It’s time, my fellow senators, that we returned the Congress of the United States of America to the very principles of democracy upon which this great country was founded. Democratic principles, my fellow senators. Democracy. If that word means anything—if it’s not just a word we toss around on the campaign trail—it means majority rule.

Majority rule. The minority does not hold the majority hostage in a democracy. A minority does not get to decide which bills are allowed to pass. That’s not democracy. And that’s why, in this body of 100 senators, it takes exactly 51 senators to pass a bill. Or it should. If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve probably seen this question being asked again and again: “Will the Democrats have the 60 votes needed to get the bill passed in the senate?”

Sixty votes? How did the media get confused about what constitutes a majority of this body? We know exactly how it happened. A certain trick, a certain loophole in our parliamentary procedure, is being abused. It used to be rare for someone to actually exploit this maneuver, so rare that there has never been a serious movement to end it. But today? Filibustering is like speeding. Everybody does it! I’ve done it! Democrats do it when we’re in the minority. The Republicans are doing it now that they’re in the minority. We all understand how it got to this point. As long as we remain trapped in this cycle, our democracy loses. Our democracy is degraded. A minority calls the shots, our elections become a meaningless exercise, and the electorate becomes jaded and angry when no one—not Democrats, not Republicans—can deliver on their campaign promises.

It’s time to close the parliamentary loophole that enables the filibuster. And let’s remind ourselves what this parliamentary rule was supposed to do in the first place: It existed to ensure that everyone got a chance to speak. Because democracy is served when we have an open and honest debate about the merits of a proposed law. That’s what the rule was designed to do. And if we were using the rule to do that, my fellow senators, I wouldn’t be calling for this change. But now it is used to block legislation. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say that a minority of senators has a right to veto legislation. The power of the veto belongs to the president alone. So we must end the filibuster. We can replace it with something else, something that achieves the rule’s original purpose, something that extends debate for, say, a month. But after a month, a simple majority of this democratically elected body should be able to vote a bill up or down with the majority prevailing. That’s democracy.

I get it. I know why some of my fellow Democrats will object to ending—to killing—the filibuster. We opposed ending the filibuster when we were in the minority, and at that time frustrated Republicans were calling for the end of the filibuster. I was one of the biggest defenders of the filibuster back then! But let’s be honest: The party currently exploiting this loophole will always be against closing it because they’re the ones currently abusing it. Which is a damn good reason to close it.

Let’s remind ourselves what happened when the Republicans were in charge and they wanted to end the filibuster: We cut a deal where we Democrats agreed not to filibuster some of their conservative judges and they agreed not to close the loophole. Now does anyone think that they would be willing to cut us the same deal now? Does anyone think that the Republicans and their conservative allies in our own caucus would be willing to let a real health-care bill come to a vote in exchange for “saving” the filibuster? No! Would they be so foolish as to agree to save the filibuster on the condition that they don’t use it? No!

Take health-care reform. Here’s a bill that was once so popular that some on the right feared its passage would guarantee Democratic gains in the 2010 midterm elections! Their only hope was to obstruct as much as possible, to block health-care reform or use the threat of the filibuster to cram a bad bill down our throats, a bill they could hang around our necks in the midterms. And it worked! We are about to pass a health-care-reform bill that pisses everyone off, liberals and conservatives, a bill that won’t solve our health-care crisis and will delegitimize any future effort to solve it. And this bill, crafted to avoid the threat of a filibuster, could wind up costing us our majority in the Senate—and if we lose control of the Senate, do you think the Republicans will respect our right to use the filibuster to thwart their agenda? Of course not! They will threaten to get rid of it—again—unless we agree—again—not to use it.

So let’s get rid of it now so that no one can use it.

If we’re worried about the Republicans making gains in the midterm elections, if we’re worried about getting reelected, we need some big wins now. We need to come through on our campaign promises and pass some meaningful legislation that will help Americans get back on their feet. And we can’t do that while letting a minority subvert the democratic process. It’s time to stand up for democracy. It’s time to close the filibuster loophole once and for all. recommended

David Mitsuo Nixon is a professor at the University of Washington in Bothell. Sometimes when he’s pissed off, he imagines the speech he would give if he were a politician. This is one of those speeches.

32 replies on “Democracy Now”

  2. Why, exactly, do we need to legislate Americans getting back on their feet? Isn’t part of getting back on your own feet doing it on your own? Since when have we been okay with such a big government? Would you let your boss dictate your personal life? So why are you okay with anyone else doing it?

  3. Except that you’re going to need 67 votes to kill the filibuster (cloture for a rule change requires 2/3 rather than 3/5).

    And a good number of Democratic Senators just outright believe in the filibuster.

  4. Let us all just hope (and pray, if you’re into that sort of thing) that a comet comes out of nowhere and slams into the Senate building while they’re in session. God knows it’s the only fucking way we’ll get any new thinkers in there.

  5. If it weren’t for the filibuster the GOP would have privatized social security back in 2005. People’s retirements would have been cut in half and there would be the mother of all bailout bills right now.

  8. When the Republicans had a majority in the Senate, they thwarted Democrats’ ability to use the filibuster by threatening to remove it entirely. So the filibuster is essentially already gone. FOR DEMOCRATS. It’s only an option for Republicans. If the Democrats were in the minority again, the Republicans would again beat back their filibusters with the threat of removing it entirely, or just go ahead and actually remove it. (They might be more inclined to do the latter, knowing that the Democrats might do it when they get a majority.)

    So the crucial point is this: We have only two options. Either we keep the current system where the Republicans can filibuster but the Democrats can’t, or we make it so that no one can. That’s it.

    And since those are the options, wouldn’t it be better to remove the filibuster loophole now, while the Democrats have a majority (instead of waiting for the Republicans to do it when they get a majority?)

