02 December 2010

There'll Be Some Changes Made

For two years now, the minority party has been able to constrain, curtail, and downright block numerous pieces of legislation in the Senate by using procedural tricks and manipulation of existing conventions like the filibuster. The result has been a shocking and astounding amount of unnecessary governmental gridlock, and the ability to leverage said gridlock to stoke uninformed populism.


In the modern Senate, the cloture of debate is used to end a filibuster; simply charting activity around cloture dramatically demonstrates how often filibusters or the threat of filibusters are used to dictate the Senate's actions.

The passionate Avenging Angel at Daily Kos compiled a fantastic overview of how the filibuster has hamstrung the Senate, including the shocking statistic relayed by Paul Krugman from political scientist Barbara Sinclair that 70% of all major legislation since 2006 has been affected by filibustering.

Now it seems the Democrats are finally endeavoring to reform this abused procedural quirk such that they can actually function. The indefatigable Ezra Klein noted yesterday that Jeff Merkley, the junior Democratic Senator from Oregon, has released a proposal of reforms to the Senate's operating procedures, something that can be taken up at the start of each Congressional convention.

Merkley's proposal is to bring the filibuster back to the originally intended purpose of fostering deliberation on an issue, especially a contentious one. He's offering reforms that would stop the procedural shenanigans that prevent bills reaching the floor for debate, since such debate is a core function of the World's Most Deliberative Body. Instead, the filibuster would be available at the final vote on a bill, such that the robust debate it invokes would center around the full measure at hand.

And should a filibuster be engaged, Merkley's proposal would bring Senators to the floor to actually articulate their concerns, with a mandated number of Senators required to proceed: five for the first 24 hours, 10 for the next, and then 20 to continue. At any point, if there's no one actively debating then regular order is established and votes proceed. As Ezra says:
This is filibuster reform that even the filibuster's supporters can love: It focuses the practice on the tradition of debate and discussion that Senate traditionalists consider to be the institution's indispensable trait."

The fact is that any hope of being able to work with the intransigent obstructionists in the minority party, especially now that they've taken control of the House, will require a reformulation of the rules of the Senate. Otherwise the insanity that will be coming from the House will gum up the Senate as well, and the government will grind to a halt. And that's simply not acceptable.


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There'll Be Some Changes MadeSong by Benton Overstreet (music) and Billy Higgins (lyrics), covered by Dave Brubeck and many, many others.There'll Be Some Changes Made - The Essential Dave Brubeck