Filibusterbuster

Our founders included the filibuster in the Constitution for good reason: Democracy, they agreed, in which government responds to and reflects the will of the people, depends on the ability of a minority of senators, representing a minority of the population, to block legislation; especially bills supported by a majority of voters. Seventy-six-percent, in the case of the American Rescue Plan. Those wise men knew what they were doing. 

Omigosh. So sorry. Doggone spell-check. The founders did no such thing. In fact, they couldn’t imagine requiring a sixty-percent majority to pass legislation. This we know because the singular role they created for the Vice President was to cast the decisive vote in the case of a Senate tie. By simple majority, is what they considered the logical way to ratify legislation. Supermajorities were for impeachments and overriding vetoes.

Nor, when the filibuster appeared, like a carbuncle, could a forty-percent minority simply say, “Don’t do that or we’ll grind things to a halt,” and not actually have to do it. Back then, like Jimmy Stewart’s Mister Smith, they had to hold the floor continuously.

Because there were no rules limiting debate, when persuasion wouldn’t work, legislation could be suffocated by filibuster. Eventually, as pressing issues facing the country grew in number, so did demands for ways to force an end to debate. Cloture, it’s called.

That came about in 1917, when cloture was allowed if agreed to by two-thirds of the senators. Over the following forty years, it was invoked only five times. Inevitably, filibusters (from “filibusteros,” Spanish for pirates) became increasingly frequent, especially to block civil rights legislation, including laws against lynching.

It wasn’t until 1964 that a filibuster was overcome to get the Civil Rights Act approved. In 1975, the required amount of senators voting for cloture was reduced to three-fifths. Now, insidiously, that super-majority has become the default to pass all legislation except, once per fiscal year and subject to many qualifications, for “budget reconciliation.” For Mitch McConnell, filibuster is the weapon of choice. So much for the will of the people. 

“Gee whiz,” weep the Mitch-like. “Without the filibuster, the majority would have all the power. There’d be no effort at bipartisanship.” They’re right, of course. That’s why, if the Mariners are behind when the game ends, they threaten to stay on the field until the runs they need are added to the score. It’s only fair.

If anyone knows about bipartisanship, it’s Mitch. Ask the Republican leaders he gathered, literally on President Obama’s first inauguration day, agreeing to block whatever he proposed, sight unseen. Ask Mr. Justice Gorsuch. Ask President Obama, too, who included Republican demands in the Affordable Care Act and the Recovery Act, disappointing liberals, thinking (silly man) it’d garner Republican votes.

Having received much of what they wanted, they still voted no, every single one of them. Which they’re now doing to President Biden. Republicans dumped bipartisanship decades ago. Crocodile tears.

Just you wait, warns Mitch. If Democrats end the filibuster, it’ll become a “scorched earth” Senate when Republicans regain control. Really? He scorched the earth during every Democratic presidency. When that recently-defeated guy was “president,” he did it by spiking over 400 bills the majority House Democrats sent over. He did it with every Federal judge foisted by the Federalist Society, no matter how unqualified.

President Joe Biden said he prefers bipartisanship, but no Republicans voted for his plans. Therefore, he was lying. Funny thing, though, about that seventy-six-percent approval of his rescue legislation: it’s more than twenty-percent higher than his winning election margin. Which means it appeals to many Republicans; just, unsurprisingly, not the impactions in Congress. It’s only by Foxian definition that that’s not bipartisan. Joe Biden aims to be a president for all Americans, not just the far right-wing. That was the recently-soundly-defeated guy.

And how’s this for bipartisanship: after passage, several voting-no Republicans are touting the Rescue Act to their constituents as if they deserve credit. The hypocrisy is stupefying.

After their Georgia defeats, it was re-confirmed to Republicans that fair elections are their enemy. Therefore, across America, they’re busy creating legislation designed specifically to hinder voting by Democrats. If they’re able to filibuster the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which, because Democrats believe in democracy, would make voting equally accessible to all citizens and each vote given equal weight, America would become a minority-rule plutocracy. Undeniably, that’s their goal.

As used by Mitch McConnell, the filibuster has become incompatible with democracy. It needs to go. Or return to what Jimmy Stewart did, all those years ago. 

Busting The Busted Buster

I share Rachel's concern, as should we all. To require sixty-percent majority for all important legislation is to turn democracy on its head. It's to subvert and pervert the Constitution, and to make governance virtually impossible. It's to paralyze us while our competitors around the world are sprinting. It's to give to the most hidebound, the most ideological, the least open to new ideas, the power to stop everything. And it's to institutionalize the rankest of hypocrisy, as those whose mantra just political moments ago was "Up or down vote, up or down vote, up or down vote" do the opposite of everything they claimed was important. For the people.

This is much more than the final nail, for that has already been driven in. This is lowering the coffin into the ground, covering it with dirt, and walking away, leaving the grave unmarked and without a map back.

