This past week's "white noise" out of the administration was typical in its vapidity and occasionally sophomoric venom, but perhaps for the first time, I heard Donald Trump say something with which I agreed...something I have been saying for years: the filibuster rule should be abrogated. Of course this perhaps most profound of legislative reforms got buried in the various self-serving pronouncements we heard, and they were all worthy of scorn. Despite his campaign promise to get us out of Afghanistan, he is adding more troops to our contingent in the international force on the ground--not enough to change anything; just enough to get a few more Americans killed and add a few billion to the cost of our effort. And of course there was the abuse hurled at congress, Republicans in particular, for their failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which I must concede to have been earned given that they had seven years to plan to either put up or shut up, and they did neither. Trump's warning that come 2018 they will pay a price at the polls is probably correct, but I call that just deserts. Of course there was the rebuke of "the fake media" over its treatment of his tardy condemnation of nazis and his half-hearted defense of it thereafter, characterizing some of the "alt-right" demonstrators at Charlottesville "good people" as if the fact that some gun-toting fascists pay their taxes and voted for him vindicates them, and on and on in typical Trump fashion, but the filibuster issue he got right.
The rules surrounding the filibuster allow senators in both parties to, in effect, vote without going on the record. What happens is that some senator proposes "cloture" of debate, which takes 60 votes. Cloture is just a fancy way of saying we are going to stop talking about this now, but as long as debate is still possible--that is a motion for cloture isn't passed--debate is still open and a vote cannot be taken. As a consequence, when an unpopular bill like The Senate's version of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare comes up for consideration, the failure to close debate would be its death knell, except that in this particular case, the bill had been declared budgetary and thus beyond the reach of the filibuster rule. A simple majority of 51 votes could pass the bill. That tactic was necessary because it made Democratic votes superfluous except for the fact that the Republicans couldn't get even a simple majority to vote for their own legislation, much less the "supermajority" necessary to end a filibuster. So, in the end the filibuster rule is the tip of an iceberg that is sabotaging democratic process in our ostensible democracy, as is the identification of bills as budgetary which allows a party with a bare majority avoid the filibuster and thus circumvent the rule that allows circumvention of democracy. Thus, getting rid of the filibuster is a double tap for partisan manipulation of the process because averting the rule by claiming the budgetary exemption would become meaningless and hence one less way in which a slender party majority can be made insurmountable. The capacity of a simple majority to pass a bill would require every senator to go on the record with regard to every issue since any senator has the power to propose a bill if he sees an issue that requires legislation. If every issue were susceptible of resolution in the form of legislation, electoral democracy would be restored and the power of the popular vote would be restored. No senator could claim that his hands were tied and party politics could no longer insulate candidates from issues by subversion of a vote.
Of course, the filibuster issue should be resolved concomitantly with the parallel issues that protect the majority party from going on the record in The House. The speaker of the House can prevent a vote on an issue by departing from what they euphemistically call "regular order" on that side of the capital. That rule should disappear too, and then, our country would be back in our hands. But I think Donald Trump didn't think that all through.
After all, he came to power because of the dysfunction in our congress. If the dysfunction goes away, the need for a dysfunctional president goes with it.
Your friend,
Mike
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