collins will demand, to get that vote, so that more sweeping reforms, such as health care, can be enacted.
But this is not the first time a minority party in Congress has used procedural rules to prevent an administration from enacting its legislative program. Join me as we journey back to the year 1890. My primary source is chapter 3 of The Proud Tower, a 1966 work by the late historian Barbara Tuchman.
The 1888 elections resulted in a narrow Republican victory. President Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, narrowly won the popular vote, but lost to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison in the electoral college 223 to 168. The Democrats went into the election controlling the House 167 seats to 152 for the Republicans, but narrowly lost control of the chamber to the Republicans, 168 seats to 160 for the Democrats.
When the new Congress met, the Republican caucus narrowly selected Thomas Reed to be Speaker of the House. President Harrison had three items on his agenda for Congressional action: First: To seat four Republican challengers, two of them blacks, who had run in Southern and Border State districts where blacks had been forcibly prevented from voting. Second: To enact the "Force Bill" (as it was derisively labeled in the South) that would have abolished the poll tax and other enactments white southerners were using to prevent blacks from voting, and would have allowed the President to use U.S. troops to ensure that blacks could exercise their right to vote. And Third: To enact the Mills Bill to raise tariff rates.
Congressional Democrats were determined to stop these votes through use of the disapearing quorum. Under House procedures, members were recorded as present only when they answered "Yea" when their names were called in a quorum call. Members who were present and who remained silent when their names were called were officially absent. At that time, a quorum was a majority of the House - 166 members. If the Democrats remained silent during a quorum call, then at least 166 of the 168 Republicans would need to be present for a vote to occur.
On January 29, 1890, the majority leader brought to the floor the issue of one of the disputed Congressional seats, this one from West Virginia. One of the Democrats suggested an absence of a quorum, and Speaker Reed ordered the clerk to call the roll. 163 congressmen, all Republicans, answered present, three short of a quorum. Speaker Reed then announced, "The Chair directs the clerk to record the names of the following members present and refusing to vote." As he called the names of Democrats present in the Chamber, the Democrats screamed and yelled, to no avail. As Speaker Reed called out the name of Congressman McCreary, the congressman yelled, "I deny your right, Mr. Speaker, to count me present!" Reed replied, "The Chair is making a statement of fact that the gentleman is present, does he deny it?" After calling the names of the Democrats in the chamber, the Speaker announced there was a quorum.
One of the Democrats appealed the ruling of the Chair, and a Republican then moved to table the appeal. The ensuing debate lasted four days, interrupted with more quorum calls in which Democrats remained silent but were counted anyway. As Tuchman describes the scene:
Members rushed madly about the floor, the scowl of battle upon their brows, shouting in a mad torrent of eloquent invective. They called Reed tyrant, czar emerged as the favorite, embodying for its time the image of unrestrained autocracy, and as "Czar Reed", the Speaker was known thereafter. The angrier the Democrats became, the cooler Reed remained.
Then the Democrats switched their strategy, deciding to absent themselves in reality, and count on the inability of the Republicans to reach a quorum on their own. But as Speaker Reed saw the Democrats leaving the chamber one by one, he ordered the doors locked. Democrats panicked to avoid the upcoming vote, one of them managed to kick open the locked door, others hid under their desks or behind a screen.
The next day, all of the Democrats stayed away. Republicans called for a quorum, but they were three short. Two Republicans were brought in on cots from their sick beds, but they were still one short. One missing Republican had been out of town but was on his way back to Washington. When he appeared, there was now a quorum, and the House proceeded to vote, 166 - zero, to seat the Republican candidate in the challenged West Virginia election. The Democrats, defeated, returned to their seats. On February 14, 1890, the House adopted "Reed's Rules" which lowered a quorum to 100 members, and required that all members present will be counted, all members present must vote, and no "dilatory motion" will be entertained - with the Speaker to determine what is dilatory.
Barbara Tuchman summed it up:
To Reed the issue was survival of representative government. If the Democrats could prevent that legislation which the Republicans by virtue of their electoral victory could rightfully expect to enact, they would in effect be setting aside the verdict of the election. The rights of the minority, he believed, were preserved by freedom to debate and to vote but when the minority was able to frustrate action by the majority, "it becomes a tyranny."
So, how long will we allow the McConnells and Bunnings and Shelbys to set aside the verdict of the election and block the reforms our nation so desperately needs? If we could raise Thomas Reed's ghost from the dead and convince him to change parties, he would make a great majority leader in the Senate.