Nearly everything legislatively this past two years that has caused aggravation and outrage among progressives can reasonably be blamed on the senate filibuster- loss of the public option, tax compromise, and the disclose act being defeated when it had a 59 vote near super majority support. I think we could have had some form of cap and trade, a bigger stimulous bill, the Dream act, and DADT repealed. The list goes on and on. I sure I've omitted much major legislation that passed in the house but died in the senate (the 911 health care bill for instance.) Well, finally, the effort to change it seems to be picking up steam.
There's a growing push for the Senate to reform the way the institution operates, and a new initiative was launched this week called FIX THE SENATE NOW.
Consider this letter (pdf), which is signed by the Communication Workers of America, the United Steelworkers, the Sierra Club, SEIU, Common Cause, DailyKos, the AFL-CIO and eight other left-leaning heavy-hitters and asks "Senators to move forward with reforms consistent with these eight principles":
- On the first legislative day of a new Congress, the Senate may, by majority vote, end a filibuster on a rules change and adopt new rules.
- There should only be one opportunity to filibuster any given measure or nomination, so motions to proceed and motions to refer to conference should not be subject to filibuster.
- Secret "holds" should be eliminated.
- The amount of delay time after cloture is invoked on a bill should be reduced.
- There should be no post-cloture debate on nominations.
- Instead of requiring that those seeking to break a filibuster muster a specified number of votes, the burden should be shifted to require those filibustering to produce a specified number of votes to continue the filibuster.
- Those waging a filibuster should be required to continuously hold the floor and debate.
- Once all Senators have had a reasonable opportunity to express their views, every measure or nomination should be brought to a yes or no vote in a timely manner.
As Ezra Klein explains
Sen. Tom Udall has a plan to change that. And not just once. Where some senators are arguing for a specific reform to the filibuster, or a new rule on judicial nominations, Udall is arguing for a routine and predictable process whereby the majority will review the rules every two years and be able to change them by a majority vote. He calls it "the Constitutional Option," after the line in the Constitution guaranteeing that "Each House [of Congress] may determine the Rules of its Proceedings."
Udall argues that the Senate's resistance to revising its rulebook has signaled that there'll be no consequences for distorting and misusing the rules. The filibuster, for instance, has gone from a rarely invoked failsafe to a constant. As Rucker and Fahrenthold note, "during Johnson's three terms as majority leader, from 1955 to 1961, there was only one time when a vote was called to break a filibuster. In the past two years, there have been 84."
Udall doesn't want to tie the Constitutional Option to one or another reform. The point is the process, not the policy. He believes that the certainty of reforms will force restraint from the minority, lest the majority change the rules on them, and restraint from the majority, who realizes that the minority might win the next election and exact revenge. This sort of dynamic accountability, he says, is far preferable to a stagnant rulebook where sentences that meant one thing during one period in which certain norms governed the behavior of both parties are being exploited by parliamentary Machiavellians for entirely different purposes in another period with different norms and far more polarization.
Now is the time to bring the pressure. In a diary I posted Sunday that received little attention I included an out of date whip count of where Senators stand in support of some kind of reform. Here it is again.
Senate Rules Reform Whip Count, August 5th
Among Returning Senators (48 plus Biden)
Favor 51-vote Senate (9): Bingaman (NM); Brown (OH); Harkin (IA); Johnson (SD); Kerry (MA); Lautenberg (NJ); Lieberman (CT); Mikulski (MD); Shaheen (NH);
Favor / considering some sort of reform (18): Begich (AK); Biden (VP); Blumenthal (CT, incoming); Casey (PA); Cardin (MD); Durbin (IL); Conrad (ND); Franken (MN); Gillibrand (NY); Leahy (VT); Levin (MI); McCaskill (MO); Merkley (OR); Sanders (VT); Schumer (NY); Stabenow (MI); Udall (NM); Warner (VA)
Wary or lean opposed to 51-vote Senate, but not necessarily to other reforms (6): Baucus (MT); Feinstein (CA); Landrieu (LA); Pryor (AR); Rockefeller (WV); Tester (MI)
Currently opposed to 51-vote Senate, and possibly all reform (2): Akaka (HI); Nelson (NE)
Unknown (14): Cantwell (WA); Carper (DE); Hagan (NC); Inouye (HI); Klobuchar (MN); Kohl (WI); Manchin (WV); Menendez (NJ); Nelson (FL); Reid (RI); Udall (CO); Webb (VA); Whitehouse (RI); Wyden (OR)
Call your Senators. Find out where they stand. Sign the petition at FIX THE SENATE NOW. Senator Jeff Merley is another leader in the growing movement to reform the filibuster and has a petition
to sign. I won't go more into his ideas because I am really more of a big picture person and trust the senators to hammer out the details if they can be pushed to find 51 votes in support of changing the rules. If anybody has read this far and makes a comment I will be out this evening and not responding (that way I won't feel bad to be ignored again.)