WASHINGTON — Senator Bob Dole had just assumed the mantle of Senate majority leader, after the Republican landslide of 1994, when he confronted a problem.
Piles of Republican legislation from Newt Gingrich’s self-styled ‘‘revolutionary’’ House were stacking up in a narrowly divided, more deliberate Senate, and Democrats were threatening to gum up the works with amendments that would stall the bills.
Comments
wow
The problem we have is not details like filibuster rules and such, it is the silly, antiquated two party system.
Great. Let's go for a one party system. Things will go much more smoothly.
If we had a Prime Minister who formed a cabinet, a multiparty system might work. Unfortunately the President forms his cabinet and the President isn't selected by a coalition of multple parties.
In other words, your comment is what's silly.
Would you rather be angry with the Senate for too little or too much deliberation? I suspect that, at this point, the answer from voters is, "Anything different that has a chance of making it functional. Please!"
The Globe republishes a generally informative article from the NY Times but displays only about a quarter of it, leaving out most background and Senate rule 22, the rule on cloture motions adopted in 1917 to limit filibusters. [ Jonathan Weisman, The Senate's long slide to gridlock, New york Times, November 25, 2012, at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/us/politics/new-senates-first-task-will-likely-be-trying-to-fix-itself.html ] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Even the full article fails to note that filibusters and cloture were never part of the Senate's original history. The Senate functioned for 17 years without allowing filibusters and for 36 more years without one actually occurring. The filibuster is a legacy from the infamous Aaron Burr, who urged on the Senate a custom of unlimited debate in his March, 1805, farewell speech as Vice President. The Senate warmed to his unctuous sense of self-importance and removed rule 8 the following year. There was no actual attempt at seizing the floor for unlimited debate until March, 1841, over an issue of replacing the Senate's printers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The heavy burden of a two-thirds vote to end a filibuster prevented the Senate from ratifying the League of Nations treaty on March 19, 1920. Without U.S. participation, the League became a weak organization and failed to interrupt the march toward violence that produced World War II. From its tawdry origin in 1805 to the present day, the Senate's custom of allowing filibusters has shackled democratic government. Even though it may comprise a majority, a party or a coalition cannot govern.
The filibuster should be retained, in my opinion, but with a short and definite time limit. The limit should be maybe 5 or 7 days, and those filibustering must actually speak from the floor for the entire time, 24 hours a day.
I think those changes would make the filibuster relatively rare, but still available.
How about we return to the original: you can hold the floor with a filibuster for as long as you can stay on your feet and keep flapping your gums.