I find it ironic that the most rapacious, repugnant character from my early childhood, on Howdy Doody was Mr. Bluster. Wonder of his first name was Phil?
Along with the Electoral College and giving small red states as much power in the Senate as much power large blue states, and gerrymandering, the Filibuster is a giant political monkey wrench to making government work for the majority of the country.
Ian Millhiser on Vox thinks there are ways around it. In How to fix the Senate without abolishing the filibuster, Ian comes up with four ways to reform the filibuster.
There are four broad ways that senators can weaken the filibuster without eliminating it altogether.
- Make fewer bills subject to the filibuster: The Senate can create carveouts and exempt certain matters from the filibuster altogether, as it does with bills subject to the reconciliation process.
- Reduce the power of individual rogue senators: The Senate could make it harder to initiate a filibuster. Right now, unanimous consent is required to hold a vote without invoking the time-consuming cloture process. But the rules could be changed to allow an immediate vote unless a larger bloc of senators — perhaps two or five or 10 — objected to such a vote, instead of just one.
- Make it easier to break a filibuster: The Senate could reduce the number of votes necessary to invoke cloture. This could be done as an across-the-board reform, like the 1975 change to the filibuster rule that reduced the cloture threshold from 67 to 60. Or it could be done by creating a carveout for certain matters, such as the 2013 and 2017 reforms that allowed presidential nominees to be confirmed by a simple majority vote.
- Reduce or eliminate the time it takes to invoke cloture: The Senate could reduce the amount of time necessary to invoke cloture and conduct a final vote. This could be done by allowing a swifter vote on a cloture petition, by reducing or eliminating the time devoted to post-closure debate, or both.
Ian goes into greater detail but this on the surface makes sense to this lay-politico.
All we need is for the Democrats and Leader Schumer to grow a pair. And then there is the Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema problem. Sound like a topic for another diary :)