A decent cap and trade bill.
A near universal healthcare plan with a strong public option.
Relatively strong financial regulatory reform with a new Consumer Protection Agency.
All these are center-left pieces of legislation. And all of them have passed….the House of Representatives, where majority rule operates. The House also best reflects the will of the people because its members face the voters every two years.
The Senate, undemocratic by design, is the reason none of the above bills has made it to President Obama’s desk. To get the Constitution ratified, the Founding Fathers gave small states the same number of senators as large states; it was not done for reasons of principle. A majority of 51 senators could easily represent 65% of the population if most of the large coastal and Midwestern states are included—which means, in fact, that a simple majority in the Senate can easily mean a supermajority of the American people. States like North Dakota have so few people that they have more senators (two) than representatives (one), and yet they hold tremendous sway over legislation affecting hundreds of millions.
But today’s situation, in which a filibuster-proof 60 senators are required to pass anything at all—the first time this has regularly been the case in U.S. history—means that a super supermajority is always needed: senators representing close to 75% of the population. Think how truly staggering this is: no other advanced democracy needs anything like this to pass legislation. No wonder we’re at a virtual standstill in the Senate.
We live in a center-left nation, but we’re stuck with institutions that allow reactionary forces to control the legislative process. While it can be argued that some supermajority requirements were built into the Constitution, there is no Constitutional requirement for 60 votes in the Senate; a simple majority of 51 should be able to pass all bills.
Which brings us to tradition.
The Constitution permits the Senate to make its own rules, and the filibuster was adopted in close to its current form in the first half of the 20th century (though it’s never been abused as it is today). The Founding Fathers would probably be aghast at the idea of filibuster, and would absolutely be aghast at how frequently it’s used.
While the Republicans deserve the contempt of the American people for abusing this procedural measure, their conduct is predictable; they’re no longer a serious political party, they’re a refuge for ideologues and fanatics completely divorced from reality.
Ultimately, the blame resides with the Democrats. They squandered many months of a filibuster-proof majority, and amazingly topped it off by losing Ted Kennedy’s senate seat.
Even now, with 59 senators, they have more seats than when Obama took office (58), and many avenues to pursue their agenda. They need only 51 votes to use reconciliation (the process Bush used for both of his tax cuts); this could be put to use quickly to modify the healthcare bill so that the House would pass the Senate’s version. This is simply a must. Anything short of this would be a political and moral disaster: the Democrats spent almost a year on healthcare reform, and the need grows every day. Failure to pass a comprehensive bill would be a betrayal of the American people, especially the Democratic base who worked so hard to get so many elected.
The Senate can also bring to the floor the rest of the House agenda, including stringent financial regulatory reform, and force the GOP legislators to vote against it (instead of watering it down to attract one or two stray Republicans). If the GOP filibusters, Democrats can bring the bill to the floor again and invite the news media in. Make headlines about how 59 Senators are trying to rein in the banks, combat global warming, and create a citizenship path for 12 million illegal immigrants, but 41 Republicans are standing in the way of an up or down vote. People need to see the abuse that’s going on.
In addition, the White House could do a lot better job messaging. It was excellent that the President addressed GOP obstructionism in his State of the Union speech, but the argument needs to be made more directly. The American people need to know that Obama’s agenda has already made it through one branch of the Congress, and is being held up by minorities who won’t let democracy work. People should be urged to call, email and write key senators who could overturn these roadblocks.
Institutions change only through struggle; they never evolve solely on their own. In this vein, some of the next pieces on VoR will point to contacts and initiatives that can help us break the gridlock.
It’s time for the center-left agenda that America voted for to be enacted. We tried the hard right agenda in the Bush years and it failed, miserably. It’s time for a new direction. If that direction fails, voters can once again choose a different course. First, it needs to be given a chance.
Jason Scorse