Just Kill The Filibuster

So that bipartisan investigatory commission into the January 6 Insurrection died a partisan death thanks to just enough Republican Senators to say NO and just enough Democratic Senators to not give a f-ck. Via Steve Benen at MSNBC:

It was emblematic of how the process unfolded. Republicans said they were open to the creation of an independent commission, but only if their demands were met. Democrats, willing to pay high prices in the interest of governing, met those demands, only to have House GOP lawmakers balk anyway.

Today, Senate Republicans did the same thing...

I can appreciate why the procedural details may seem boring and unimportant, but it's worth emphasizing that this was technically not the vote to create the Jan. 6 commission. Rather, this was a procedural vote on something called a motion to proceed -- which in practical terms means Republicans blocked a Senate debate over whether to create the Jan. 6 commission.

For those unfamiliar with congressional procedures, it's probably also worth noting that the gap between the opponents and proponents was less important than it might appear: proponents of the bipartisan plan needed 60 votes. Period. Full stop. The fact that most senators supported the proposal is, thanks to the filibuster rules, irrelevant. In fact, if only 60 senators showed up for today's vote, and 59 of them voted "yes," the one "no" vote would prevail...

This procedure basically forms part of what's known as the filibuster, an internal procedural process wherein just one Senator of either party makes clear their intent to delay a vote by talking as long as possible to prevent a bill or an appointment being made (certain votes have deadlines attached to them). The talking itself isn't even necessary: All the Senator has to do nowadays is THREATEN to filibuster, and a Cloture motion has to be voted on it, and that requires that bloody 60 votes.

And this is where I bitch about the Democrats being cowards, because they have the means of rewriting Senate procedures right now and can easily get rid of this debate blocker, to get rid of filibustering altogether and require simple basic majority (51 out of 100) votes on everything so they could end Republican obstructionism here and now... and they won't.

/headdesk

I've been complaining about the filibuster all the way back to 2009, when this was a different blog: 

Worst of all is the filibuster rule. What was once an obscure rule is now an impediment on getting anything passed in the Senate (the House has no filibuster and so can pass laws by majority vote more quickly) because the filibuster can't be stopped (Cloture) unless two-thirds of the Senate votes to, which means you need 60 votes nowadays to ensure Cloture. Problem is where the Republicans are organized to a fault to where their own party is consuming themselves, the Democrats are disorganized to where each Senator can (and does) act like their own party and vote however they want...

And I wrote that back when the Democrats had 59-60 seats and could have overridden every Cloture procedure and forced the Republicans to eat their own failures. Instead, they kept faltering over passing major legislation that could have shortened the economic recession during Obama's tenure, all because enough Democratic Senators wanted their egos as "Centrists" stroked. And not enough Democrats pushed to end the Filibuster/Cloture rule altogether to ensure simple majority votes. Gods, it was frustrating then and it's frustrating now to watch the Democrats shoot themselves in their own cowardly foot rather than get rid of an unwanted and self-damaging rule.

Ezra Klein wrote this at Vox back in 2015: 

Today's filibusters simply paralyze the Senate until the majority either finds 60 votes to proceed or gives up and moves on to another piece of business.

The filibuster is no longer about ensuring that minorities can make themselves heard on the floor of the Senate; rather, it's about forcing the majority to find 60 votes to pass anything...

Some political scientists argue that the idea of individual filibusters has become outdated; they say the Senate now operates under the filibuster's 60-vote requirement as a norm, and it's anything that requires a simple majority that's the exception. In other words, in the modern Senate, almost everything is filibustered...

This speaks to a crucial fact about the filibuster: though a filibuster can only be broken with 60 votes, the rule that powers the filibuster can be changed, or even eliminated, with 51 votes. The filibuster is a minority protection that exists at the pleasure of the majority.

This is the fundamental tension of the filibuster: it gives the minority the power to obstruct the majority, but if the minority pushes that power too far, the majority can end the filibuster entirely...

That last part is something that the Senate Democrats - clinging to a super-slim majority of 50-50 with VP Harris as the 51st tiebreaker vote - can do, they could vote on eliminating the debate procedure and shut down filibustering as a tactic. They could break the Minority Rule the Republicans have been forcing on the United States for 20-plus years.

The Democrats could vote to end a filibuster process that has routinely been used as a racist override of legislation: The filibuster is a "Jim Crow relic" interfering with Civil Rights and voting bills, and above all blocking anti-lynching bills that we haven't been able to pass as far back as the 1920s. Christ, Rand Paul filibustered against an anti-lynching bill just last year!

We ought to have seen an end to the filibuster the minute the Democrats gained control this February 2021... and they didn't because the likes of Joe Manchin (WV) and Krysten Sinema (AZ) still think there's some personal value to be had in stopping our nation's legislative body from passing meaningful reforms and much-needed budget deals.

Because of that cowardice in the party ranks, the Senate doesn't belong the Democratic majority: It belongs still to that goddamned obstructionist Mitch McConnell. And because of all that, our nation is still screwed.

Just kill the filibuster, Democrats. SAVE THE DEMOCRACY YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT.