Blame the (Senatorial) System, Man
I don’t always (often?) agree with Paul Krugman, but his column today hits the hammer on the head. Instead of progressives railing against Obama and his failure to get the public option in the Health Care Bill, the outrage should be focused on the institutional failure of the Senate. As League contributors often reminds its readers, there are three parties in America: Democrats, Centrists (some with Rs after their names, some with Ds), and Republicans. If The Democrats want to actually govern, given the Senate’s screwed-up rule system and the total “nein: position of the Republicans, then the Centrists are holding way too much power. But unless you want nothing passed, the Centrists have to be placated. This leaves us with seriously damaged legislation (imo), but what other option is there? Invoking the mythical “power” of the Presidency to cajole Senators to vote for bills?
As Krugman asks:
Now consider what lies ahead. We need fundamental financial reform. We need to deal with climate change. We need to deal with our long-run budget deficit. What are the chances that we can do all that — or, I’m tempted to say, any of it — if doing anything requires 60 votes in a deeply polarized Senate?
The House has already passed legislation on financial reform and climate change. Neither of which is perfect– in fact, they’re not even really good–but both strike me as superior to the current state of affairs. But The Senate Centrist Cabal is just going to water those (already watered down) bills before any bill passes.
Starting next year, the clock is already ticking on re-election campaigns, so the chances of this stuff getting passed seems much more difficult. At the end of the day, The Senate is simply unable (and unwilling) to do its Constitutionally-mandated job. It’s a perfect storm of hardened filibuster rules (60’s the new 50), total opposition by a completely minority party that operates in lock-step, and a party with about 57 sure votes ceding way too much influence to 5 or so Senators who have their own peculiar “centrist ideology.”
—
Update: Either that, or I guess you could follow Jane Hamsher and talk about how progressives should join up with tea party-goers. I see nothing but good coming from that plan. [I need a sarcastic font so you know how ludicrous a position I think this is and how venomously mocking that last sentence was intended to be.]
James Fallows tackles the filibuster too; and recounts a friend’s evidence the founding fathers didn’t intend this perversion of our political system:
Report
Right – but there weren’t 50 states then either…Report
well, substitute “a supermajority for cloture” for “60” and you get the same basic point.Report
Chris:
The Repubs could easily say the same thing when it is their ox being gored. That being said, I’m glad we have a system that makes it hard for the gov’t to do too much.Report
sure. but the Dems aren’t a unified party in the same sense as the Republicans are. Also, if the Reps win, then they should get the chance to put through their agenda. I’m not a fan of their agenda (such as they can be said to have one), but this gridlock is insane.
We are facing serious problems and as James Gleick said, the speed of fast is getting faster. And these slow-moving proceduralisms are making the institution unable to respond in an adequate time frame to the problems facing it.Report
The cynical answer is that gridlock is good – better to stop the car before they drive us over a cliff.Report
It may be cynical, but it can also be true. Filibusters serve as a way to slow down the process. Currently, with the trend toward trying to rush through huge bills (that are often in flux to the very minute that they are voted upon), that which applies the brakes through parliamentary process is more beneficial than not, and I hope will be retained. I opposed its elimination when the Republicans proposed it, and I oppose it now.Report
historystudent,
You make a good point which I was just making on my own blog this morning. The thing that leads to gridlock is the fact that these bills are so huge and try to do so much. I don’t understand the rationale for big legislation guaranteed to create partisanship. If Congress had been willing to break out the 10% of stuff that caused problems into separate bills, the larger slate of provisions would have passed months ago with a degree of bipartisanship. As it was the bill languished for several months because of the public option, then another month because of the abortion funding, etc. If those had been taken out and pushed as separate bills, a real debate could have been had. The problem is that Democracts saw the only way to get those things is to hope that the public would want everything else so bad that they would swallow the bad stuff as the pricer for broader reform. They just under-estimated the effects of those poisoned pills.Report
Mike, Dubya & Co pretty much drove us off of the cliff; I find it, um, ‘interesting’, that the checks and balances don’t work as well when it’s right-wingers doing stuff.Report
Oh now we see the real problem, Dems lack of party unity. So instead of blaming the system why not blame the peoples whose responsibility it is to whip the votes into line? Even with the system as it now stands, if you have 60 votes you can do what you want. Not to mention, the Senate was not made to move fast but instead be the deliberative body as opposed to the House. I think the Senate is moving fast enough on health care.Report
I’m not a Democratic. I leave up it to those who are to decide whether they should party unity or not. I was simply responding why the Republican counter-analogy is not a very good one.
