It’s not specifically a quorum call, it’s asking for any other business. You have to yield the floor in order to have the president of the senate (or pro temp) call role on the senators.
And, as I said before, even if it were not the case, then what would happen if there was no longer a quorum? The senate would be taken out of session, and your filibuster would be over. It certainly would not force the senators opposing your filibuster to stay or to come back. It would only force the senators supporting your filibuster to stay.
There would be no reason or advantage for such an action.
Now, if anyone could call for a quorum, even while someone else has the floor, that would be more interesting, as it would do what you are saying.
I like the idea that if there are fewer than 40% of the elected senate body present, then that automatically ends the session, then the supporters of the filibuster are forced to stay, while those opposed are not.
In the end I think a filibuster in some form is worthwhile. The senate needs a mechanism for the minority to pushback. I am not saying the minority should have an easy time of it. I think there should be some effort and (figurative) pain involved like sitting in the chamber all night listening to someone read “Nancy Drew” books.
But if an issue is important enough to a minority they should have a means to make it known. Otherwise, whoever has 50+1 can tell the other side to fuck off. I don’t think that is the best governance.
Many people think this is how filibusters still work. I had to educate two twenty-something co-workers this month. There needs to be a campaign to highlight how filibusters really work. Maybe a meme with Jimmy Stewart orating on the left half, and Moscow Mitch sipping Starbucks on the right.
And whether or not he maintains is key to the entire issue. You can bet Schumer will put substantial pressure on him, offer committee chairs, etc to get him to flip.
I personally think that they should have filibuster rooms. If a senator wants to filibuster a bill, they can go into one of those rooms and talk into a camera. Senate business proceeds, they are counted as part of the quorum, but any votes they are marked as present.
I’m not entirely against that. It is the will of the majority that is supposed to make laws, and a minority shouldn’t always get an objection. As we can see, just because the Democrats have currently have a majority doesn’t mean that they are monolithic.
I find it more concerning that whoever has 40+1 can tell the other side to fuck off.
Agreed. That is how my mother believes that filibusters still work. She couldn’t accept that thing had changed since her civics classes in the 60’s.
Eh, maybe. OTOH, McConnel is also probably putting pressure on him to flip to the other side.
First, the senate is FAR from being a good mirror of the populace of the United States. It is distinctly tilted and an un-democratic body as far as it represents the will of the people of the US.
Second, the FFs talked about the violence of faction and the problem of majorities. We really do not want it to be that 51 people can absolutely rule over the other 49.
Don’t get me wrong. A majority is a majority and wins in the end but, as we saw with the last four years, having nearly half the senate side-lined and told to go pound sand is not great either.
So, a filibuster, a painful and hard to do filibuster, is a mechanism to let a minority have some say in governance.
This is a tricky subject, and I don’t have the answer, in fact, I don’t think that there really is a right answer.
However, while it may be a good idea to have the minority have some say, it is never a good idea to be able to dictate from the minority, which is what the current set up does.
Also, any changes in the filibuster need to be encoded in something stronger than senate rules, as only the majority would be able to make changes. Which means that a majority which increases the power of the filibuster only hurts itself while they have the majority, as if the other party gains a majority, they don’t have to abide by them.
As to the answer, I don’t think that the current set-up can address these issues at all. We really need a massive rehaul of our entire govt structure. Fiddling about with the filibuster is like trying to choose what color Band-Aid best staunches a gaping chest wound.
Democrats have one chance, the next two years, to make their case that they are the superior party for governance. If they allow the Republicans to prevent them from doing so, then it may well be the last time Democrats have a majority of any sort for the foreseeable future.
The Republicans have advantages, they have an easier time gaining a majority even while representing a smaller and smaller minority of voters, and they tend to fall in line much easier than Democrats do. If the filibuster stands in the way of something the Republicans want to do, it will be gone, regardless of what the Democrats do now. Your concern of 50+1 ruling over the other side is not without merit, but it is something that will happen one way or the other. All the Democrats do by not doing it first is to make sure that they are the ones with a weakened position.
Now, I do think that the Democrats should hold off on nuking the filibuster for a little bit, let the Republicans filibuster a few bills that are extremely popular among the voters, then make their case and give their reasons as to why the filibuster is being abused to prevent proper governance.