But soft! Our nation's foremost Constitutional scholar, Dan Quayle, has weighed in; he's said the founding fathers didn't have in mind the idea that things could pass with a majority of votes. (Funny they didn't say so or put it in, y'know, writing.) Not 51 votes in the House, not 51 votes in the Senate, he potatoed. He was half right, though.

For something as undeniably critical as this, I hate to end on a facetious note. So let's hear from Tom Harkin, who has that thing so hated by the RWS™: knowledge. And credibility. Who began calling for change when he was in the minority, like the current abusers (but unlike them in consistency and integrity and commitment to the common good):

... I'm going to reintroduce that again in January. And people are going to say I only worry about this because I'm in the majority. But I come with clean hands! I started when I was in the minority!

The idea is to give some time for extended debate but eventually allow a majority to work its will. I do believe there's some reason to have extended debate. If a group of senators filibusters a bill, you want to take their worries seriously. Make sure you're not missing something. My proposal will do that. It says that on the first vote, you need 60. Then you have to wait two days, and on the third day, you need 57 votes. And then you need to wait two days, and on the third day, it's 54 votes. And then you'd wait another two days, and on the third day, it would be 51 votes.

Makes sense to me. And if not, then let's get back to this. (Well, in that clip it's the good guy who's filibustering, an entirely foreign concept, these days.) Let's make the bastards talk round the clock, till they're too hoarse to be heard. Let's let the public watch the spectacle and know who is really doing what. And to whom.

Rhetorical Question

Or maybe I should make it some sort of office-pool equivalent:

When Obama's Supreme Court nomination goes forward, how many of the Republicans who demanded "up or down vote" for Bush's nominees will, this time around, opt for filibuster?

1. Every damn one of them.
2. Three quarters of them.
3. Over half.
4. Less than half.
5. None. They're people of high principle.
   

There was a time, when the Democrats were in the minority in the Senate, when Bush was president, that Republicans screamed bloody murder every time the Ds threatened filibuster. Now that the tables are turned, the Rs have gone to it more often than at any time in history.

So mine is choice #2, but #1 wouldn't surprise me even a little.


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Calling Jimmy

Think the Senate Republicans might filibuster the stimulus bill? A part of me hopes they do; assuming, were it so, that the Democrats would have the guts to make them actually do the thing. Bring in the cots, the Jimmy Stewart impressions, and carry on day and night, round the clock. Let them read the phone book. Let the data roll daily, about layoffs, economy shrinkage, let the President fire up a little of his patented rhetoric and call them out.

I can only assume the reason the dangerously daunted Dems have let bill after bill fail over the mere threat of filibuster is that they figure sooner or later they'll be in the minority again and would have to go to the mattresses themselves.

Pussies.

Because this is real. This is fly or fail for the economy. If they can't find a way far enough to the middle, and if the Republicans won't go past -- or, as it turns out, anywhere near -- the middle (given the recent failures of everything of which they're demanding more), then let it rip. See who the voters side with, those who put forth a bill or those who reject it.

Fair is fair. Elections have consequences. Country first. That sort of thing.

[As to fixing the stimulus package: Here's an opinion piece by a conservative (but Harvard!) economist that makes a lot of sense to me, especially his comments about what sort of tax breaks might actually work. He seems more enamored of defense spending than I am, but much of it rings true. I wonder if our esteemed Senators read it.]

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Get The Picture?

I may not know much, but I know this: the only reason Republicans blocked the auto bailout is that they want to bust the unions. In particular, the UAW. For days the meme has been the outrageous wages of workers, repeated by every right wing talking head. And now they had their chance to act. (For the record, I'm not a knee-jerk supporter of all unions all the time: I might even write about that at another time...)

Having approved 700 billion for Wall Street, with virtually no restrictions at all, they balked at a tiny fraction thereof going to auto makers, with all sorts of strings. Having spent all the money on which they could get their hands for the first six years of Bush, happily running us into staggering debt (and, let us not forget, happily blocking all legislation to enforce higher CAFE standards, which might have saved the industry), it can't be about a trifling handful of billions. It's politics, pure and simple. Damn the consequences, damn the country, damn everyone's life savings, damn their futures. Mitch McConnell and his cronies see a chance to bust up the UAW, and take it come hell or high water. (We've seen the high water. Howdy, hell.)

What a pathetic bunch of unctuous, self-righteous and self-serving assholes. As long as idiots such as these keep getting elected by their thoughtless constituents, there'll be no such thing as bipartisanship. Those guys are not about solutions.

Not in the slightest.

We're screwed.

[Let it also be said: at some point the sponge-spined Democrats need to force the Republicans actually to stand there and filibuster, rather than let a small number of zealots kibosh legislation, one after the other. Let Americans see the spectacle; let them watch long enough to figure out what's going on. Why not? Because they're afraid of having the tables turned when they're back in the minority? Screw it. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.]

[Update: I'm not alone.]

[Even more.]

[More still, famouser and better-looking.]

[And now, a day later, the LA Times chimes in. I'm starting to think I'm right.]

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