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McConnell's defense of the filibuster is a farce

Rogue Valley

Rogue Valley

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www.cnn.com

Opinion: McConnell's defense of the filibuster is a farce

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything possible to save the filibuster now that Republicans have lost control of the upper chamber. This rule allows senators to keep speaking on the floor to delay or block legislation that has majority support. The only way to stop a...
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

1/30/21
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything possible to save the filibuster now that Republicans have lost control of the upper chamber. McConnell, who is eager to hold on to power, is now defending the filibuster, arguing that the Senate should maintain the rule in the name of "deliberation and building consensus". Regardless of how the battle over the filibuster plays out, it is important to see why McConnell's arguments don't hold water. The notion that the filibuster is a source of comity couldn't be further from the truth. The rule, which is not written into the Constitution, but something that the upper chamber gradually adopted in the 19th century, has been used as a bludgeon against vital measures throughout much of American history. The filibuster, became a prominent strategy for southern Democrats to block civil rights bills in the 1950s and 1960s. Liberal senators at that time considered the rule anti-democratic, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights listed ending the filibuster as one of its key goals in 1951, alongside criminalizing lynching and ending segregation. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, a segregationist, famously set the record for the longest individual speech when he filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for more than 24 hours.

Since the 1970s, the filibuster became a regular tool of partisan combat. Since Republicans are not interested in a robust federal government, tying the Senate up in knots fulfills their political goals. Under McConnell, the GOP accelerated the use of this political weapon during the Obama administration, blocking judicial nominations and stifling attempts to achieve immigration reform and gun control. The cost of the filibuster has been immense. Congress has lost its ability to legislate. Republicans — who already have disproportionate power in the Senate because the upper chamber gives smaller states the same number of representatives as larger ones — abused the filibuster. As a result, Democrats have not been able to push reforms on issues like climate change — even though a majority of Americans support them. And so, serious problems continue to fester in this country. There is no evidence that the filibuster helps create comity. In fact, the expanded use of the filibuster coincides with the most divisive and polarized periods in American political history. As the debates over the filibuster unfold, nobody should take McConnell's arguments very seriously. He's certainly within his rights to defend the filibuster as a tool of partisan obstruction, but he should at least be honest about it. Obama was right. It is a "Jim Crow relic," and one that keeps us decades behind where we need to be in public policy.
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I also view the filibuster as anti-democratic and hope it is relegated to the ash heap of history.

www.politifact.com

PolitiFact - The history of the filibuster as 'Jim Crow relic'

Former President Barack Obama made some news when he delivered a eulogy for John Lewis, the civil rights activist and co
www.politifact.com www.politifact.com
 
Rogue Valley said:
www.cnn.com

Opinion: McConnell's defense of the filibuster is a farce

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything possible to save the filibuster now that Republicans have lost control of the upper chamber. This rule allows senators to keep speaking on the floor to delay or block legislation that has majority support. The only way to stop a...
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com




I also view the filibuster as anti-democratic and hope it is relegated to the ash heap of history.

www.politifact.com

PolitiFact - The history of the filibuster as 'Jim Crow relic'

Former President Barack Obama made some news when he delivered a eulogy for John Lewis, the civil rights activist and co
www.politifact.com www.politifact.com
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To McConnell's credit he did not remove the senate filibuster for his own benefit. I have mixed feelings on eliminating the filibuster, certainly it would give the majority
opportunity to pass desired legislation, also worth remembering we won't always be the majority party. Without the 60 vote threshold
the ACA would have been eliminated several years ago. Sometimes you have to take the long view.
 
911Sparky said:
To McConnell's credit he did not remove the senate filibuster for his own benefit. I have mixed feelings on eliminating the filibuster, certainly it would give the majority
opportunity to pass desired legislation, also worth remembering we won't always be the majority party. Without the 60 vote threshold
the ACA would have been eliminated several years ago. Sometimes you have to take the long view.
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The gop was going to remove ACA with a simple majority. McCain saved it. He was the 51st vote against trump care.
 
The filibuster is a useful tool. The problem with it now is that it's too easy use. It was meant to be used in the rare cases where the majority wanted to do something that the minority viewed as so egregious that they could not let it pass uncontested. To that end we should go back to filibustering the way it was prior to the 1980s (?) when someone had to actually speak for hours on end. Making it uncomfortable guarantees that it's a tool the minority will use in the most extreme cases.

