Fili-busted?
One step is all it takes
READING the wires, especially the commentary tracker, we get the feeling that the United States Supreme Court has gone too far this time. Or, better yet, the United States Supreme Court has gone too far this time! Complete with italics, when it’s not all-caps.
According to the commentariat, now that the Supreme Court leans conservative, it’s time to blow things up, politically speaking.
A liberal court could find all kinds of things between the lines in the U.S. Constitution, and keep finding them for decades, generations. But once the court’s philosophy changed, the court is now “political” and “brazen” and “extreme.” We read an editorial from a Midwest paper this week that said eliminating the filibuster in the Senate to codify abortion rights in law is “the minimum that should happen.”
To which we’d answer: Well, at least you’re in the right branch now, guys. That’s worthy of a mention. Instead of this debate being held in the courts, it should be held in the legislative and executive branches. Which is what the Dobbs decision said.
Once more from the top: The court didn’t outlaw abortion; it only said the previous ruling that found such a right in the Constitution was an incorrect overreach by the 1973 court. (And legal scholars of all stripes have been saying that for years.)
But abortion drives a lot of voters. A good many of those One Issue Voters can be found in the abortion column, in one group or its opposite. The president knows that, too.
President Biden last week called out the court’s “outrageous behavior,” and said that the Senate filibuster should be scrapped because of it. At least, he said, the filibuster should be scrapped for supporting abortion rights. And maybe voting-rights laws.
“We have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure the Congress votes to do that. And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights; we provide an exception to the filibuster for this action.” Hmmm.
Surely the president—who spent decades in the Senate—knows that once the Rubicon is crossed, there is no going back. Scrap the filibuster to add an abortion rule to federal law, and the filibuster is dead. Eighty-six’d. Color it gone.
If abortion is important enough to change this Senate rule, isn’t banning assault weapons just as important? And wouldn’t many Americans agree to that, especially considering this past week/month/year/pick your timeline?
If abortion is important enough to kill the filibuster in the Senate, isn’t the environment every bit as important? What about the need for all Americans to have access to free health-care insurance? Or for folks to have a “living” minimum wage? What about a raise in the Social Security check given to millions of Americans considering all this inflation?
The president has already called on the Senate to nix the filibuster on an issue as important as voting right laws in the several states. Some of us think we can all make our own lists on what issues are really, really important, too.
And when the Republicans take control again, and they will, they won’t have to fight the filibuster, either. They’ll simply walk over its dead body to do what they want. (Aren’t tax cuts important? Aren’t right-to-work laws?)
The Democrats killed the filibuster for presidential nominees for lower court judgeships in 2013. A few years later, the Republicans killed it for Supreme Court nominees. Have the Democrats in the U.S. Senate forgotten that? Be assured the Republicans haven’t.