Would you apply the same logic to elections? I mean, if a candidate is obviously the right person for the job, they would have no problem securing 60% of the vote.
For those of us from democracies where filibusters are not in the political armory and a simple majority is a majority, the notion that without 60% you don’t have an effective mandate is a touch bizzarre. Add in the moderating effect of staggered terms and it seems that veto/gridlock is the default legislative position.
How many presidents won 60% of the popular vote?
I believe the list is limited to:
1920 Warren G. Harding 60.3%
1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt 60.8%
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson 61.1%
1972 Richard Nixon 60.7%
But don’t mind me, none of my beeswax.
For those voicing your support for the filibuster: Perhaps y’all should pass a Constitutional amendment (a process which I’m sure you’re happy to know requires super-majorities of Congress and of the states) declaring that all bills (or if you prefer, all bills except for budget bills) must pass the Senate by a three-fifths majority in order to become law.
Because I’m not seeing any such rule in the Constitution as written; to the contrary, every case where a super-majority is required is carefully spelled out in the text (Constitutional amendments, expulsion of members of Congress, overriding of Presidential vetoes, Senate approval of treaties and convictions of persons impeached). The Constitution also gives the Vice President the power to break ties in the Senate, which is a fairly useless power to have if bills actually require a 60% super-majority to pass (not that it hasn’t been suggested before that the Vice Presidency is a fairly useless office).
^^This.
I agree with some others a filibuster is a good thing to have. In the past, at least, it would be used when it was actually a really big deal to one party or the other to stop something they really found offensive.
Thing is today a filibuster is done on just about anything, big deal or not. Merely state your intent to filibuster and it is done.
I would like it to go back to the way it used to be. If someone filibusters they need to stand on the floor of the Senate and read the Washington phone book (or Vogon poetry or whatever they want) ad nauseum till the filibuster is resolved. Force a quorum so a majority of senators need to be present at all times for this. They get to sleep in the chamber till it is done.
Of course the lazy bastards would rather be at parties so have arranged the filibuster to not be so onerus to them.
Tough!
If it is a BIG DEAL to them they will go to this effort. Further, when they do this, they stop all other business of the Senate. The nation becomes focused on what is happening and pressure mounts on one side or the other to get the issue resolved. No way they will bother with the little things though because they really would rather be at fundraisers.
THAT is a filibuster I can get behind.
This default supermajority to do anything if even one person states an intent to filibuster is bullshit. Far too much power to hand to an individual. If the above were the way of it the person filibustering would need to have the support of others else they would pass out on the Senate floor eventually and business would continue.
I’m for making the filibuster more difficult to implement… it has it’s place but shouldn’t be used to the extent that it is.
My guess is that most filibustering the next two years will be by the Democrats. The house will move something that will have the support of the Republican senators plus Nelson, Manchin, Webb and a couple others.
The Dems will block it … and we’ll see who complains then… and conversely, who does’t complain.
There’s ought, and there’s is. I don’t think anyone can observe government over the past 20 years and say that your principle is true in practice.
And, of course, reducing the size of government in any kind of orderly way also requires the passage of legislation.
Generally speaking, though there are exceptions, the majority party does not filibuster. If they want to block something, they simply vote nay.
Are you referring to the Republican majority in the House of Reps? The House has time limits on debate, and does not permit filibusters.
For my $.09, I’d like to see the Senate leadership (of BOTH parties, mind you) grow balls – first one side to call the “filibuster” bluff and insist on an actual filibuster instead of caving at the first hint of one, then the other side to go ahead and do just that.
That’s the beauty of having the majority…the Senate Majority Leader doesn’t need to bring any bill s/he doesn’t want to to the floor. Something that passed the House but is odious enough to make the Senate Democrats cringe won’t be seen in the Senate chambers.
Yeah but none of them want to do that. If one side forces the other to stand on the floor reading for hours on end the other side will do it right back when they are in power.
That and a filibuster usually demands a quorum so even your side has to sit and listen to the phone book being read.
No one wants to do that. They want to go to a nice dinner, have some good wine, talk someone into donating to their campaign, see their mistress and get a good night’s sleep.
I agree it would be nice to go back to it. I just think it will not happen as it is in no one’s interest to do it. Even if they care about the issue at hand they care more about their own comfort.
Note that I accuse all sides of doing this. It is not a partisan thing.
Traditionally I would have agreed with this, but I don’t buy it any more. First because the definition of “really offensive” now just means “proposed by the other party.”
