Back to basics on filibusters
It’s no surprise that filibusters are frustrating the 50-50 Senate’s new, slim Democratic majority — made possible by the vice president’s tie-breaking — and delaying their plans under Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass a slew of legislation they’ve long favored. Filibusters only exist to frustrate and delay, used by the minority to impede the majority. The need to get 60 votes grants the GOP a big stick to jam in the spokes.
Yes, as the Democrats rightly complain, filibusters are not democratic (in the little d sense), stymieing the popular will. But the Senate itself is undemocratic and unrepresentative, giving big states the same two votes as small states. The Senate’s structure would be unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause of one person, one vote were the two seats each not written into the original document.
And that is the only thing in the whole Constitution that cannot be altered, as the Article V rules for amendments say, “that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” The only other forbidden change was interfering with the slave trade before 1808.
However, the filibuster can be modified. Since GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s pledges to bring the chamber to the standstill if the filibuster is ended, just mend it, don’t end it.
The classic filibuster where a senator stood and talked and talked and talked is no more. That was Jimmy Stewart’s Sen. Jeff Smith, of unknown party and unknown state, in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” fighting for a good cause in 1939 and winning. And it was Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat of South Carolina, fighting against a good cause in 1957 and losing as the Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed.
Today’s filibusters are silent and bloodless, just a requirement to get 60 votes whenever someone demands it. Instead of abolishing the filibuster, just bring back the talking version. Make senators, be they Republicans or Democrats, who want to block something get up and start spouting. And stay there.