If you have 57 votes you should be able to pass legislation. The filibuster is in extreme cases only. Krugman cites a political scientist who said that it was used roughly 8% of the time in the 50s and now is used over 70% of the time. If we go back to 8%, I’d be fine with that.Report
“If you have 57 votes you should be able to pass legislation.”
Says who? Heck, why not make it only 51?Report
it is only 51 to pass legislation. It’s _still_ only 51 to pass legislation. There’s _also_ a requirement of 60 votes to bring cloture to the debate, but the way the Senate works nowadays “cloture” has nothing to do with expediting debate and everything to do with actually proceeding to a vote where a mere simple majority is required.Report
to clarify, I mean that cloture is supposed to be about expediting debate and fast-tracking a vote, but now it’s about preventing a vote from occuringReport
Exactly. I have wondered for a long time where I missed the boat. I always thought the filibuster was for extreme cases only, and now it’s just assumed that a party has to have 60 votes to pass anything. When exactly did we go from 8% to 70%, anyone know? Was it gradual or sudden? I assume there was a sort of gentlemanly agreement before not to use the filibuster except under special circumstances, and that agreement went out the window along with gentlemen in Congress.Report
Over that same period, the length of the average bill increased by something like an order of magnitude. The trend is toward fewer but bigger bills, precisely for the purpose of pushing unpopular items through the process. Earmarks and unrelated amendments are bundled with essential legislation (or at least legislation that’s perceived as essential). There may be more filibusters, but the total amount of legislation passed is steadily increasing.
Besides, the Senate is doing its job when it sticks its finger in the eye of an activist House or an aggressive President. It’s supposed to be the biggest obstacle in the system. It’s the second-most undemocratic body in government (behind the courts), and it was conceived to be the protector of the individual states.Report
“I’m glad we have a system that makes it hard for the gov’t to do too much.”
I hear this again and again and again and frikkin’ again. But you know what? These checks and balances sorta faaaaaaaaaade away into another dimension when the rich want something.Report
“As LOG often reminds its readers, there are three parties in America: Democrats, Centrists (some with Rs after their names, some with Ds), and Republicans. “
I would challenge that by saying there are actually few real ‘centrists’ out there. Most of them are actually Independents whose positions on various issues run the spectrum of political thought from libby-lib to Far Right and back. The true ‘Center’ is mostly a mythical place where a few senators like Olympia Snowe live. Most of America isn’t Centrist at all….they are just complicated.Report
I agree there are few centrists in the country, but there are a goodly number of them in the Senate and they are holding way too many cards at the present moment. So we have our legislation being decided by a group that essentially represents just about nobody (ideologically) in the country. Fantastico.Report
I don’t know that there are too many Centrists in the Senate either. Look at Nelson. He’s basically a mainline Democrat/liberal. He just happens to lean right on abortion. Lieberman has plenty of liberal views but he leans right on national defense.Report
Nelson’s not a mainline liberal. Neither’s Lieberman. They are centrists. They are built in opposition (in many ways) to progressives/left.
The difference would be how say a Max Baucus (a conservative Dem) and Nelson did on health care. Nelson held the whole thing up to his vote, Baucus did not.
Or if you don’t like Baucus (because he was a chairman of a drafting committee), then say a Jeff Bingaman or Tom Carper. Pretty conservative Dems but they didn’t put their disagreements up to the point of stopping the whole thing.Report
I’m actually quite sympathetic to Hamsher, who has long understood libertarian thought processes more than most liberals and is on firmer ground than I think her critics are giving her credit for.
