In Slate, Michael Moran argues that much of America’s economic difficulties has nothing to do with actual economic problems, and everything to do with the paralysis of the American political system. “Only about 30 percent of the trouble facing the U.S. today is economic,” he writes. “The U.S. economy, compared with all the other developed economies, is in the best structural and demographic shape to weather this storm and ultimately regain its health. But a cancer does exist: The real problem America faces is political, and once again today, it is on stark display.” Moran blames this problem on Americans who don’t vote in primary elections; by leaving the choice of candidates to the partisans of both parties who tend to favor more extreme standard-bearers. “The result: an American economic crisis that is eminently solvable has been trusted to the hands of political hacks representing fringe minority factions within each political parties whose primary incentive is to avoid providing ammunition to the other side. Thus has our political system turned a simple question of accounting into an economic version of the Arab-Israeli conflict – a conflict for which the solution has been clear for 40 years if only either side were willing to deal with reality.”
Well, sure, but blaming 120 million people is the same as blaming no one. I would point the finger at something simpler: the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to cut off debate on a bill. This is usually incorrectly referred to as the number of votes needed to cut off a filibuster, which often leads people to wonder why a majority party doesn’t challenge the minority party to mount an old-fashioned, stand-on-their-feet, gum-up-the-works, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-type babblethon. In fact, the super majority is what is needed to stop senators from adding amendments to the bill, which can be inconsequential and paralytic.
But the super majority is just a rule of the Senate, as changeable as any. Prior to 1975, Rule 22 of the Senate said that it took two-thirds of the Senate to invoke cloture and end a filibuster; in 1975, that number fell to 60. Thirty-five years later, we can see that 60 is still way too high. I understand that the Senate prides itself on its role as the more deliberative of the two houses, the one less reactionary to tides and trends. But as we see, sixty votes doesn’t protect deliberation; it empowers obstruct. It doesn’t protect minorities; it neuters the will of voters.
Just to be clear, protecting the filibuster may be a long-honored custom, but it ain’t the law of the land. Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution says “Each house may determine the rule of its proceedings.” For the first 15 or 20 years of the Senate, there was no right to unlimited debate. After that, the right to filibuster was enacted. By 1917, after a long era of Senatorial obstructionism, the two-thirds threshold was established. The Founding Fathers almost certainly did not envision the establishment of any kind of a super majority, because the gave the Vice President the right to break deadlocks in the Senate when the body was “evenly divided.” Now the body can be deadlocked when the vote stands at 59 to 41, a state of affairs that clearly disenfranchises the Vice President. Although I bet most people don’t care about that.
Let’s start a campaign: Bring Democracy to the US Senate. In January 2013, when a new Senate convenes as part of the 113th Congress, it will have to adopt the rules that will govern its proceedings. Those rules will be adopted by a simple majority vote. We must begin a campaign to persuade the Senate to change Rule 22. to either get rid of the super majority, or at very worst, lower the threshold to 55 votes. Since pledge-signing seems all the vogue these days, let’s get the people who are going to run for the Senate in 2012, incumbents and challengers alike, to pledge that they will end the tyranny of Rule 22.