  11. I KNOW WHO HOLDS THE FUTURE,
    AND I KNOW WHO HOLDS MY HAND;
    WITH GOD THINGS DON’T JUST HAPPEN–
    EVERYTHING BY HIM IS PLANNED.–SMITH
    A ‘ MERE HAPPENING’ MAY BE GOD’S DESIGN.
    IN ALL YOUR WAYS ACKNOWLEDGE HIM, AND HE SHALL DIRECT YOUR PATHS. PROVERBS 3:6WE ARE AT OUR BEST WHEN WE SERVE GOD BY SERVING OTHERS.
    (NO CAUSE FOR ALARM)
    ANGER LEFT UNCHECKED IS CAUSE FOR ALARM.
    (THE STAR SHEPHERD)
    CAN YOU SPARE A DIME.

  12. It is even worse than David Nixon says. The Senate itself is undemocratic in that small population states have overrepresentation relative to large population states. Add the filibuster, and you get hyper-undemocracy. With the the filibuster and the fact that larger states with urban populations tend to become more liberal over time (Texas is the outlier in this whole deal), you can do the math and come up with a scenario where 25% of the population can veto the will of 75%.

  13. When the Republicans take control of the Senate again (in 2010 or some other year), will you hold firm on this anti-filibuster argument? When the Republican nominate the usual suspects for federal court, will you say ‘no’ to the filibuster by the Democrats? When President Sarah Palin acts to pass her mandate, will you be glad that the filibuster no longer exists?

  14. @13: Respectfully, but you still don’t understand.

    If/When the Republicans take control of the Senate, it won’t matter whether the filibuster loophole has officially been removed or not. The Republicans demonstrated in 2005 that they can break any democratic filibuster by simply threatening (or making good on the threat of) the removal the filibuster permanently. (See, e.g., Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, and William H. Pryor — conservative judge nominees that the Democrats tried to filibuster. The Republicans destroyed their ability to filibuster with the threat of the “nuclear option”. Those 3 are now federal judges.) So you see, the Democrats ALREADY lack the ability to filibuster. If/When the Republicans take control of the Senate, the Republicans ALREADY have the power to nominate whomever they want for federal court. That scenario sucks, but it’s just democracy: When the people you don’t like get a majority in congress, it sucks.

    The only question is whether NEITHER party should be able to filibuster, or it’s just the DEMOCRATS that don’t get to do it. Between those two options, it’s clearly more fair that neither do it.

  15. The only problem with the filibuster is that it no longer has a price.

    A real filibuster is hard to keep up and blocks anything else from getting done. In the 1970s, Democrats introduced a dual-track system allowing the majority leader to set aside one bill and move forward on another. Now you can “filibuster” a bill without doing anything, if the majority leader lets you.

    Let Reid force a real filibuster. Let the Republicans stand 24 hours a day and read from the phone book. Let the voters see who’s holding up the business of the people. How long do you think it would last?

  17. Oh, I understand David Nixon — you want the Democrats to use the filibuster as aggressively as the Republicans. You are upset that they didn’t during their last time out of power.

    I’m saying that when the Republicans take over the Senate — and they will someday — you will be singing a very different tune.

  18. Man – was I misled by the title of the article – The Stranger Recognizes the Imaginary Senator from Washington State. I thought it was going to be about the utter ineptness of the 2 Senators from Washington.

  22. #3 is genius, by the way.

    Mike Mansfield, among other amazing things, introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and slapped Strom Thurmond in his stupid face, parliamentarily speaking, when he lead a filibuster against equality.

  23. An excellent polemic, Professor.

    I would add that when the Commonwealth of Poland (RIP 1792) started allowing a minority to veto anything, the country went straight into the crapper.

  24. If the filibuster is eliminated, then what about the unanimous consent rule? If you eliminate the filibuster, then use of unanimous consent would grind the Senate to a complete stop.

  28. The filibuster “controversy” is a red herring. The party in majority control of either the House of Representatives or the Senate has less to do with party affiliation, be it Republicrat or Neocon, than it does with the REAL underlying problem:

    American voters keep sending idiotic douche bags, greedy a-holes, self-righteous c-wipes, and a paltry few truly well-meaning public servants to Congress.
    It is more important to most voters that our Rep or Senator “bring home the bacon” at any cost. That same kind of person will always be “available” for corruption by some special interest or another. By the way, we are ALL part of one special interest or another.

    The worst of it all is made possible ONLY because the majority of active voters are themselves a-holes or idiots interested mostly in their own narrow interests (and therefore easily manipulated), illiterate of the broad issues, willingly incapable of discerning rhetoric and policy, often because they are easily distracted by “charismatic” personalities, while overlooking candidates of personal character.
    Then there are the “consensus at any cost (including principle)” voters. These voters understand that to acquire and maintain political power, voters of common goals must be prepared to sacrifice some of their own core values. Both major parties suffer from this same philosophy.

    All of this is helped along as we, collectively, choose not to nominate and elect level-headed people who are intelligent, honest, and qualified to navigate, and to ethically operate the complex process of running our own government. Instead, we seem, with rare exception, to favor familiar names, “good” hair, statesman-like personality, gaudy pant suits, impossibly perky and omnipresent smiles, impossible campaign promises, pathetically transparent posturing, and especially, the candidate with a sense of self-empowerment the could make Donald Trump blush.

    Time and again, in the past and in the future, we as a nation, ALWAYS get the government we deserve.

  31. They can ELIMINATE the filibuster alltogether,if they REALLY wanted to,TO-FUCKIN’-DAY;but,they are the puppets of the megarich;so they DON’T……..The U.S.Senate should be ABOLISHED(along with the state senates).Ask Nebraskans how they feel about living with a unicameral legislature.

Comments are closed.