I think it’s an incredible stretch to say that it was a mistake to not let the Republicans install the Nuclear Option in 2005, but I get what Chris Bowers is saying. If we didn’t have to contend with the 60-vote threshold, both policy and progressive attitudes would be much, much better. I’m happy to see him make arguments like this because it shows he understands reality. As Chris notes, life without the filibuster would have been glorious.
This would have resulted in a wide swatch of changes, including a larger stimulus, the Employee Free Choice Act, a better health bill (in all likelihood, one with a public option, and completed in December), an actual climate / energy bill, a second stimulus, and more. If Democrats had tacked on other changes to Senate rules that sped up the process, such as doing away with unanimous consent, ending debating time after cloture is achieved on nominations, eliminating the two days between filing for cloture and voting on cloture, and restricting quorum calls, then virtually every judicial and administration vacancy would already be filled, as well.
Actually, the health care bill would not only have had a public option, but it would have been completed before the August 2009 recess. A climate bill would have been done by December, and it would have probably included a Cap & Trade scheme (although that’s uncertain even at the 51-vote threshold). Someone should write a book about what Congress would have passed if the House didn’t preemptively water-down legislation to put it in the same ballpark as what the Senate could conceivably get Olympia Snowe to agree to. I mean, most of what the House has passed over the last year and a half could have won a simple majority in the Senate. But that’s because it was designed to be within pissing distance of getting 60 votes. Had they not had to trim their sails, we would have seen much stronger stimulus, a much more robust health care bill, and far stronger regulation of Wall Street. We would also have seen more progressive nominations. In this Congress, according to Progressive Punch, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana would have been the pivot vote on high-priority legislation if the filibuster rule was not in place. Because the filibuster rule was in place, that role has fallen to Susan Collins. On most issues, nothing could pass that Susan Collins didn’t sign off on it.
Did you know when you voted for Obama that Susan Collins would have effective veto-power over his entire agenda? Do you think that’s what the American people want?
My recollection is that the Nuclear Option that the Republicans were pushing in 2005 only applied to nominations (maybe just judicial). I’m not sure it would have helped here.
Do you really think that would have lasted?
Agree with everything you say Booman, though I’d like to add that there may well have been a few Obama supporters who knew exactly what they were getting (specifically the ones in Maine who voted for Susan Collins and Barack Obama in the first place…)
I”d bet 15% of the population knows about the whole 60 vote rule .. if that
I’d go with ‘if that’.
Obama wanted a consensus bill and would have thrown the public option under the bus very early to get that consensus, at least among non-rightwingers.
It just wasn’t important to him.
It goes both ways though. The Bush tax cuts would have been permanent. And if the Republicans get back in at some point in the future, they would be able to repeal health care or privatize social security.
If the Republicans want to do these things the next time they come into power they will just repeal the filibuster and do it. Or get a handful of Democrats to vote with them in a “compromise” to keep the filibuster sacrosanct.
And they will do it too, make no mistake. Keeping the filibuster now doesn’t preserve it in the future.
And, BTW – let them. That’s actually how representative democracy is supposed to work, and if they roll shit like that back they’ll get punished for it. Much like the attempts to roll back Social Security inevitably end up with Republicans getting smacked around. If you’re a believer in representative democracy the filibuster is an anathema because it makes an undemocratic body even more undemocratic than the Constitution has already outlined.
Hell I’d be in favor of eliminating the Senate altogether and going with a single chamber legislature. That would make it even easier to roll back laws, but it also means that when idiots roll back good programs they get punished for it even faster. That’s how it’s supposed to work after all.
The Bush tax cuts would not likely be permanent. The pressure to roll them back would be greater and no doubt Democrats would have crawled out of their shells and started reminding folks that “Tax and spend” is how government is supposed to work. “Borrow and squander” is how Republicans want government to work. Until Democrats get in office when Republicans want all that borrowing (from their cronies, btw) paid back as quickly as possible (but not by taxes on their cronies, btw, but by taxes on the middle class so that Republicans can win the next round by being anti-tax).
