This topic always makes me laugh
When the Republicans had control, Filibuster was somehow a bad thing, and the Democrats used it effectively.
Now the Democrats have control, and the Filibuster they used effectively, is somehow unfair now, because they realize, the Republicans can use it effectively, and have in the past
I say keep the filibuster…
I say keep the filibuster too, but again, I say, if you’re gonna fillibuster, you better stretch out your lips so they don’t cramp up while you’re reading the phone book for 12 hours.
The alternatives sugested to the filibuster might be workable, and the complete lack of a filibuster might be unpleasant, but that’s a bit besde the point – if a reasonable compromise with the GOP were possible, it would have been reached already. But it isn’t, because the GOP caucus in Congress is not currently a reasonable group. So you have to go outside the box. I hope they win, but they won’t. The courts will invoke the political question doctrine and refuse to rule on Congressional rules.
Were they to rule (in an unbiased fashion), you’d have to expect them to rule for the plaintiffs. The Constitution doesn’t make mention of what constitutes a passing vote because the default rule for Parliamentary bodies, in England and in the colonies, was well understood as a simple majority. The Founders could have specified a different rule, of course. But in the absence thereof, the default stands. The plaintiffs at issue have standing because, as Members of the House, their ability to exercise their legislative powers is cramped by the Senate’s embrace of this extraconstitutional rule.
As for Bricker’s point that the good guys will fear the lack of the filibuster when the winds change, I can’t disagree. But over the history of the Republic, the filibuster has been used (or threatened) overwhelmingly in order to prevent progressive legislation to be passed rather than the other. Now that the filibuster has – for the first time – created a supermajority requirement in the Senate to even pass routine legislation, that will be even more often the case. As I said above, I’d prefer a negotiated settlement. But you can’t play chicken with a crazy person.
–Cliffy
I must comment – this is simply innacurate. If you look at the last several years, the filibuster has been invoked steadily more and more often, and with a couple exceptions, always by the GOP. The GOP raises the stakes, and then the Dems adjust to the new paradigm. That has been the recent history of procedural roadblocks to legislative function in general. Not exclusively, but overwhelmingly, the GOP has invoked process in novel ways to stymie the popular will, and then the Democrats use that process the same way once the seal is broken. It is rarely (not never) the case that the Dems have been the first to run a game.
–Cliffy
Really, youre QQing that GOP did it more? Laughable. The, “Theyre more evil then we are rebuttal” is fail.
Both parties have used it, will use it, and if the Reps had control, you can bet these 4 wouldnt be making this claim until Dems had control. If Reps get control, I would wager they would attempt to do the same.
While there is certainly an element of partisanship in his opinion I think the issue is the procedural filibuster has made the senate frozen to the point of serious dysfunction. The filibuster has gone from a rare thing to (recently) used far too often to (currently) the status quo requiring a supermajority for nearly anything to pass.
As grist for the mill (actually asking here) what if the senate passed rules requiring a unanimous vote for everything and, being unable to ever get anything passed, effectively shut down the government.
Would there be no recourse in the courts for this? Would the SCOTUS merely shrug and say, “They can make whatever rules they want, not for us to gainsay them.”?
If the answer is that is exactly what the courts would do then obviously there is no case here. If the answer is the courts would step in then there is at least wiggle room for this case to proceed.
FTR: My personal wish is to keep the filibuster as it was in the “old” days. Make someone stand there and talk non-stop, require a quorum and see who can outlast who. Back when this was the case filibusters were rare and done only when one side REALLY cared about a particular issue.
I think the procedural filibuster is crap.
Of course senators like the procedural filibuster. None of them wants to be forced to fill a quorum for days on end or have to stand and read the phone book non-stop. Much better to go to a fundraiser for their campaign, have some good food and drinks and go home to a soft bed.
First of all, “QQing?” I have no clue what that means, and you may find that most members here prefer standard English and punctuation.
But it is simply a fact that filibusters have been increasingly common. Cite, cite, cite.
I don’t think it is fair to point fingers at who is to blame: one party filibusters a lot of things, then control switches; the other party filibusters even more things; control switches again and there’s even more filibusters, etc. But that does not mean that Republicans are not now currently using the filibuster more than in the past.
Actually he is correct.
Certainly Dems use it but each significant bump up in the past 30 years has been by republicans. Dems then kinda keep it at that level till the next republican bump.
Look at a chart of it: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/cloture-stats-chart2.jpg
In 1982 republicans gain control and dems keep the level about even with the previous decade.
In 1988 dems take control and after a few years reps spike the number to record levels.
In 1996 reps gain control and levels stay roughly even with the record the reps got.
In 2008 dems gain control and the reps substantially raise the number again.
EDIT:
Crying.
Check my memory here… Didn’t the Congress put together a “line item veto” that worked on the basis of House and Senate rules? And didn’t the Supreme Court tell them no?
To my mind, the plan (if I recall it at all correctly) was perfectly constitutional: it would simply have divided up spending bills into hundreds of smaller bills, which the President could have vetoed (or signed) individually. A de facto line item veto. But (IIRC) the court said that it altered the balance and division of powers and could not be permitted.
