Retiring Senator Chris Dodd urges freshman Senators not to change the cloture rules:
Dodd, who is giving up his Connecticut Senate seat following a 36-year congressional career, argued that those who have yet to serve in the minority should be careful tampering with the rules.
"I made a case last night to about ten freshman senators, you know, you want to turn this into a unicameral body? What's the point of having a Senate? If the vote margins are the same as in the House, you might as well close the doors," Dodd told reporters in the Capitol.
With nearly 400 bills passed by the House having seen no action whatsoever on the Senate side, and every attempt by the House at actually passing something with muscle turned to mush in the Senate, the Congress already is a unicameral body.
Dodd is restating the oft-made objection that "you don't want to turn the Senate into the House," which is supposed to mean that the fake supermajority requirement is what people like Dodd think distinguishes the two bodies -- as opposed to, say, the very different make-up of the body and the specific charges and grants of power made to them by the Constitution.
Well, if you don't want to turn the Senate into the House, then how about letting the House be the damn House? Because the ossified Senate has made that pretty much impossible by refusing to step back and even entertain the possibility that they might be clinging to their rules more out of a desire to accrue personal power than for "the good of the country."
It's apparently not enough for some Senators that the Senate remain the Senate as they liked it (but not enough to stay there, it seems). They also demand that the House remain the stymied, remnant rump they've turned it into with their intransigence.
Those on their way in, it turns out, may feel differently. And not, perhaps, because they've never served in the minority, as Dodd suggested. Certainly one of the chief proponents of change, Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) has. He served eight years in the minority in the House, and has a much closer and much fresher view of what it is to sit in an even more powerless minority than Senator Dodd has. And yet he has a very different view of things.
In fact, insofar as it'd be valid to point out that some freshman Senators might not have much experience with being in the minority, it might be just as valuable to point out that it's possible that Senator Dodd has forgotten what it's like to be a Member of the House. Or at least that he has no experience with what it's like to be one in an era during which the Senate routinely sees over 100 cloture motions during a two-year Congress, plus countless holds and other related delays, not to mention being handed back the toothless and disemboweled hulks of once-ambitious legislation along with a demand that it be swallowed whole by the House, because it was the "best they could hope to get" given the 60 vote "requirement." In other words, Senator Dodd may not realize that the Congress is already unicameral because that's not immediately apparent to people serving in the only body that seems to count.
All advice is appreciated, of course. But let's keep in mind that Chris Dodd was swept into office as part of an enormous post-Watergate reformist wave, and probably would have had rather a different view of things as a freshman as well. To be as kind as possible about it, it's perhaps an open question, then, whether he's speaking as the voice of experience, or as the voice of an era long past. Doubtless it's a little bit of both, but that can only mean Dodd's caution is one opinion among many that ought to be considered.
That's a pretty restrained note on which to end. So I'll stop here.
