One year ago I wrote a diary describing how, in 1890, Republican Speaker Thomas Reed defeated obstructionist Democrats by unilaterally changing the Rules of the House of Representatives. Under those rules, members who were present in the House Chamber were counted absent when they declined to respond when their names were called during a quorum call. Democrats, largely from the South, used the rule of the "disappearing quorum" to block House consideration of the Federal Elections Bill, which would have abolished the poll tax used by white southerners to prevent blacks from voting, and, more importantly, would have used the federal courts and federal marshalls to supervise voter registration and federal elections to ensure that blacks could register and vote. But Democratic obstruction ended on January 29, 1890, when Speaker Reed ordered the clerk to count as present Democrats who were in the Chamber but who remained silent during a quorum call, and two weeks later the House, by a simple majority vote, ratified this change of House rules.
This diary discusses a more recent reform of a Congressional rule that had allowed a minority of six to block the will of the majority. A few of us were even alive when it happened (I was 10).
John F. Kennedy came to office with an impressive legislative agenda, including civil rights and Medicare, which JFK proclaimed as "The New Frontier." And, on paper, he had a large Democratic majority in the House: 263 Democrats to 174 Republicans. But President Kennedy faced almost certain legislative defeat because, under the rules of the House of Representatives, no bill could be brought to the House floor unless it had first passed the House Rules Committee.
There were 12 Congressmen on the House Rules Committee, 8 Democrats and 4 Republicans. All four Republicans were conservatives, six of the eight Democrats were liberals. The two exceptions were William Colmer of Mississippi, who was first elected to Congress in 1932 and would be succeeded in 1972 by Trent Lott, and "Judge" Howard Smith of Alexandria, Virginia. Both Colmer and Smith were rabid bigoted segregationists, with Smith pontificating that "The Southern people have never accepted the colored race as a race of people who had equal intelligence and education and social attainments as the white people of the South." More often than not, Smith and Colmer would join with their Republican colleagues to deadlock the Rules Committee at 6-6. Lacking the required majority, bills would be blocked and thus defeated without ever reaching the House floor.
During one of his televised debates with Vice President Nixon, then Senator Kennedy had recognized the problems he would face in getting progressive legislation past the House Rules Committee were he to be elected President:
MR. VANOCUR: Senator, you've been promising the voters that if you are elected president you'll try and push through Congress bills on medical aid to the aged, a comprehensive minimum hourly wage bill, federal aid to education. Now, in the August post-convention session of the Congress, when you at least held up the possibility you could one day be president and when you had overwhelming majorities, especially in the Senate, you could not get action on these bills. Now how do you feel that you'll be able to get them in January -
MR. KENNEDY: Well as you take the bills -
MR. VANOCUR: - if you weren't able to get them in August?
MR. KENNEDY: If I may take the bills, we did pass in the Senate a bill uh - to provide a dollar twenty-five cent minimum wage. It failed because the House did not pass it and the House failed by eleven votes. And I might say that two-thirds of the Republicans in the House voted against a dollar twenty-five cent minimum wage and a majority of the Democrats sustained it - nearly two-thirds of them voted for the dollar twenty-five. We were threatened by a veto if we passed a dollar and a quarter . . . . Secondly, we passed a federal aid to education bill in the Senate. It failed to come to the floor of the House of Representatives. It was killed in the Rules Committee. And it is a fact in the August session that the four members of the Rules Committee who were Republicans joining with two Democrats voted against sending the aid to education bill to the floor of the House. Four Democrats voted for it. Every Republican on the Rules Committee voted against sending that bill to be considered by the members of the House of Representatives.
But, unlike today, President Kennedy refused to accept the status quo, he refused to allow two bigots from his own party to single handedly stop legislation, he was determined to change the House rules. And Kennedy acted quickly, acting even before he would take the oath of office. When the new Congress assembled at the start of January 1961, President-Elect Kennedy conferred with House Speaker Sam Rayburn. They agreed that the easiest way to overcome Smith would be to expand the House Rules Committee by three members, two to be named by Speaker Rayburn, one to be named by the Republican leadership. On January 31, 1961, only eleven days after President Kennedy had taken the oath of office, Sam Rayburn, for the first time since first becoming Speaker back in 1940, stepped down from the Speaker's podium and pleaded with the House to add the three members to the Rules Committee. After one hour of debate the House voted, 217 to 212 to make the change.
Howard Smith remained chairman, but liberal Democrats now enjoyed an 8 to 7 majority on the Rules Committee. Without the foresight and political courage of John F. Kennedy and Sam Rayburn, none of the Great Society legislation - Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare, the War on Poverty -would have been possible. All this legislation would have been buried in "Judge Smith's Graveyard."
Last year in my diary about Speaker Thomas Reed, I quoted the late historian Barbara Tuchman:
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."
Professor Tuchman's words ring true today. The Republicans, joined by the likes of Nelson and Lieberman and Lincoln, have been allowed to set aside the will of the electorate. Cynacism has set in, the Democrats have looked inept and stupid - all because of the filibuster. The filibuster may have served a purpose when it was used sparingly, for only the most important and controversial legislation. But it has been abused, the will of the majority has been set aside, and it must be abolished, NOW.