Am I even close?
I’m not sure if you’re actually aware of this… but quite a large percentage of bills passed by the Senate are passed by a process known as Unanimous Consent, which requires all 100 Senators to informally agree (but not vote) to pass a bill. If one senator objects, the bill does not get passed until it is scheduled for debate and perhaps a filibuster.
To give you a sense of how common this process is, there have been 106 laws approved in this session of Congress. Just a quick browsing of the record seems to indicate that the substantial majority of those laws were passed with the Senate unanimously agreeing to them – my guess would be something like 75% of them were passed this way. I have no idea how to tell how many bills did not reach votes in the Senate because one senator objected to them, but it has got to be substantial.
So, can a House member seek relief from the courts because one senator foiled a process by which a bill may be passed with no debate? Absolutely not. The idea that other branches could make presumptions about the legislative process and dictate whether procedures like that are acceptable makes about as much sense as a solitary congressman getting the authority to decide who should be made a general or not: it’s a stark and clear invasion of the powers of a separate branch of government.
I agree.
Unanimous Consent is not the same as needing unanimous votes to pass a bill. They are just greasing the wheels of the process for stuff that everyone can easily agree on (e.g. declare that kittens are cute). If someone objects then the Kittens Are Cute bill rumbles through the normal process and, hopefully, gets an up or down vote which does not require unanimity to pass.
I think the difference here is the constitution stipulates that each house of congress may make up their own rules.
Granting the president a line-item veto is not covered in that.
You’re Wrong.
Parliamentary Law never had every vote be a majority to pass. As I explained above the motion to stop debate requires a 2/3 vote, more than required by the Senate.
Oh and the quorum for the House of Lords is 3 for debate and 30 for voting out of 753 members and in the Commons it is 40 out of 650. Are you suggesting that we should eliminate a quorum as being a majority in our Houses because of default rules?
Perhaps but our Founding Fathers contemplated requiring a supermajority and rejected it.
Here is Alexander Hamilton’s take on it in the the Federalist #22:
And James Madison in Federalist #58:
Better we should get rid of the Senate entirely.
The filibuster is the stupidest idea in government. Even when properly applied, it reduces debate on issues of national importance to the level of a child holding his breath till he turns blue.
I don’t know whether or not this lawsuit has any grounds, but weeding that idiocy out of the process of running our nation can only be a good thing, no matter which party is in charge.
From Ezra Klein’s blog post linked above:
“Today, with the filibuster, 21 of the 50 states, representing 11 percent of the population, can muster the 41 votes to stop a majority in the Senate.”
This is an interesting stat that underlies the problem.
I can be banned for message board abbreviations?
Again, the youre more evil then us rebuttal doesnt fly. Both sides have used it. Both sides will continue to use it. Both sides will continue to stop its use when they have the control.
Repeating what was said earlier doesnt change things. Reps and Dems will abuse tools like this to fight each other ad nausea.
Damn we need a 3rd party
Now, maybe I’m confused, but it seems to me you can’t get rid of the filibuster, because in parliamentary rules there is no “filibuster.” The term - originally referring to a military expedition - was coined to refer to extending debate through existing parliamentary rules.
“Getting rid of the filibuster” basically translates as trashing parliamentary rules.
On the other hand, if they’re talking about getting rid of the retardedly codified procedural filibuster, a pussy move if there ever was one, I’m behind them 100%. It’s a short-cut to avoid having to do real work in a debate.
I’m reminded of an old joke.
(dangerously off-topic and horrible joke spoilered for your convenience)
A guy goes to prison. His first night in, he’s talking to his cell-mate, asking if he knew any jokes to cheer him up.
Cell-mate says, “sure, check it out,” he hollers out into the cell-block, “24!”
The cell-block erupts in laughter.
A few seconds later, some other inmate yells out, “73!”
The cell-block erupts into laughter again.
The new guy is confused. He asks his cell-mate what the hell is going on.
The guy says, “well you see, most of us have been in here so long, we’ve heard all the same jokes a million times. So to save time, we numbered them. Hey, why don’t you give it a try.”
New guy says, “sure, why not,” he leans toward the bars and hollers out, “18!”
Nothing. Stony silence from the cell-block. He looks at his cell-mate, “what gives?”
Cell-mate says, “I don’t know; must be the way you tell it.”
As a practical matter, there isn’t a substantial difference between one senator not going along with a unanimous consent request and a senator staging a filibuster. For the most part, it is exactly the same thing: a senator objects to passing the Kittens Are Cute Bill. The Majority Leader then has to get cloture on the motion to bring up the bill for debate. If that succeeds, the Majority Leader then needs to get cloture on ending debate on the bill. See Tomnibus bills, in which Senator Tom Coburn objects to passing dozens of non-controversial bills.
If one expects that the courts ought to step in and find that it is unconstitutional that a bill with 59 senators in support cannot pass, then it would seem to me that it would be even more objectionable for the Senate to rely on a process for passing most laws that requires the support of all 100 senators.
However, I don’t see it as the role of the courts to explain why cloture is bad and unanimous consent is okay. It isn’t any of their business.
