It’s true that Gail Collins laid a very sloppy kiss on Nancy Pelosi, but I can’t say it wasn’t well deserved. Pelosi seems to be able to work her will on the House of Representatives and get her priorities passed. She’s powerful and effective, and she’s the only Democratic leader who begins from a progressive place and aims high. What would be interesting is if someone were to do a kind of project on what Obama would have accomplished so far if he were able to sign Pelosi’s legislation into law without first melding it with whatever the Senate has produced (or refused to produce). It wouldn’t be the easiest project because the House already waters down their product in anticipation of having to negotiate with the Senate. Freed from that requirement, chairmen like Conyers, Waxman, Miller, and Frank would have provided truly stunning progressive change. Every day in this country we pay the price of having an unrepresentative Senate governed by undemocratic rules. And it all, all of it, works against progressive change.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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OT, great seeing you guys today!
you made the right call in not sticking around to watch the World Cup.
But it was great seeing you, too.
Which, of course, was the “intent of the founders” from the very beginning. Them chickens just keep coming home to roost, don’t they?
The Senate’s blocked some key things that we should be grateful for, too, don’t forget.
Even though the Senate has historically been more resilient, it’s also harder to buy off people at the state level than the local level. I’ve noticed that with the banking reform; so much focus on the Big Evil Banks, when the smallest community banks have the largest influence in Congress. It’s like the public at large never wanting to take away the farmer subsidies. They think of farmers as these cute little Farmer Joe types with their tractors, rather than giant corporations with big influence.
I think it’s important to remember this. Just off the top of my head, I can note that Clinton would have been impeached and Social Security privatized without the Senate. So yes, much of what the Senate blocks, especially in the present era, is Progressive change. And one can never forget all those anti-lynching and civil rights bills that were successfully filibustered in the early to mid-20th Century. But not everything done by the Senate in history has been bad.
I think MNPundit’s comment below about the change in political dynamics absent the Senate is good too. If it were just the House, we might expect an even more crazed death-race of electoral politics, since the House’s power would be so greatly enlarged.
Lodus, your point has some merit, but the examples you give aren’t the best.
Clinton was impeached by majority vote of the House, but not removed from office because his opponents did not get (or come close to) two-thirds of the Senate vote. If the US Constitution were written so as to establish one House of Congress and still require a two-thirds vote to remove a President from office, Clinton would not have been removed by such a hypothetical unicameral Congress in the 1990s.
When Republicans controlled both houses of Congress under President George W. Bush, they didn’t even attempt a committee vote (as I recall) on privatizing Social Security, let alone try for a floor vote (which they would have lost).
Thanks for the correction. I remember Dick Durbin at some point pushing back on filibuster reform by saying that the GOP would have privatized Social Security if Dems hadn’t had that arrow in their quiver. But maybe he was shining the apple.
I don’t get what you’re referring to on civil rights legislation. The filibusters were against civil rights and and pro-lynching. Filibusters were attempts to kill those bills, not promote them. They were attempts by a regional minority to thwart the minority much as is happening now. For example the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed 290 to 130 in the House. It was the ridiculous Senate that put the law in jeopardy. Wouldn’t have even been an issue if we were rid of the Senate or at least rid of its pompous crap.
Not that the House has ever been a reliable force for good or for sanity (it was at least as bad as the Senate in the Joe McCarthy fascism takeover, for example), but from a liberal perspective reading pretty much any record, it does better than the Senate, near as I can tell. Sometimes the Good Old Boy system does the people some good, but I believe we’d be better off with something more like open democracy. If we can’t manage that maybe we don’t deserve a free country.
Just saw your comment now. Perhaps my word choice was poor in my earlier comment. I meant that we can’t forget all those anti-lynching and civil rights bills that, as you point out, were killed by the filibuster. I was referring to them as (obviously) negative effects of the filibuster.
As for your second paragraph, you may be right. I honestly don’t know much about the history of the House – have to do some reading on that score.
Of course, the idea would have worked so well in the 90’s, too.
if the President was a:
?
The problem isn’t the Senate and the problem isn’t necessarily the outdated rules of the Senate, though they intensify the problem. The problem is Republicans. The problem is having people in Government who not only don’t believe in Government, but who are actively trying to prove Government cannot work by trying to break it when in power and obstruct it when out of power.
Republicans in Government is about as good an idea as putting a BP executive in charge of Greenpeace, or a vegan running a butcher shop.
Simply. Won’t. Work.
Pelosi is effective now I did not think so her first two years. She has grown into her role.
Oh and yes the senate is a major problem. Millionaires that represent vast swathes of uninhabited land are seldom progressive. At least not in this century. It seems to have affected the millionaires who represent actual people.
So maybe the problem is money itself? Too much money to get in to the club. It leads to a lot of rich and out of touch senators or cold calculating political tacticians. People who vote down unemployment extensions and aid to the very states that they live. Oh yeah there is the added benefit of killing off state jobs and maybe killing off the recovery in an election year. Hooray we blame the Democrats and pick up seat in this years election!
Mission Accomplished! With a big fuck you to the people you lost their jobs or had their unemployment pulled because of our politically motivated, rich Republican, bullshit politics. Men without conscience screwing with peoples so they can grow richer by taking over the Millionaire’s Club.
A 33 billion dollar bill killed because of the hilarious notion that Republicans are scared of the debt? Ha Ha. They lined their pockets with trillions in tax cuts. Now the average guy needs some stimulus spending and there is no money. Oh it would be sinful the future generations will be mad. Well the next generation is looking at a lot of people from across the dinner table. I think they would appreciate a roof over their heads. Oh and no they don’t want another dividend tax cut or a capital gains tax cut. They don’t need another estate tax cut. They just need their government to pass an unemployment extension bill with some badly need state aid.
Like Ed Shultz said recently, the Senate is run by old, rich white guys who have no idea how it feels to be poor, unemployed, hungry, homeless.
I also laugh at all the chest thumping I see when the House passes something good because I know that it doesn’t stand a chance to get through the Senate. The Senate is where bills go to die.
You can’t just subtract the Senate. Assuming suddenly as of Obama’s inauguration there is no more senate, you’re have 100 people with largest amounts of money trying now trying to influence the house by donations. The stakes for the house chamber would also be raised and legislative situations would turn out differently with Republicans and Blue Dogs seeing themselves as the last line of defense against Obamian Socialism or conversely, seeing themselves as incapable of stopping it and so trying to to siphon what power and prestige they can from it.
Further Pelosi now effectively becomes the head of the legislature. So you have John Roberts, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelsoi as the faces of government. It’s inevitable her profile rise and tactics used by her supporters and detractors will alter in that situation.
Obviously this is a hypothetical exercise we’re engaged in here—akin to speculating what North America would look like today if the CSA had successfully seceded from the US in the 1860s.
Having said that, I agree MNPundit that a unicameral Congress would raise the profile of the Speaker. I think we can all agree that a unicameral House would not change many Republican votes in the current Congress. Blue Dog Democrats might try harder to leverage their power. On the other hand, the Speaker and her allies might try harder to leverage their power against the Blue Dogs (and against wayward progressives).
In any case, it’s likely that in such a scenario, most of the major legislative accomplishments of this session of Congress (the Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act, financial reform, energy reform/climate change) would have passed as more progressive pieces of legislation than they have passed/are passing with the Senate.
It’s also likely that most (if not all) of the 200+ bills that have passed the House but are languishing in the Senate would have become law as well.
I’m alternate history guy so… heh. I certainly think the most likely outcome is more progressive change. But a lot of things would be different.