Even allowing for the Senator from MA and the more blue dog Dems, there should still be 51 or more Senators who would vote for the House version of the HCR bill. All it would take is the fortitude to wait out a filibuster by the Republicans. To the best of my knowledge, the only filibuster the Democrats have allowed to start since 2006 only lasted one night before they pulled the bill. What would it take for them to actual go to the mattresses and force the Republicans to keep talking until they give up? If they will never do if for HCR, what would the do it for?
Here is the Wikipedia article on the practice in the U.S. Here is the Senate’s own page on the subject. And here is an article on some of the frustrations with how the two parties use the practice.
What I am really talking about is the fact that currently Congress allows pain free filibusters which basically mean that they won’t even bring the bill to the floor unless they are sure of at least 60 votes. From the Wiki link:
So it is up to Harry Reid to force the opposition to go through the pain of actually talking non stop for days at a time (record: 57 days for the Civil Rights Act) or just let them have their way pain free.
[off topic]“going to the mattresses” is a quote from The Godfather. It refers to when the mobs go to war, they pull all the soldiers into the Corleone compound and have them sleeping on mattresses all over the house. Cite.
[/off topic]
Senate rules have, since early in the 19th century, been interpreted to allow for infinite debate.
Beginning sometime in mid-19th century, some who wanted to block a bill would ‘debate’ as long as they could hold out.
‘Filibuster’ was a term initially applied to persons who engaged in private military actions overseas, such as William Walker. But the term got applied to Senators who were hijacking the proceedings of the Senate in this manner.
Somewhere around the Wilson presidency, IIRC, a Senate rule was passed to enable a 2/3 majority of the Senate to shut up such talkers via a cloture motion, bringing debate to an end whether the talkers wanted it or not.
In the 1970s, the 2/3 was reduced to 3/5.
Throughout all this, filibusters were very rare compared to today.
Up until the 1980s, a filibuster took precedence: while one was proceeding, no other business could be conducted on the Senate floor. Sen. Robert Byrd then instituted a rule that allowed for filibustered bill to essentially be set to one side while other matters proceeded on the Senate floor. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but paradoxically made filibustering easier, since one could do so to derail a particular bill, rather than the entire business of the Senate.
By 1993, the GOP notices this, and turns the filibuster into a fairly routine supermajority requirement during the first Clinton Congress. Doing so effectively keeps the Dems from accomplishing much. Voters, unaware of the details, just know that the Dems have the White House and big majorities in Congress, but still aren’t doing shit. Result: the GOP wins big in November 1994.
The Dems, in the minority from 1995-2006, use the filibuster far more frequently than in the pre-1993 era, but their use of it is still basically selective.
The Dems win back Congress in 2006, and in 2007, the GOP routinizes the use of the filibuster as a 60-vote supermajority requirement for everything.
I’ve obviously got a bias here, but that’s pretty much it AFAIAC.
And that wasn’t even a filibuster - the Dems hadn’t yet tried to invoke cloture, so the GOP hadn’t blocked it yet.
Breaking a filibuster would be difficult. To sustain a filibuster, the minority just needs a couple of Senators who can take turns talking: while one talks, the other can catch his breath, go to the john, grab something to eat or drink, etc.
But to break a filibuster by exhaustion, the majority needs 50 or more Senators in place for the whole time, because the filibusterers can demand a quorum call at any time. And if a quorum is called, and less than 50 Senators are present, then no Senate business - no votes on bills, no procedural votes, no motions, not even debate - can take place. Everyone, including the filibusterers, gets to go home until the Senate reconvenes.
That means the fifty ALL have to outlast the two. And of course, if the two show signs of faltering, the minority can bring in another two Senators, and let the original two leave the floor.
So it’s essentially impossible for a filibuster to be broken that way, as long as the minority regards it as important to block the bill.
So it’s 60 votes, or bust, when it comes to breaking a filibuster.
That is a pretty good summary. The only thing you left out is when the Democrats were considering filibustering some nominations under Bush, the Republicans threatened the so called “nuclear option” of having the VP disallow filibusters on nominations. Of course this was in 2005 when some Republicans were talking about a permanent majority.
RTFirefly:
It has worked in the past, although it takes a long time. 57 days was the longest. It also takes the political will to go through with it. If the Democrats would literally go to the mattresses (they used to bring in cots an sleep just outside the chamber so they could go inside whenever a quorum was called) the Republicans would have to keep at it night and day until one or the other side gave up.
