President Obama wants to do away with the filibuster as constant roadblock to progress. I guess that means that Republicans can't nuke it now. ^_^
Seriously, changing Senate rules to reform or repeal the filibuster on legislation will require Democrats to take the Senate and hold the White House in 2016. HRC, whatever you think of her policies and funding sources, is well-positioned for the second against everybody in the The Republican Clown Car Express to Nowhere, and her coattails may well be sufficient to tip the balance in the Senate. Can we take the House, too? Expect non-stop discussion of those questions here for the next two years.
But let's think about what we could do in 2017 without the filibuster and with control of Congress. Then let's think about what we could do if Democrats campaigned on that.
In Daily Kos Radio is LIVE at 9 am ET! David Waldman noted this proposal in conjunction with Alabama Chief Injustice Roy Moore's ongoing intransigence on Marriage Equality. Talking Points Memo took it up from the President's interview with Ezra Klein on Vox.
Probably the one thing that we could change without a constitutional amendment that would make a difference here would be the elimination of the routine use of the filibuster in the Senate. Because I think that does, in an era in which the parties are more polarized, it almost ensures greater gridlock and less clarity in terms of the positions of the parties. There's nothing in the Constitution that requires it. The framers were pretty good about designing a House, a Senate, two years versus six-year terms, every state getting two senators. There were a whole bunch of things in there to assure that a majority didn't just run rampant. The filibuster in this modern age probably just torques it too far in the direction of a majority party not being able to govern effectively and move forward its platform. And I think that's an area where we can make some improvement.
"Less clarity" means more opportunity for Republicans and the media to blame Democrats both for Republican and Democratic filibusters, and to describe Democratic measures that got 59 votes in the Senate as having been defeated. Joan McCarter discussed this and related phenomena today in
Now that Democrats are the minority, reporters notice the filibuster.
The President has not given us a specific proposal. There is a wide range of possibilities, from doing away with filibusters altogether (which nobody in the Senate has seriously proposed) to eliminating some or all of the multiple rounds of cloture per bill and assorted opportunities for individual holds, even secret holds on judges and legislation, while allowing the basic process of talking filibusters to continue. Also, it would greatly speed things up if the Senate did not allow obstructionists to require 15-minute recorded votes just to switch back and forth between Executive Session and Legislative Session when considering Presidential nominations.
Vox has a handy-dandy page, What is the filibuster?, explaining how filibusters work, and their consequences, as part of a card deck on Congressional dysfunction.
Some of the Senate Old Bulls who oppose filibuster reform (Traditionalists, they prefer to call themselves) are leaving at the end of their current terms, most notably Dianne Feinstein of California and Pat Leahy of Vermont. So this is a live issue for 2016, and we should press all Democratic Senate candidates on it.
What would nuking the filibuster on legislation, or even reining it in, mean for the public? Well, if we get control of both Houses of Congress, they could follow Nancy Pelosi's lead from 2009-2011, passing hundreds of bills on every issue that the public has evolved on over the years, where there is majority support for doing something better. Only this time, they would pass the Senate and get signed and implemented. Hey! We could raise taxes and cut subsidies on those who have been extorting financial favors from the government. We might even consider fully funding many of the laws we already have. The IRS could use more money for collecting more of the taxes actually owed. With better funding, the EPA, FDA, CDC, SEC, NLRB, CFPB, and other agencies could issue regulations and enforce them, returning many times their cost in public benefits. We could even invest in education, infrastructure, jobs, and other measures to improve the economy and reduce poverty, both in the US and globally.
Everybody has their favorites, but we are talking about major advances on essentially every issue except perhaps gun safety, abortion, Too Big To Fail, and war. I don't say that those are out of the question, just that further evolution seems to be necessary in order to make more than marginal progress. Certainly we could proceed to a new Voting Rights Act to undo the gerrymanders and voter suppression, which would over time allow us to replace much of the current deadwood in Congress, and proceed to further rounds of progress.