We couldn't wait to elect Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in the elections of 2006. We thought they would end the Iraq war and reverse some of Bush's insane policies. Then not much happened. Why? Two things: the filibuster and the veto. The filibuster, according to the way the rules are set up in the Senate at the present time, allows 41 senators voting as a block to defeat any legislation sent to it by the House. It takes 60 votes for cloture which amounts to ending the filibuster and allowing the legislation to proceed. Since the House and Senate both have to pass the legislation before it's sent to the President, the House is simply spinning its wheels passing legislation, which it can do with a Democratic majority, but which will get stopped cold once it reaches the Senate where it will be filibustered by the Republicans voting in a block. Unfortunately, this legislation will never see the light of day, and the House is wasting its time, but it makes the Congress persons look good. They can say "I voted for this and I voted for that," but it's all to no avail so why bother? Any legislation that does get through both the House and Senate can and has been vetoed by the President if it's not to his liking and any Democrat inspired legislation is not to his liking. So even with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, not much has changed.
The filibuster may be well established in the popular consciousness — think of long-winded senators speechifying for days. But because modern Senate rules allow lawmakers to avoid the spectacle of pontificating by merely threatening the act, filibusters and the efforts to overcome them are being used more frequently, and on more issues, than at any other point in history.
So far in this first year of the 110th Congress, there have been 72 motions to stop filibusters, most on the Iraq war but also on routine issues like reauthorizing Amtrak funding. There were 68 such motions in the full two years of the previous Congress, 53 in 1987-88 and 23 in 1977-78. In 1967-68, there were 5 such votes, one of them on a plan to amend cloture itself, which failed.
For policy making, this is the legislative equivalent of gum on a shoe.
It has produced a numbing cycle of Washington futility: House Democrats pass a bill, but Senate Democrats, facing a filibuster by the Republican minority, fail to get the 60 votes needed to end debate. Little wonder that approval ratings of Congress stink these days.
But, you say, wait till the elections of '08, and then we'll have a Democratic President and Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Surely, the Democrats will be able to bring about change at that point. Unfortunately, the prognosis is not good despite what the Democrats running for the White House say. They are promising change, health care, jobs etc. etc. But the reality is that the Republicans will still be able to defeat any Democrat inspired legislation with the filibuster. Granted they won't have the veto and a Democratic President wouldn't use it anyway. Whether it's Hillary or Obama or Edwards, they would be sitting there willing and eager to sign legislation to get the country back on track and to reverse the insidious policies of the Bush Administration. The problem is that they would need a filibuster proof Senate in order to do that. In other words they would need 60 Democratic seats, and they're not going to get them. They'd need to pick up 9 Democratic seats and keep the ones they have, and 6 of the 9 seats up for election are secure Republican seats according to all estimates. OK, so even if the Democrats win the White House, which is not altogether a foregone conclusion, nothing is going to get done because it would have to get through a Senate which is controlled by a minority of Republicans using the filibuster to defeat all legislation that isn't suitable to them.
So we would be right back where we were when Bill Clinton was in the White House. All legislation going to the President to sign would have to be triangulated which is nothing more than saying it would be Republican controlled. Do you really think Clinton would have repealed the Glass-Steagall Act (which led to the sub-prime mortgage mess), approved NAFTA and CAFTA (which led to the export of middle class jobs) and signed a bill on welfare reform without the Republicans breathing down his neck? His Presidency would have been quite different if the Democrats controlled the House and had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. A new Democratic President in 2008 is going to be faced with the same situation. Since the Democrats have already demonstrated that they won't take the Republicans to the mat, and the Republicans have demonstrated that they will take the Democrats to the mat, the Republicans will remain in control of the nation even with a Democratic President and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. It doesn't take Karl Rove to figure this out.
One possible way out of this morass would be to change the filibuster rule, to make the Republicans actually stay on the floor and filibuster rather than just say they were going to like the rules are set up now. However, it takes a two thirds majority to change the Senate rules and that's not going to happen any time soon. So forget that. We're stuck with a rule which effectively gives a minority of Senators voting in a block the power to defeat any legislation they so desire, and the Republicans have demonstrated time and again their willingness to use it. And, as we know, the Republicans play hardball. They will use every tool at their disposal, every weapon in their arsenal, to prevent any Democratic inspired legislation from ever getting to the President to sign into law. And the Democrats will capitulate because they are wimps and because some of them might as well have been Republicans. They won't vote as a block, and even, if they did, it wouldn't do them any good.
There is one other possibility, and that's been dubbed the nuclear option. The Republicans under Bill Frist threatened to use it. It boils down to a procedural end run around the filibuster.
In 2005, then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to end Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees by something called the "nuclear option." It is actually a series of steps designed to bypass the two-thirds vote requirement to change rules:
- The Senate moves to vote on a controversial nominee.
- At least 41 Senators call for filibuster.
- The Senate Majority Leader raises a point of order, saying debate has gone on long enough and that a vote must be taken within a certain time frame. (Current Senate rules requires a cloture vote at this point.)
- The Vice President -- acting as presiding officer -- sustains the point of order.
- A Democratic Senator appeals the decision.
- A Republican Senator moves to table the motion on the floor (the appeal).
- This vote - to table the appeal - is procedural and cannot be subjected to a filibuster; it requires only a majority vote (in case of a tie, the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote).
- With debate ended, the Senate would vote on the issue at hand; this vote requires only a majority of those voting. The filibuster has effectively been closed with a majority vote instead of a three-fifths vote.
This is exacrtly what the Democrats should do and should use, but they're such wimps that I'd lay odds they won't do it. They'll play nicey nice with the Republicans, they'll try to be "collegial," they'll sell out to the same corporate interests, they'll be eager to dole out pork to their home districts. Forget universal health care (unless it benefits corporate interests), forget the reversal of NAFTA and CAFTA, forget taxing the rich, forget anything that threatens corporate interests. Even if Edwards gets in, he won't be able to take on corporate domination of the government without a filibuster proof majority in the Senate or without using the nuclear option which is really the only hope for meaningful reform starting in 2009. If the Democrats are serious about changing the direction of the US, they need to use every tool available even if it provokes a confrontation with the Repuiblicans. 
The Republicans aren't afraid of confrontation. The Democrats shouldn't be either. They should do whatever's necessary to make majority rule prevail and defeat the filibuster which is antidemocratic and gives a small bunch of Senators representing a small number of citizens overwhelming power. Consider that California and New York contain huge populations. But they only have two senators just like sparsely populated Rhode Island and Wyoming.
The Republicans have turned this country into a corporatocracy and turned it away from a democracy. They've gutted the middle class starting with Reagan. Their agenda is to privatize everything: education, social security, health care. Do the Democrats have the guts to take them on and be as partisan in the implementation of their agenda? Have they even articulated a coherent agenda? I don't think so. The Republicans, at least, have a coherent philosophy and agenda. Where is the Democratic equivalent? If the Republicans can enunciate clearly their philosophy of privatism, the Democrats should be able to enunciate a philosophy which is a rational, balanced combination of capitalism and socialism. Are they afraid of the word? The Republicans aren't afraid of theirs.