It is not anti-democratic. Even when one party has a majority in Congress things are still supposed to be done by consensus.
 
Gaius46 said:
The filibuster is a useful tool. The problem with it now is that it's too easy use. It was meant to be used in the rare cases where the majority wanted to do something that the minority viewed as so egregious that they could not let it pass uncontested. To that end we should go back to filibustering the way it was prior to the 1980s (?) when someone had to actually speak for hours on end. Making it uncomfortable guarantees that it's a tool the minority will use in the most extreme cases.

It is not anti-democratic. Even when one party has a majority in Congress things are still supposed to be done by consensus.
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Didn't both parties a few years ago just about lose it when Senator Ted Cruz conducted an old style filibuster?
 
Gaius46 said:
It is not anti-democratic. Even when one party has a majority in Congress things are still supposed to be done by consensus.
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Consensus?

Don't know where you've been for the past eight years.
 
911Sparky said:
To McConnell's credit he did not remove the senate filibuster for his own benefit. I have mixed feelings on eliminating the filibuster, certainly it would give the majority opportunity to pass desired legislation, also worth remembering we won't always be the majority party. Without the 60 vote threshold
the ACA would have been eliminated several years ago. Sometimes you have to take the long view.
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Or not. The filibuster protects the GOP from acting on unpopular policy commitments to their base like ACA repeal. For over ten years that's supposedly been their key agenda item, yet they clearly did not want or expect to ever do it--they still haven't even come up with the "replace" part of their empty "repeal-and-replace" slogan! You can find any number of wingnuts around here who justify Trump never developing his long-promised health care plan on the grounds that the Senate wouldn't pass it even if he did come up with one. In other words, the existence of the filibuster allows them to justify having no position on major challenges facing Americans.

The reality is that to the extent the GOP has a policy agenda, it generally doesn't want to actually pass it. Whereas the Democrats have a policy agenda they do want to pass. The filibuster protects the GOP from itself--or at least shields them from their own voters and the consequences of their platform. That asymmetry is a big problem.

The only things the GOP actually cares about, judicial nominations and tax giveaways to the rich packaged in reconciliation bills, aren't impeded by the filibuster. The things the Dems care about (health care, immigration, the climate crisis, addressing market failures, etc) are.

Time to nuke it.
 
99percenter said:
The gop was going to remove ACA with a simple majority. McCain saved it. He was the 51st vote against trump care.
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You are correct, my memory on that historic moment failed me. I still think the filibuster is a tool to keep the majority from running over the minority.
If we remove it, we may be sorry in a couple years.
 
Lead obstructionist says what?
 
Dayton3 said:
Didn't both parties a few years ago just about lose it when Senator Ted Cruz conducted an old style filibuster?
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Yep. He went on for most of a day. It’s actually kind of the beauty of the filibuster. No one’s gonna go through it unless they feel strongly about the issue
 
Dems should definitely get rid of the filibuster. It only helps the gop. Even if the gop gets in power again, most of the legislation they want like removing health care, ending medicare, ending Social security, destroying the environment, raising taxes of the middle class and lowering them for the wealthy aren't popular and if they can pass all that without interference from the dems, they just wouldn't exist anymore.
 
99percenter said:
Dems should definitely get rid of the filibuster. It only helps the gop. Even if the gop gets in power again, most of the legislation they want like removing health care, ending medicare, ending Social security, destroying the environment, raising taxes of the middle class and lowering them for the wealthy
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When in modern times has the GOP as a party advocated any of that?
 
Rogue Valley said:
I believe it does.
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Just because Congress has been acting like a pair of armed camps for the past 8 years (really probably the last 20) it does not follow that it should stay that way. Or that that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

The majority party gets the benefit of the most control over what goes on in Congress but that does not mean it’s desiresble to give the minority no voice at all - especially when the minority represents nearly half the electorate. The filibuster - when used as it originally was intended - gives the minority a voice in things that it finds especially important.
 
I have come around to getting rid of the filibuster. Used to be against it.

But I think that if it is eliminated it would force the minority party to work with the majority to actually craft consensus legislation instead of simply killing everything that happens to come from the "other side" even though it has broad support in the electorate.
 
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