In an article for the Boston Globe, Joshua Green railed against the filibuster, a congressional procedural tactic of the minority party to prevent something coming up for a vote. In his article, well written and occasionally humorous, Mr. Green details the many bills and measures that would have been passed were it not for the dreaded filibuster. He further hammered the point that the Republicans have filibustered proposed legislation over 85 times. However, his article is not entirely partisan and instead rests on the very nature of a filibuster. He even quotes a University of Miami political professor (I normally call them pundits) who declared Congress was not functional any longer. Here is a little history lesson – there has not been many moments in history when Congress operated the way Mr. Green romanticized it did.
There are a couple of things to take from this article. One, Congress was never meant to be a well-oiled, highly efficient body capable and often producing hundreds of laws a session. It is designed to be cumbersome, time consuming and dysfunctional. The House of Representatives was originally conceived as the people’s house, in much the same way as the House of Commons within the British Parliament was designed to represent the great unwashed, the hoi polloi if you will. Representatives were given only two year terms. This does two things. One, it makes representatives more panicky and more likely to make decisions in a knee jerk response to immediately mollify their constituents. Second, it allows the public to more quickly vote out or re-elect a representative, based on their legislative actions. However, any political body that is directly answerable to the public must be counter-balanced, as it were. Here is where the Senate comes in.
The Senate, prior to 1916, was not elected by the people but rather by the representatives of his/her state. Senators serve six year terms and as such, are much more deliberate and exacting in their legislative output. This was meant as a check on the sometimes impulsive nature of the Lower House. The Senate, a more powerful form of the British House of Lords, was meant to prevent the government from going into directions that, upon further reflection, it would prefer not to go. To do this, one thing that is missing from the Senate that is prominent in the House is the powerful Rules Committee. In the House, the Rules Committee set up the guidelines of how a bill is argued, including how long debates will last. The Senate does not have this committee in the way it is seen in the House. Without the power of the House committee, the Senate can not easily put the brakes on the consideration of a bill.
The filibuster requires the majority party to have at least sixty votes to end the stalling technique. This is called a cloture vote. If the majority party can muster the votes, it can break the filibuster. Mr. Green bemoaned all the things that did not happen because of an obdurate Republican minority in the Senate. However, we are talking about things that had barely a majority support or, otherwise, a cloture vote would end the delay. It also suggests that some of the opposition to much of what was filibustered was comprised of bi-partisan support, given the margin of defeat. While we have a winner-take-all system in our government, we also fear the potential of a powerful majority.
Many people take swipes at our Congress. Mostly, it is against individual members of Congress, not necessarily their own elected members or the Congress as a whole. Critics cry about the ineffectiveness of the Congress and often, advocates will champion a sad-sack case as representative of the damage being caused. Yet, they miss the point all together. Not only are the government in general and the Congress in particular not designed for the needs of the individual (it is responsible for the well-being of the whole), it is also not designed to blithely and thoughtlessly succumb to reactionary pressure. To change the government or, worse, change the Constitution is a serious thing and must only be embarked upon after a most deliberate consideration. It is the way Congress was meant to be.
To see the article referred to in this article, check out:
bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/05/17/taking-word/QrHaNvodpWOtRXy6bTKZ3M/story.html
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