Secondly, because the Senate is just one of four players. If they were the only deliberative body the filibuster might mean something. Having the ability to stall debate until a recess would be profound. It would give time to bring the issue to light so that the electorate could voice their concerns. It could even push the issue past a congressional session and fall into an election cycle.
But in reality, what ever they are blocking also has to go to the house, and also has to go to the President, and also has to stand up to the Supreme Court.
If we apply the “really offensive” test, absent the filibuster a law might get passed. But less than two years later there will be an election and an opportunity to replace both levels of congress and the white house and thus a chance to repeal the law–without the threat of filibuster. The only way the test fails is if the electorate wants the law.
The problem is not with the filibuster, but the fact that the filibuster is too easy. Make the Senator(s) actually hold the floor and nothing else gets done a la Mr. Smith. The filibuster should be a situation that is so dire that Congress literally comes to a halt until the stalemate ends. UHC may have been one of these, but over the last 20 years would there have any other bill that was so contraversial that the opposing party would have had an oldtime filibuster?
On a hijack, what if we returned to the Senator being appointed by the state again. Would that change the idea that 60% is an acceptable threashhold?
My sentiments exactly. And by “too easy”, I mean “lacking (political) visibility”.
It’s not clear to me how removing Senatorial election from the people would affect anything in this context. Do you have a theory why it would?
Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and someone else whose name escapes me essentially filibustered the health reform bill. They didn’t agree to vote for cloture. That’s what’s so hilariously misleading about saying that the Democrats had a “filibuster-proof majority”. Those three could have voted for cloture then voted Nay for the bill.
Except the filibuster/cloture rules in the Senate doesn’t protect small government; it protects status quo. The status quo in the US right now is a large federal government that is running enormous deficits, with taxes being cut and spending increasing. The filibuster/cloture rules protect that status quo and make it very difficult to change it, even when the long-term financial projections are dire, and even when there might be a simple majority in the Senate that is willing to direct it.
So what you’re saying, Oak, is that you support the filibuster rule, even though it makes it very difficult for there to be any significant contraction of the federal government. Isn’t that right?
Plus, you do know how you get that 60 % support in the Senate, right? By horse-trading. Which means that the way you get your colleagues to support your bright idea may mean that you have to agree to someone else’s bright idea that actually contradicts yours. So, tax cuts plus spending hikes will get things through the Senate…
Why should a filibuster be more onerous on the majority than on the minority? The majority needs to maintain an actual majority of Senators while the minority only needs one or 2 Senators to keep up their side. This is a big part of why an actual filibuster is so rare. Senators feel they have better things to do than sit and listen to someone drone on after they have already made up their minds. And why not? All it provides is political theater. Sometimes useful, to be sure, but rarely and we have seen the result in the lack of filibusters.
If we were to retain the filibuster a better system would be to put the burden on the minority. Forbid quorum calls after cloture has been attempted and restrict debate to pertinent discussion of the question at hand. No reading the phonebook. No repeating the same talking points over and over. Instead force the minority to work to continue to justify holding off on a vote. That change plus a rule restricting the filibuster to a single session of Congress (one of the three regular sessions every term) would make it acceptable to me. It would prolong debate through a recess where Senators could presumably consult their constituents but would only permanently derail legislation that was brought up in the third session.
Huh?
Not sure I am following you.
Almost always it will be the minority doing the filibuster.
I honestly do not know how a quorum must be maintained. If the Republicans are in a minority can they say they are going to bed and the Dems have to meet the quorum? Somehow I doubt that but again I am not sure how quorum is enforced.
And then there’s the significance of factoring in the populations that are represented by the Senators. The top 30 states, with 60 Senators, have 86.19 % of the population of the United States. (Based on wiki’s list of state populations.)
The other 20 states, with 40 Senators, have 13.81 % of the population.
So, Senators representing 14% of the nation’s population have the potential to block legislation in the Senate, due to the filibuster/cloture rules.
Even taking federalism concerns into account, is that a justifiable result in a democratic system? The filibuster/cloture rules greatly magnify the influence of the small states, arguably beyond the situation envisaged by the drafters, since the super-majority required to invoke cloture is not set out in the Constitution.
This is the one change I would make to the filibuster rule. that a quorum being present, you only need a 3/5 vote of those present - not “duly chosen and sworn”.
This. I not only believe the filibuster MUST be abolished, I believe the Senate as well SHOULD be. Better to make lawmaking abusively easy–yes, I said abusively–so that changing course through repeal is also easy.
Yes, that means my environmentalist progressive oxen will be gored sometimes. Better than the present mess, where it takes 30 years to get anywhere. A country can’t respond to everything on that timetable.