But in terms of the centrist issue, I think the big thing is to look at the types of concessions they’re primarily seeking. Nelson’s pro-life insistence aside, most of the centrists are seeking concessions that basically just seek to split the difference between doing something and doing nothing or that provide some sort of direct benefit to the centrist’s district. I think one could argue that Nelson’s demands on abortion are principled; but the concessions demanded by the other centrists in this debate largely seem to be devoid of any principles whatsoever.Report
I agree about Hamsher, it’s easier to work with people who have principles than to work with political opportunists you can’t trust. I think there is a possibility for libertarians and true liberals to work together — many of the goals are similar, and I think some liberals are realizing that statism is not the way to accomplish the goals. The State is after power and control, not results that help those in need.Report
Well there is fail all around. It boggles me the level of anger among progressives about what congress and the Prez did or didn’t do when this asinine system is with us. Having a strong majority just isn’t enough with these rules so we are left with sucking up to Lieberman and Nelson. It seems anybody with a basic understanding of the rules ( in this case Obama and Reid) knew they couldn’t’ just do what they wanted and had to play for a supermajority.
So the Repub dynamic is to stall and obfuscate, then blame the gov for not doing this or that. Failure works for them…..oh joyous season this is.Report
Be of good cheer; for at least the Republicans, obfuscate as they might, have the cold comfort of their precedent late at night when sleep eludes — the Unitary Executive.
It would seem Republicans, at least in the Senate, shirk their responsibilities through stalling now, and passing it off to the Executive Branch when they were recently in the majority.
As much as I wish Democratic Senators had used the filibuster for more then judicial nominations, I would see it dead this political holiday and the work of federal policy begun again. Dem’s won’t use it to stop bad policy, and Republicans won’t not use it for any policy. It’s poison.Report
It is not the responsibility of the political opposition to help the party in power enact its pet programs. The parliamentary rules package governing the Senate is enacted by…the Senate. The size of the supermajority necessary for a cloture vote was reduced ca. 1974 from 2/3 to 3/5. Why not use that 3/5 majority to unload in entirely, along with the other crappy practices (‘holds’ on nominees, &c.)?Report
Chris – I’m all for killing the filibuster. I think it creates inordinate amounts of apathy in our political process, and lets politicians get away with little accountability.Report
We argue that modifying the filibuster is far better than eliminating it, for reasons described here:
http://www.thefourthbranch.com/2009/12/why-modifying-the-filibuster-is-preferable-to-ending-it/Report
4branch,
that sounds like an eminently reasonable policy to me. I therefore (sadly) think it has little chance of passing.Report
Thanks for the comment. I tend to agree with your prognosis.Report
Is this a feature of the modern Senate, destined to continue into the future, or just a feature of a bankrupt Republican party that can only respond to any issue with tax cuts or deregulation?
It’s not an institutional problem that Democrats have a wide array of opinions. It seems to be a problem that the Republicans only have one and are now no longer willing to do their job (craft legislation that addresses the issues of America).
Instead, they present a unified front of obstruction for the purposes of potential electoral gain; an exercise of their power only in the pursuit of more political power. The idea of being a wise representative of the people, selected for his independent wisdom and judgment (i.e. the original intent behind our representative government) seems totally absent from the modern Republican Senator.Report
The Republican Party is not ‘bankrupt’ for advancing its own programs and interests. If parliamentary rules are impeding them unacceptably, the frigging majority party can change the rules.Report
True, how many times have the Dems threatened to use reconciliation doing this process?Report
reconciliation was threatened by some, but the leadership saw it is actually not a possible alternative.
It would still take a super majority of senators to get rid of the current terrible senate rules. if enough of both parties would support it then it could be changed. if it is just the D’s then they don’t have enough votes.Report
“reconciliation was threatened by some, but the leadership saw it is actually not a possible alternative.”
And you know this to be true because? If they really didn’t think it possible then why did they spend so much time threatening to use it? I guess buying votes was easier.Report
well define how the leadership spent so much time pushing it? the actual leadership did not push it. some bloggers and writers did and a few prominent D pols talked about, but no, the leadership did not spend the last 10 months threatening it.
have you read up on what reconciliation involves? it is not some easy panacea for getting any bill passed.Report