If You Still Believe in the Filibuster, You Don’t Believe in Progress
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I could go into great detail defining the filibuster, and I will, but all you really need to know is that Senate Republicans use it to stymie basically anything the Democrats want to do, they ignore it when the situation is reversed, and it’s the latest, greatest obstructive technique employed by a body that has been obstructing for centuries. If you see the U.S. Senate as a worthless body where conservatives who represent about 43.5% of the population strangle to death any policy that might help anyone but the ultra-wealthy, you are correct, and you should know that the filibuster is their chief weapon now that they’re in the minority. Sometimes you can bypass the filibuster with reconciliation, as we saw with the COVID relief package, but even in those cases a single parliamentarian can tank something like the $15 minimum wage with an arbitrary ruling. When it comes to screwing the American worker, the Senate usually finds a way.
(A necessary “credit where it’s due” caveat: Even without the minimum wage hike, the COVID relief package is a shockingly progressive piece of legislation and everyone involved in its creation and passage deserves praise, from Biden to Bernie. As we’ll see, this was passed using the process of reconciliation, and further important policy measures will be impossible to enact under the same set of circumstances.)
The problem now is that moderate Democrats believe in norms more than reality, and don’t seem as anxious to end the filibuster as their colleagues on the left. A rational Democrat might look at the polarization of the country, the absolute annihilation of those beloved norms as practiced by Republicans, and the impending doom represented by climate change, pair it with the strange resiliency of the GOP, and conclude that unless you find a way to actually do something, you’ll lose. Which would lead you to the obvious conclusion: Destroy the filibuster or watch the American titanic continue to sink.
That isn’t happening. As Politico reported, the man at the top of the party, Joe Biden, doesn’t even believe in filibuster reform, much less abolition.
“The president’s preference is not to get rid of the filibuster,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, repeating Biden’s position on maintaining the rule. “His preference is not to make different changes to the rules, to the filibuster rules.”
That’s miserable news to activists who are fighting for policies like the $15 minimum wage, because it signals that nothing will stop Senate Republicans from swatting those policies down at will.
Let’s talk about the filibuster. It exists because of the cloture rule, which requires 60 of 100 senators to vote to end debate on most measures. It has been a long, long time since either party had 60 members, and considering how starkly divided our country is, and how gerrymandered the Senate itself is—to the advantage of low population Republican states—it will be a long time before we do again. When you consider that most major votes fall along strict party lines, you can quickly see the consequence: if one party doesn’t like a policy, they can simply prolong the debate indefinitely until the other side gives up. That’s a filibuster, and the threat of it means it doesn’t even have to be used in many cases, since there’s no point in wasting time with a doomed policy. This leads to a state of partisan gridlock, and there aren’t very many good answers for it.