Let's Talk About Filibuster Reform

One hot-button issue, threatening to forever paralyze America’s democratic system, is being largely ignored on the campaign trail: Filibuster reform.

Obstruction in the Senate recently hit rock bottom when a minority of Senators prevented debate on bill that would have created new job-training programs for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  While 58 Senators voted to proceed on the veterans’ jobs bill, the legislation failed to even be discussed because of blatant abuse of the Senate rules.  We aren’t electing these people to take part in partisan games. We are electing them to tackle serious problems facing this country.

So where is the outrage? Where is the call for reform? So far, the 2012 candidates have been silent.

But at tonight’s debate, Vice President Joe Biden and his GOP challenger Paul Ryan have the opportunity to finally address the filibuster mess head on. And what’s more, they might actually agree on reform. As a New York Times op-ed pointed out, “With supermajority voting, the Senate is never ‘equally divided’ on the big, contested issues of our day, so that it is a rogue senator, and not the vice president, who casts the deciding vote. The procedural filibuster effectively disenfranchises the vice president, eliminating as it does one of the office’s only two constitutional functions.”

The way the filibuster is used has changed drastically over the years. During Lyndon B. Johnson’s six years as majority leader there was one filibuster.  In the same period Harry Reid has led the Senate, there were more than 300.  

Since Democrats took control of the Senate in 2006, the three successive Congresses have witnessed the three highest totals of cloture motions ever filed.  While obstruction has always been a tool of the minority party to slow legislation, it has never before been wielded as the default order of business.

But there’s a solution.

The package of Senate rules reforms authored by Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-NM) is a good place to start.  Senate Resolution 10 garnered 44 votes during the debate over Senate rules reforms in 2010.  These changes do not eliminate the filibuster or limit the rights of the minority party in the Senate.  Instead, the reforms would limit the opportunities to filibuster to actual issues and policies, not on the motion to proceed to debate.  It would place the burden on the 41 who want to halt action, not on the 60 who want to proceed.  It would require those aiming to stop legislation through a filibuster to actually take the Senate floor and talk.  And it would streamline the approval of nominations.

When the next Congress convenes, it will only require a simple majority vote to move forward on a package of Senate reforms.  Unlike the “nuclear option” debate of 2005, which would have changed rules after they had already been adopted by the new Congress at the start of that year, the Constitution protects a new Senate’s right to adopt rules at the beginning of a Congress.  In fact, Vice Presidents Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller have each issued favorable opinions from the chair in regards to Day One rules changes.

Separate from the details of how we should achieve Senate Rules reforms, the past four years are a testament to why we should pursue such changes.  The American people deserve a government that is responsive, accountable, and capable of addressing the challenges of our time.