Reform the Senate Filibuster and Restore American Democracy

BY JOEL MCNALLY

Last month, President Joe Biden passed the first major legislation of his presidency creating a massive national vaccination program to end an uncontrolled pandemic and pouring money into the U.S. economy the deadly virus destroyed. It was celebrated as exactly what Biden was elected to do. Unfortunately, Biden’s first piece of vitally needed legislation also could be his last.

That’s a shocking statement to make in the early months of a popular president elected with the largest vote in American history. It’s also the harsh reality of the vicious, anti-democratic tactics of today’s Republican Party. The word “democratic” in this case, is spelled with a capital D or a small d.

Consider the vote on Biden’s desperately needed recovery plan. If anything can bring Democrats and Republicans together for the good of the country, it’s legislation supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, right? Wrong. Three days before the Senate voted, a Morning Consult poll found 77% of voters supported Biden’s plan, including 59% of Republicans. That didn’t stop every Senate Republican from opposing it just as every House Republican did a week earlier.

Elected Republicans really don’t care what the majority of the Americans want. Having lost the presidency, all that Republicans really care about is preventing Biden’s presidency from being successful. That’s just the opposite of what the majority of Americans want. The cruel Republican calculation is that, if Biden fails to return American lives to normal, voters will take it out on Democrats in the midterms and Republicans could regain power. Midterms usually attract fewer voters, and Republicans know they do better when fewer Americans vote.

SACRED PRINCIPLE?

Here’s the scariest part. With the razor-thin Democratic control of the Senate—a 50-50 split with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking tie votes—Republicans have a wicked, undemocratic (small d) Senate rule that could destroy Biden’s presidency. Republicans never describe the Senate filibuster rule that way, of course. They call it a sacred constitutional principle designed to protect minority rights in a democracy.

That’s just another Republican lie. Our nation’s founders never heard of the filibuster. Their basic principle of democracy was after robust congressional debate, a vote would take place and the majority would prevail. That’s just the opposite of the present-day tyranny of a minority that’s transformed the Senate into a legislative graveyard preventing popular bills from ever coming to a final vote. It’s the

latest undemocratic chapter in the filibuster’s mostly shameful history.

The first rudimentary Senate filibuster was invented in the 1840s by South Carolina Sen. John C. Calhoun to defend slavery from northern abolitionists as a “positive good” civilizing Africans into American life. But Calhoun’s filibusters could only delay the inevitable with long-winded speeches leading up to the Civil War.

KILLING LEGISLATION

The irony is that it was a successful, two-day, anti-war filibuster in 1917 led by Wisconsin’s progressive Republican Sen. “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, Calhoun’s polar opposite, that created the weaponized, modern-day Senate filibuster now used by a rightwing Senate minority to kill progressive legislation. For the next half-century until passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the primary use of the filibuster again was by racist southern senators to block civil rights legislation including anti-lynching laws. LaFollette’s was one of the few filibusters ever used for a progressive cause. LaFollette prevented President Woodrow Wilson from arming American merchant ships that were being harassed by German U-boats, a pacifist attempt to keep America out of World War I. The short protest worked because the Senate faced a legal deadline for adjournment. But U.S war fever was so high, it prompted a fierce, national backlash burning mock senators in effigy. Wilson demanded the Senate reconvene and change its rules, leading to a 76-to-3 vote passing Rule 22.

Rule 22 has now been corrupted beyond recognition in the modern Senate, turning it upside down. It originally required a supermajority of two-thirds of the Senate (later lowered to three-fifths, today’s 60 votes) to shut down minority filibusters. But senators are no longer required to debate during filibusters. That made the filibuster an even stronger weapon for the minority to thwart the majority. Senators on the losing side simply announce a filibuster. Unless the majority can pass a bill with 60 votes, it loses without another vote taken. Sixty votes are now required to pass most major Senate legislation. The only reason Biden could pass his recovery plan with a simple majority vote was through a budget reconciliation process. Democrats can only use that process two more times for budget measures before the midterms. Democrats shouldn’t expect to pass any other legislation in the Senate until they rewrite the filibuster rule. Ten Republican senators didn’t even vote with Democrats to prevent a deranged president from ever sending another raging mob to the Capitol to murder them.

After living through a president who has tried to destroy American democracy, it’s always a good idea to start restoring some of democracy’s basic principles like majority rule in the Senate and the right to vote even if you don’t vote Republican.

Joel McNally was a critic and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal for 27 years. He has written the weekly Taking Liberties column for the Shepherd Express since 1996.