San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Filibuster’s racist past drives calls for its end
WASHINGTON — Once obscure, the Senate filibuster is coming under fresh scrutiny not only because of the enormous power it gives a single senator to halt President Biden’s agenda, but as a tool historically used for racism.
Senators and those advocating for changes to the practice say the procedure that allows endless debate is hardly what the founders intended, but rather a Jim Crowrelic whose time is up. Among the most vivid examples, they point to landmark filibusters including Strom Thurmond’s 24hour speech against a 1957 Civil Rights bill as ways it has been used to stall changes.
The debate ahead is no longer just academic, but one that could make or break Biden’s agenda in the split 5050 Senate. Carrying echoes of that earlier Civil Rights era, the Senate is poised to consider a sweeping elections and voting rights bill that has been approved by House Democrats but is running into a Senate Republican filibuster.
In a letter Friday, nearly 150 groups called on the Senate to eliminate the filibuster, saying the matter takes on fresh urgency after passage of more restrictive new elections law in Georgia, which could be undone by the pending “For the People” act that’s before Congress.
“The filibuster has a long history of being used to block voting rights, civil rights, and democracyprotecting bills,” said Fix our Senate and a roster of leading progressive and advocacy groups focused on gun control, climate change, immigration and other issues.
“Senate Democrats will soon face a choice: Protect our democracy and pass the For the People Act, or protect the filibuster — an outdated and abused ‘Jim Crow relic’ that deserves to be tossed into the dustbin of history.”
The pressure is mounting on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats as time ticks on Biden’s priorities. With the narrow Senate and the Democrats holding just a slim majority in the House, it’s clear that Republicans will be able to easily block bills from passing Congress.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell recently declared it “fake history” to suggest a racial component to the filibuster practice. In a Senate speech, McConnell recalled times the filibuster was used by both parties, including just last year when Democrats were in the minority and used it to block other bills. “It’s not a racist relic,” McConnell said.
Established almost by accident in a way that allows unlimited debate, the filibuster practice dots early congressional history, but entered the lexicon on the eve of the Civil War. By the early 20th century, it was used to block antilynching bills but became more widely used in recent years, sharpened as a procedural weapon to grind any action to a halt in the Senate.
To overcome a filibuster takes 60 votes, but some Democratic senators have proposed lowering that threshold to 51 votes, as has been done to allow approval of executive and judicial nominees. Senate Democrats hold the slim majority this session because under the Constitution, the Vice President, Democrat Kamala Harris, can cast the tiebreaking vote
McConnell himself changed the filibuster practice when Republicans were in the majority, stunning Washington when he maneuvered the Senate to lower the 60vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees to 51 votes, enabling Republicans to install three of Donald Trump’s high court judicial nominees over Democratic objections.
The topranking Black member of Congress, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, warned senators recently that he would not be quiet if they used the filibuster to halt action on raising the minimum wage and other Democratic priorities. “We’re not just going to give in to these arcane methods of denying progress,” the South Carolina Democrat said, hearkening back to Thurmond’s speech.
But it would take all Democrats to agree to change the rules, and some centrists, including Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., are not on board. “There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster,” he wrote in a recent oped.