Real Filibuster Reform Appears to Be Dead in the Senate

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/americanprogressaction/4972157648/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Center for American Progress</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The fight to rewrite the filibuster, that pesky blocking maneuver used by senators to quietly kill a bill before it even arrives on the Senate floor, appears to be over. As the Huffington Post reports, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have cut a compromise deal that will make it easier for the Senate to begin debating new legislation, while also speeding up the process of voting to confirm the president’s judicial nominations. But the deal does not include the major reform liberals wanted: the so-called “talking filibuster,” which would force senators to remain speaking on the Senate floor for as long as they wanted to filibuster.

Here’s more from HuffPost:

[Reid and McConnell] also agreed that they will make some changes in how the Senate carries out filibusters under the existing rules, reminiscent of the handshake agreement last term, which quickly fell apart. First, senators who wish to object or threaten a filibuster must actually come to the floor to do so. And second, the two leaders will make sure that debate time post-cloture is actually used in debate. If senators seeking to slow down business simply put in quorum calls to delay action, the Senate will go live, force votes to produce a quorum, and otherwise work to make sure senators actually show up and debate.

The arrangement between Reid and McConnell means that the majority leader will not resort to his controversial threat, known as the “nuclear option,” to change the rules via 51 votes on the first day of the congressional session. Reid may have been able to get greater reforms that way, but several members of his own party were uncomfortable with the precedent it would have set. And Reid himself, an institutionalist, wanted a bipartisan deal for the longterm health of the institution. Reid presented McConnell with two offers—one bipartisan accord consisting of weaker reforms, and a stronger package Reid was willing to ram through on a partisan vote. McConnell chose the bipartisan route.

The Reid-McConnell deal is nothing to dismiss. It should accelerate the pace of bringing new bills to the floor and confirming nominations in the Senate. But it is a stinging defeat for progressive senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who fought hardest for the talking filibuster.

Merkley and Udall’s proposal makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it. If you want to stymie a piece of legislation, or deny a vote on a judicial nominee of the president’s, then stand up and explain why and don’t stop until you’re done blocking whatever it is you don’t agree with. The way it works now, senators can filibuster in absentia, meaning they don’t need to be on the Senate floor—or even in Washington, DC!—to block a bill. Senators now filibuster more than ever, objecting to even the most routine bills and nominations. As Merkley recently noted, there was just one vote to try to break a filibuster during Lyndon Johnson’s time as Senate leader in the late 1950s; under Harry Reid, there are have been 391 such votes.

But even some Democrats in the Senate didn’t like the talking filibuster idea. They still believe the filibuster will be useful when, inevitably, they’re the minority party in the Senate, and they feel complelled to block the GOP’s agenda. 

The Reid-McConnell compromise is also a blow to the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of labor unions, enviros, voting rights groups, and other progressive outfits that had embraced filibuster reform as its new cause célèbre. That coalition lobbied hard in the Senate this month and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads to promote the talking filibuster. Now they’re left empty-handed. A related filibuster reform group, Fix the Senate, blasted out this statement Thursday morning: “If the agreement proceeds as expected, Senator Reid and the entire chamber will have missed an opportunity to restore accountability and deliberation to the Senate, while not raising the costs of obstruction.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate