When it comes to institutional reforms in the tragically dysfunctional U.S. Senate, there's a growing sense that some changes are inevitable, though the scope of the reforms and the level of support remains entirely unclear.
Politico reports today that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is increasingly focused on two ideas: (1) eliminating filibusters on motions to proceed, which seems like a no-brainer, and (2) forcing the filibustering minority to literally stand on the floor and try to talk a bill to death.
There's ample room for debate on the merits of the reforms, whether they'd be effective, and whether they go far enough, but how the reforms are adopted is also likely to matter.
Republicans are threatening even greater retaliation if Reid uses a move rarely used by Senate majorities: changing the chamber's precedent by 51 votes, rather than the usual 67 votes it takes to overhaul the rules.
"I think the backlash will be severe," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the conservative firebrand, said sternly. "If you take away minority rights, which is what you're doing because you're an ineffective leader, you'll destroy the place. And if you destroy the place, we'll do what we have to do to fight back."
"It will shut down the Senate," the incoming Senate GOP whip, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, told POLITICO. "It's such an abuse of power."
Coburn and Cornyn are, of course, referring to the so-called "nuclear option," which senators like Coburn and Cornyn helped come up with and used to support.
But even putting hypocrisy aside, there's a certain oddity to the Republican threats. The GOP minority has abused Senate rules in ways unseen in American history, rendering the entire institution a dysfunctional mess, and creating mandatory supermajorities for the first time since the Senate was created over two centuries ago.
And if Democrats take steps to make policymaking slightly more efficient, then Republicans will "shut down the Senate"? The GOP threat is that the future will abandon the bipartisan comity and constructive process the nation has enjoyed in recent years?
Wait, it gets worse.
As Greg Sargent noted, Coburn's complaints about taking away "minority rights" really don't make sense.
The package of reforms most likely to be adopted would not take away the ability of the minority to block legislation supported by a majority of the Senate.
That's right: While the reforms currently being considered would force filibustering into the open and end the ability to filibuster before proceeding to debate and in other situations, they would not -- repeat, not -- mean an end to the filibuster on ending debate and having a final vote on any bill. In other words, these reforms would simply remove ways of using the filibuster explicitly as a tactic to gum up the works by stalling legislation, without altering the underlying ability to block legislation with a minority of the Senate. It would fundamentally remain a 60-vote institution where majority rule doesn't automatically prevail. Indeed, some liberals think this means the reforms aren't good enough.
That's absolutely right, and I'd add just one related thought.
For Senate Republicans, "minority rights," which they suddenly take seriously after four consecutive losing election cycles, means the ability of 41 senators to defeat literally any bill or nomination is sacrosanct and inviolable. After all, it's one of the defining features that makes the Senate different from the House.
But this assumption is at odds with history. The Senate functioned quite well for 200 years while remaining a majority-rule institution. It differed from the House, not because of mandatory supermajorities that didn't exist up until very recently, but because members serve six-year terms (instead of two) and represent entire states (instead of districts).
What reformers have in mind is not to break the Senate or introduce radical changes to the staid institution, but ultimately, are motivated by the opposite motivation -- reforms would bring the Senate closer to the way it was designed to function, and used to function before Republicans abandoned institutional norms and abused Senate traditions.
The chamber is broken, and those who broke it are now vowing to fight those trying to put things right. It should be quite a showdown.
Leave a Comment:
They're going to shut down the Senate?
What the hell have they been doing since Obama became President?
Mann and Orstein made the point that if a minority in the Senate is interested in obstruction, there are countless ways to do it. Their argument* is that it is pointless to attempt anything less than comprehensive reform.
The Senators know this is true, and they want to engage in this charade for a reason. This is really about Schumer being able to water down the Dodd Frank bill for his Wall Street backers. This is about countless other Senators protecting their keys to the Kingdom.
Reid Schumer and Durbin are the problem. The only way is to eliminate them and vote in reformers. Patty Murray needs to be the Senate Majority Leader.
It is time to shut down the old boy network.
---- Notes---
* They made this point on Last Word (or maybe hardball?) last week, and is an elaboration of the idea that if you want to kill the King, you better succeed or he will kill you. No half way measures. The longer exposition may be found in their book, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism" (link)
Further proof that "the only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies."
I remember now.
Orenstein said this when Ezra was hosting O'Donnell's show last Wednesday or Thursday. (link to msnbc video click on "Senate dems want to fix the fillibuster)
Pooh. Utter bullpucky (Not you, John, the premise of the claims put out in the post above).
I mean, yes, all that is possible, but this is alarmist and unlikely, and just an overt attempt to shut down any attempts at reform with some kind of sky-is-falling boo hoo stuff.
Leaving the filibuster but forcing the buggers to TALK exposes obstructionism to the light of day. I keep seeing that underestimated, like if the culprits blocking votes are standing up there bloviating with B-roll clips on the evening news every night, that awareness doesn't penetrate to voters and public opinion in a way that these quiet obstruction tactics of the current rules does.
Sure, Senate rule reform should be an ongoing process, just as House rules work.
Oh? You think Orenstein is nuts?
Chris, I am a big fan of incrementalism, but it is a meaningless exercise if the other side has no interest in being bound by the same rules when they no longer favor them. As far as I am concerned we need more Thadeus Stevens' advocating for the "Radical" solutions. Absence of these voices in favor of the less radical and more reasonable/ sensible is what doomed single payer.
Reid will get his half measures and it will incrementally get us to where? Same place. A Congress that needs a supermajority if the Dems are in power, and a simple majority if the GOP is in power.
Because the GOP will blow away the obstacles to their agenda the second the Senate rules no longer favor them.
No, I am a big fan of Ornstein. Have been since I used to listen to his gigs on Air America. I don't goose-step with anyone, but I really like his ideas.
Note that in Lincoln (the film), Thaddeus Stevens essentially HELD BACK his radical (for the time) views in order to pragmatically get the amendment of the moment through.
Or, to quote Evita, "Politics is the art of the possible."
I have no illusions about the intransigence of the obstructionists (even as the coalition of Grover Norquist no-tax adherents loses unity).
I'm just saying the worm has turned for the obstructionists. They can't reliably depend on deluding people and getting away with it anymore. Public opinion morphs into public pressure.
I don't think it is possible to see the kind of extended Newt Gingrich-style stand-off post-2012 election. The Fox News un-reality bubble is in the process of bursting, with all the attendant cognitive dissonance for the Kool-Aid drinkers that will come with it.
Something is shifting. Truth will out (she says as Mercury turns direct today).
I was putting out fires at work at the same time I was writing my bit above, so maybe I should clarify a bit, what I meant to characterize as bullpucky.
Yes, comprehensive reform is needed in both houses, and that is part of the ongoing rules process, etc. blah blah blah. Not real exciting to the public, and it tends to happen incrementally, and to favor seniority, entrenched interests, so on and so forth. But it would be nice, yes indeed, elect reformers and let them have at it. I'll sit here and watch paint dry while I wait.
Meanwhile, I think waving the "total reform" flag (not Ornstein, nor you John, but the piggy-backers) as a "do-it-now-or-else" measure is a bit of an obstructionist TACTIC in and of itself.
In other words, the people who want NO-REFORM-STATUS-QUO fully realize that that waving the "total reform" flag with the reformers serves obstructionist interests (since it will be unlikely to ever get through).
And a Senate-opening filibuster FIX (as proposed by Elizabeth Warren and others) very well COULD get through. And that sort of makes the obstructionists wet themselves a bit. Noooo, they don't want to have to stand up and read the phone book. They really don't like to WORK very much at all, you know. That's their game.
Not that they wouldn't still stand up and read the phone book, if made to do it, but it would not only get OLD really fast, they'd find themselves the subject of the kind of public attention for it that they are wholly unaccustomed.
Srsly. Sort of like how roaches scramble away when the light goes on.
So I am calling bullpucky on this. The total reform folks are being used by the obstructionists JUST THE SAME AS Thaddeus Stevens principled position on slavery and full voting rights for all people, including those formerly known as slaves was used by the pro-slavery Democrats opposing Lincoln's 14th Amendment in the film.
Something Thaddeus Stevens realized and corrected before the end of the film. The perfect can be the enemy of the good. Politics is the art of the possible.
One other thing Sen. Reid needs to do is --
He should change the rules to allow a simple majority to change the rules more if -- the Repubs do in fact use the remaining super-majority rules to block NECESSARY action.
Sen. Reid has this one chance to get it right unless he can reopen the debate on the rules ANYTIME !! Only then will the Repubs play ball with any sort of sportsmanship.
So the Republicans are threatening to shut the Senate down...again... this time if rules are adopted that would make it more tedious to shut the Senate down, as they've done in the past? How is this any different than what we've been living with? The Republians are always threatening to gum up the process, and in most cases they do exactly that.
Once again, I am reminded of the scene in Blazing Saddles, where the sheriff holds a gun to his own head.
So, basically, they're warning Democrats that they will need to pass more drastic reforms than Reid is currently contemplating. Good work, R's.
The minority should have the opportunity to present their case against a bill, but they should actually have to stand on the Senate floor and debate the bill. That means that what they say must be germane to the bill. If they have reasons to oppose it they should present their reasons, and a quorum should be present to listen to their arguments. If the others who oppose the bill will not sit all night and listen to the arguments against the bill, debate should automatically be shut off.
We tried a system where one state could veto the will of the majority. It was called the Articles of Confederation. That system failed because the country could not raise enough tax money to pay the nations debts including paying the continental army. Our Constitution was written so that the nation could have a strong, functional government.
First - the GOTP don't have a "case to present", their obstruction is based on that 3 yr. old that thinks "I want it NOW" and will hold their breath in order to get it their way!
Second as the GOTP has shown over and over and over - they are NOT leadership material, their sole plan of "cutting taxes" for trickle down theories that have shown themselves to be proven failures - just means that they don't give a dayum about America or working Americans - which is treason and yet another reason to vote them out!
Third - our Constitution was written to delineate the powers both federal and state that were given to them by "WE the PEOPLE" - and even as they wrote that document up women, slaves, native nations and minorities were NOT who they had in mind - what they had in mind were the hereditary, authoritarian monarchs that abused their power and they were determined NOT to have that replicated on these shores.
sometimes I think they ought to shut Washington DC down. We might all be better off. No more stupid ideas to contend with, no more regulations to swallow etc. Things that happen in DC don't always benefit the citizens of the US. Maybe stalemate is the best solution to many problems.
In that case, then, no budget would get passed and money would freeze (to pay employees, soldiers, debts, etc.); states would be dependent on their own inadequate resources to fund schools, roads, state employees, state debt; the country would default massively on debt and bring down the world's economy, again. All this to satisfy a few petulant senators? Really?
Sounds like you signed Grover's Pledge and have bought whole heartedly into the destruction of the Federal government as an institution.
Are you suggesting States rights is the way to go? After the way they just totally hosed up elections on purpose?
It should be necessary that anyone opposing a bill should be on record. Even better they should be required to state their reason to oppose the legislation, on the record. Being accountable to their constituents for their votes is not too much to expect. There is much too much follow the leader, and if Norquist is their leader.........
What I don't get is why every Democrat in Congress isn't carrying that chart around with them everywhere they go. It instantly communicates how badly the filibuster has been abused for the last 4 years in a way that anyone can understand. How can it be after all this time that the Democrats STILL can't figure out how to blast a simple message out to the masses?
As far as I can tell the Senate has been shut down, at least for the past four years.
Well . . . if anyone knows about taking away minority rights, it's the republicans.
To understand the idea of 'minority rights' when a right-winger appeals to it, you have to be familiar with the political career of John C. Calhoun and his brainchild 'concurrent majorities'. Long story short, by 'minority rights' they mean that the game ought to be rigged so that their small faction always carries the day.
"Republicans are threatening even greater retaliation if Reid uses a move rarely used by Senate majorities:..."
Would that be greater retaliation than the 100% retaliation they currently strive for? Is there anything they know except "greater retaliation"? Retaliation is what they do, who they are. It's how they define themselves to themselves and to the world. Retalitaion is their life force, (that and tax cut worship anyway). They are the RETALIATORS!
They should be given the opportunity to put their retaliation up their own bums.
How can your retaliation percentage be greater than 100%? That is where it is now. The Republican threat is hollow.
Using Republican faith-based math, a bazillion-jillion percent retaliation level is possible.
Ron, that's the point I was trying to make. You are correct of course. In reality 100% is all there is, (liberal bias skewing the truth and all that notwithstanding). But that doesn't stop the r's from making it sound like they can conjure Armageddon out of thin air whenever they so desire. They cannot, their threats are hollow, as you say, though their threats get far more consideration and respect than they deserve because of their bombastic and continual repetition. The r's bluff should be called.
The threat of retaliation is what kept Reid from reforming the rules 2 years ago. The GOP said they would go easier on the holds and filibusters. They lied.
How did Dubya say it? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..uh...er...you can't get fooled again."
If the GOP doesn't like the new rules, they are free to bring back the old rules--they just need 51 votes and a new Congress to do it.
It would be hard for the GOP to continue running on a platform of "Washington is broken and we're the only ones that can fix it" if suddenly Washington was less broken and their tactics that actually did so much of the breaking couldn't be done in secret, wouldn't it?
Remember this in two years. Voting is important. As the right digs in we need to raise the price they pay for their arrogance and ignorance.
I hope and wish and wish and hope that the Republicans will cease to exist.
I feel like somebody needs to convince Republicans of the fact that if the filibuster is removed, the liberals can't use it anymore either. Which, if they should fail in facilitating reform, they will be sure to use the filibuster eventually and the Republicans won't like it when they do.
The fact is that the Senate rules can be changed on the first day of any new Congress, which happens every two years.
One of the most important things Reid needs to include in his reforms (mild as they are) is an up-or-down majority vote on Executive branch appointments and most judicial nominations.
It's ridiculous to think that the Executive branch can function when it can't fill the positions in the administrative hierarchy needed to make decisions and carry them out.
Holding the country hostage, while winning demands, that once obtained allows you take the economy hostage. That’s a plan.
Having a minority of equity-stockholders take control of a solid business, with assets, funded liabilities, and popular products, while winning huge loans against the ownership of those assets and funds, that at once enables you to sell those assets and funds. The plan is to drain the costs from the existing structure; from old management, from employees, from future liabilities, from squeezing resource suppliers. Once this done it is critical to sell the once 'prosperous' business to an obscure municipal pension fund that later discovers that the assets and funds no longer exist and the public does not want the debased and more costly product. The rigged bankruptcy laws allow for the lender to claim all the facility assets, for sale, while the employees, their pensions and their health are FREE to be placed in the open market, if any, for less profit.
Thus the accumulated wealth of the healthy and vibrant well-run company with product success and happy employees is transferred and the company chopped up and sold to the highest bidder (future loan customer?), while all the expenses, health insurance, and retirements that would have been paid from the company's wisely saved assets and investments are transferred to the Government for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The existing system, tax code, and its extreme laws favoring equity-stockholders and financial lenders, simply harvest existing healthy corporations, taking cashing out and leaving the Government to flounder under more and more debt.
The hostage takers (Senate Republicans), are willing to take down healthy corporate America, using the government debt as a cudgel to block suitable reforms against corporate raiders, venture capitalists, chop-shop specialists, illicit banker deals, hedge fund managers. This ironically has been placed beyond the reach of public outrage, wrath and control of the voting public, by the Nation's central law, the Constitution.
A Nation hung by the very rope that supports it. The Constitution gives unfettered power to the Senate to make its own rules unencumbered by review of any sort from the other branches of the government. We are currently in the 'funding times', in utter contrast with 'founding times' and most of the past 200 years. The difference is that those old 'founding times' exist in the imaginations of the American Public, where we imagine a loyalty and a trust of public servants, U.S. Senators, that was based upon electing am accomplished and honorable persons, who had everything to give back to a nation who had given them success. Yes boys and girls, U.S. Senators went to serve the people under the Constitution and to represent their states in their positions in the National government. No boys and girls, U.S. Senators were not elected to subsequently become accomplished and wealthy by bargaining their position for the highest bidder to a gigantic, wealthy, and successful, if not monopoly, corporations.
We are told time and time again, that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but few if ever of how that power was obtained. It is not ever granted by divine intervention, power comes to the willing. stroke by stroke closer and closer by those who covet such power. While the Senate comes with 100 members, it not necessary that Senators enter the office with magnanimous or unanimous intentions, in fact that are elected with intentions unknown. The Senate as rogue club needs only a rule that allow the minority to divide the remaining Senate first into halves, and then to side with one part or another in winner take all power play, and like any unruly fraternity to hazed others into submission. The public could see that the minority of members of the Senate can be put in place by States where the influence of corporate monies, knowing full well that the candidate is unqualified by any criteria save the purchased votes of manipulated election. The public could also see that once elected the Senators rise to power is magically except from being a reminder to the preceding corruption.
The result of this too long reminder, is that the Senate is all but run by the jagged edge of minority corruption, the roles of equity-stockholder, hapless management, gullible resistance, and well healed funder, proceeds the buying and the selling of American assets for quick profits, and willingness to trade the entire republic for a currency not all measure in dollars, but power.
The U.S. Senate as grown immune to reform, as it has armed and adjusted itself again new Senators even those with the most wholesale 'founding ideals'. The current U.S. Senate and the next U.S. Senate has grown powerful from its own rules. While the needs for those rules has grown beyond the need for parliamentary order, they have the power to block, the House, the Supreme Court and the Executive and worst of all those rules can block the Senate itself.
It is in the moneyed interest to shut the Senate down, the rules can allow that, if it is in the moneyed interest to have the Senate rule supreme, the rules can allow that. If you think for one moment that in six years that can be changed by the voter, just remember who the Senators are, how they came to elected and how they became qualified by interest, disposition and prior success, and as well how the manipulated the voters into keeping them in office.
Perhaps then you will see that meeting the demands of hostage takers does not stop their lust for power, how that power can grow greater and how much poorer we can be come if it continues, when it continues and after it continues as it will!
Reference: Lincoln's First Inaugural.
FINALLY we've found a "minority" that the GOP cares about!
Yeah. Themselves.
I say make them stand and hold the floor to filibuster. Their prostates would eventually explode and we'd be rid of them once and for all.
The Republicans have no weapon to shut down the Senate if Dems change the rules. If the Republicans start a filibuster, they will be forced to stay on the floor. They are not going to want to do that with every bill that comes up for a vote. These senators have to raise campaign funds and go home. That would be a problem with the first holiday if Dems refuse to adjourn. Republicans (and Dems) would be forced to stay in town. Every bill could be brought up for votes by a simple majority with the same result. Republicans would have to filibuster one bill and keep it going or relent and give up filibusters on a whole host of legislation to leave town.
It's a lot of grand standing ... call their bluff and let them filibuster. We will actually get something done while they throw their tantrum.
Excellent post, but I have one minor point on"Coburn and Cornyn are, of course, referring to the so-called "nuclear option," " No they aren't. The Reid proposal is to use the fact that each new Senate makes its own rules. There is a tradition that the first step is to adopt the old rules which include the requirement of 67 votes to change rules, but the newly sworn in Senate is perfectly free to start from scratch.
In contrast the nuclear option was based on lying. The idea was that after the Senate had adopted rules, the presiding officer could claim that the rules were different from the plain text of the rules and the rules as they had always been implemented in practice. Then a majority could claim to agree with the presiding officer.
The nuclear option is different from the Reid proposal, because it was based on strategic lying. Reid is not claiming that according to existing rules motions to proceed can't be filibustered. If he were to threaten to lie and claim that, he would be emulating the Republican Senators who threatened to use the nuclear option.
There is a difference between honesty and lying. Reid is being honest.
Sorry I'm back. On the simple question of whether the Republicans could obstruct even more than they have already, the answer is yes. The current rules of the Senate are absurdly burdensome requiring, among other things, that bills be read on the floor of the Senate. The absurd rules are waived by unanimous consent. This gives each single Senator the ability to obstruct the Senate. This is how single Senators obstruct the majority with "holds". Senator Coburn, in particular, has frequently withheld his consent for waiving the absurd rules.