But, as I said, I don’t think that it will be dropped in the next congressional session. There are too many Democrats who would be opposed to it. Which is why Republicans will take power in 2022, nuke the filibuster, and probably keep power for the next decade or more while our country is looted and ruined.
I’m pretty much with WaM on this. I want some way for the minority to block legislation but it has to somehow be limited so it’s not used for every bill. If we have a system where 50+1 let’s you pass anything then we take power from half the country.
I don’t have a good solution so the current filibuster is what we’ve got.
The Do-nothing Senate of the last four years was not a result of the filibuster. It was because the Republicans had nothing they wanted to pass except the bare minimum to keep the govenment running. Since McConnell was majority leader and thus controlled which bills were brought up for consideration, they didn’t have to filibuster anything. Bills they didn’t want passed ended up in his circular file.
I don’t disagree, but it also needs to be fixed so that it is not only used by one side.
Doesn’t do much good to abide by the filibuster if the Republicans nuke it first thing.
If we have a system where 40+1 lets you block anything then we take power from over much more than half the country.
Keep in mind that the Democrats may only have the slimmest majority in the senate ATM, but that represents a significantly larger majority of voters.
Like I said, complete overhaul over the entire govt structure. I’ve got a Constitution all ready to go, complete with triumvirate head of state and pentacameral legislature. Just needs ratifying.
The next two years will be scary. I really hope dems rise to the occasion but I am not hopeful (there are still enough blue dog dems (see: Joe Mancin) to thwart things with margins this slim…it will be difficult for dems to have an aggressive agenda).
True, but the correlation is much less strong in the Senate than it is in the House. If I’m recalling correctly, in postwar midterm elections the President’s party has lost Senate seats about 65% of the time but 90% of the time in the House. Of course, if the D’s pick up seats in the Senate but lose the House, eliminating the filibuster doesn’t do any good – progressive bills will just die in the House instead of on the Senate floor.
There has been nothing normal about the last few years.
We can only hope that this is one more thing that will not be following trends.
And, it’s not just hope, per se, there is some reason to think that may be the case. Republicans may be disillusioned by the acts of Trump supporters, and Democrats may be invigorated by them as well. Young people have traditionally been low to turnout, but that’s had a bit of a turnaround the last few years.
If the Democrats are able to push forward legislation that helps out people, with the pandemic and with the economic difficulties that result not just form it, but have been going on for quite a while, then they will likely be rewarded with continued governance.
If the Democrats allow the Republicans to obstruct any sort of legislation that helps people, and then let the Republicans blame them for it, then we will likely see Republicans take back control over both houses in 2022.
I do think there is a small chance that the filibuster may suffer A death within a few weeks. Nuking the filibuster doesn’t have to happen all at once. When Daschle first nuked the filibuster on nominations, he did so for all nominees except Supreme Court justices. Similar, if McConnell continues to obstruct an organizing the Senate, I could see him having Democratic support to nuke the filibuster just for organizing resolutions. Manchin could probably get behind that, if it gets him his Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairmanship.
That’s may be true, but the rationale behind it – a vote on whether to limit debate – could offer a way to keep it but not give up too much.
The minority should not be able to block majority legislation on a mere vote. The vote is whether to limit debate. If that vote fails, the only thing that should happen is that debate is not limited. The minority gets to continue debating the issue, on topic, until they are done.
I am torn over whether other business should be allowed to continue, and on whether the quorum or a new, 40 senator quorum rule would be good. I think in terms of a genuine good purpose for the filibuster, being able to delay legislation and make the other side hear you out is a good idea. But as soon as they move to reading the phone book, or are otherwise done debating, it should be over. Maybe it should just be changed to allow speaking filibusters of up to a week, after which a simple majority can end it.
At the end of the day, nothing like this would really work. Let’s say that in one term the Senate was allowed to filibuster 5 bills. Then the majority part could just invoke cloture on 5 poison pill bills, the minority would have to either use their filibuster cards or try and call the majority’s bluff. Or the majority could just put 6 different versions of universal healthcare on the table and invoke cloture for each of them in turn.