But will they do so ? I agree with the OP that if they don’t do it for this, they it won’t happen. And in that case you might as well say ALL legislation requires a super majority to get passed, and good luck getting any actual problems solved by government.
The problems is the Republicans use the filibuster so much more than the Democrats. So it appears that we have two choices: Republican agenda, or no agenda.
What I don’t understand is the political calculation. If the Republicans can block the Democrats, Democrats are going to lose seats. How can pushing through the legislature your supporters want and you detractors hate be any worse for them come November. HCR has been set up to be a do or die issue. So why won’t they do? What would it take to get them to play hard ball?
Political calculation: The Repubs put a de facto filibuster on everything in the Senate. Nothing gets done. Then in November, the Republican candidates campaign against “Washington” because “Washington” can’t get anything done. And “Washington” is controlled by the Democrats, hence, it’s the Democrats’ fault nothing is getting done.
My bet is people are stupid enough to fall for it, and it will work.
Another option would to be to put up ‘good’ legislation that can gain widespread support of the people. Make the Republicans publicly fight it. Then when elections come around and nothing is still getting done the people can vote out the people that are actively stopping the good legislation from taking place. Thus gain the super majority they need.
Unfortunately the democrats start at the point of compromise and let their work get torn down even further, so they have no ‘good’ bills that can gain widespread popular support.
IMO the Democrating party as it stands now can not break a filibuster. They are an un-unified party fighting a unified one.
Which is why I think forcing a real filibuster is the way to go. Even if the republicans can keep it up until the November elections, it would be hard to blame the Dems for not getting anything done when the Reps are out there reciting poetry 24x7 to stop them.
The problem is that real legislation is complicated. An example mentioned on NPR’s Talk of the Nation was from the health bill. Everyone agrees that regulation that prevents insurers from denying coverage due to preexisting conditions would be a good thing. But if you have that you need a mandate to keep people from only getting insurance once they need it. Then you need subsidies for those that can’t afford it. Now, you need to fund it. Do you cut spending somewhere (such as medicare benefits) or raise taxes? So you can’t have the thing everybody thinks is good without three things that many people object to.
Thanks. Yeah, I did leave the 2005 ‘nuclear option’ bit out, because no permanent change occurred. (The Dems temporarily lost their ability to filibuster judicial appointments, and got nothing in return, but that ceased at the end of that Congress.)
I’m not an expert on that particular bit of filibuster lore, but my understanding is that, back then, neither party was supporting the filibuster, and since the Senate could do no other business while the filibuster continued, there was pressure from both parties on the filibusterers.
While it’s true that the majority party today could force the bill being filibustered to remain on the floor, the fact is that the current minority party is 100% in support of the filibuster, and would divide its members into teams, each taking shifts to talk talk talk through the days and nights. With 41 Senators in the minority, and only 2 needed on the floor at any one time, the load on any individual Senator would be pretty small. But 50 of the 59 majority Senators would have to be available for quorum calls at all times, and one of them is 92 years old. I’d bet on the majority throwing in the towel well before the minority felt particularly imposed on.
Not to mention, there are multiple filibuster points for each bill. You can filibuster the motion to proceed, which brings it to the floor in the first place, for instance. I think that may be the only additional one, if no amendments are necessary - but if they are, they can all be filibustered.
But still, after you break the first filibuster, you’ve got to start right over with the second one. And that’s just one bill.
The problem is that by allowing all the procedure filibusters, the Democrats have conceded their majority. They can get nothing done and the voters don’t really notice who is stopping them. There has to be something that would make them actually make the Republicans work to stop the system under the cameras of CSPAN instead of just basically giving them veto power.
It would definitely work if they had the balls to do it, but the Democrats won’t do it.
They are spineless cowards, who lack the courage of their convictions (assuming that most of them have any convictions beyond pleasing their corporate masters).
I want to be careful here, because criticising other peoples governments never ends well here.
Is there any good argument this to occur other than “the rules kinda allow it”? It seems farcical to allow a very small number of individuals to derail the democratic process in this way and impede a majority opinion.
The SEIU is allied with the government itself. As are the Teacher’s Unions. At the last Democratic convention, the largest block of people in attendance were Teacher’s Union representatives.
This is not a small issue. The public employees unions are running California into the ground and looting the treasury for their own ends. They have enormous influence in government and have the power to destroy pretty much any politician who crosses them. Yet I don’t hear much clamoring for rules preventing them from interfering in elections.