Maybe permanent Bush tax cuts would have given Democrats the spine to explain clearly…Oh shit that’s the problem. Democrats can’t explain anything clearly.
I doubt it, actually. The reality of the 60 vote requirement meant that some Senators could “support” legislation safe in the knowledge that their stances were meaningless. Had there only been a 51 vote margin (or a 50 vote margin with Biden as a tie-breaker), more Senators would have been on the record expressing “grave concerns” about legislation and demanding their own concessions.
The 60 vote margin is, in many ways, a smokescreen for the more conservative Democrats in the Senate. And there are more than 10 conservatives in the Senate who caucus with the party. Just because they let Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh act as spokespeople doesn’t mean that if they were gone someone else wouldn’t step up to take their place.
One nice thing is that you’d be negotiating in your own caucus, rather than trying to get Republican or Ben Nelson votes, so there’s more of a chance for horse trading. Still, the corporate masters in the insurance industry were not going to allow a public option to be a viable alternative no matter what the vote margin was. It needed to be much more publicly popular to overcome the hold they have on the Senators’ leashes, and Fox news and the Republicans and the Tea Partiers worked very hard to create a perception that it was unpopular and muddy up the works.
I don’t blame Obama for not pushing to end the filibuster at the outset of his administration. That just wasn’t the time for that, even if they foresaw the degree of obstruction they were likely to face. I’m pleased the president has started to talk about this, and I’m very pleased Reid has put it on the agenda. I’m not surprised by the poo-pooing from various usual suspects, and it probably is unlikely it will happen next year. However, Reid only needs 51 votes to change the rules if I understand the process correctly. That’s a totally different reality-that’s why I think it’s a bit futile to speculate on what would have happened without the filibuster. That’s just a totally different political reality which could change things in strange and unpredictable ways.
But so, needing only 51 votes, I suspect the pro-filibuster side in the democratic caucus better start locking up a minimum of 10 votes right now. Because if the clock is ticking down and only a few stand in the way, those senators will have to start thinking about living with a permanently disaffected base, very willing to push for primary challenges as we saw in Arkansas. Blanche had the big dog pull through for her, but that’s a one time deal type thing. I think if the president and progressives really boldly make this an issue, tell all the whiners to stuff it, unpredictable things might happen…
This is the most important issue in national politics right now!
I’m not surprised by the poo-pooing from various usual suspects, and it probably is unlikely it will happen next year. However, Reid only needs 51 votes to change the rules if I understand the process correctly.
Right. Reid will only need 51 votes to change the Senate rules come January. I think that’s what pretty much everyone thinks and is pushing for. I don’t think anyone is pushing to change the rules right now(which would require 67 votes .. which they don’t have, obviously)
You keep ignoring one piece of the Party of No strategy: Obama’s commitment to bipartisanship and working across aisles. We can disagree on whether this is just an extension of his pragmatism or his honest belief, but part of the set up of the party of no strategy is having a president who’s committed himself and to a certain extent defined himself as a politician who’s measures of success are tied to bipartisanship. Since Obama needs to follow through on that, the GOP has huge amounts of leverage in denying it. One of the crucial differences between Obama and progressives which I think the progressives are right on, is whether bipartisanship is an end or a means. Given the fact that our political system requires compromise and consensus to get anything done, the two aren’t really different concepts in practice, but rhetorically and politically, I think where you fall on the question matters enormously. Don’t misconstrue this as a critique of booman’s views, just something to keep in mind.
A different dem president such as Hillary (and no, i didn’t support her- i campaigned for and donated money to Obama) might not have been stuck with that bipartisanship baggage. I can easily imagine Hillary coming in on day one and rhetorically staking the claim that bipartisanshp was just a means to an end and that the failures of the last 8 years of GOP policies would weight heavily on her mind when she negotiated with GOP leaders.
You’re overthinking it. The public does not care about the filibuster. It’s too complex. Cable channels might well wet-themselves about it, but this is an arcane issue for the general public. If the public can reconcile itself to Bush v. Gore, it can reconcile itself to a change in senate procedures it is hardly conscious of. Everything else is the tantrum of private capitol.