This is unexpected: every single returning Senate Democrat has signed a letter urging Harry Reid to change the rules surrounding filibusters when the new Congress convenes in January. Ezra Klein has a good take on this:
They say elections have consequences. So too, it turns out, does obstruction.
….It’s no surprise that some Senate Democrats want to see the practice reworked. What’s remarkable is that all Senate Democrats want to see it reworked. It’s not just the young senators like Jeff Merkley and Tom Udall and Michael Bennett, but the older veterans like Barbara Mikulski and Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin.
Their unity stems from an unlikely source: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has mounted more filibusters in the past two years than occurred in the ’50s and ’60s combined. Uncontroversial bills like an extension of unemployment benefits that passed 97-0 and food-safety legislation that passed with 73 votes frequently faced multiple
filibusters and months of delay. The minority has been so relentless and indiscriminate in deploying the once-rare failsafe that the majority has finally decided to do something about it.
There’s no telling exactly what changes Democrats might try to impose, and no telling if they have the gumption to do it on their own if they can’t garner any support from the Republican leadership for a bipartisan compromise reform. For one thing, if they aren’t able to come to a compromise agreement with Mitch McConnell, any attempt to change the rules would require favorable rulings from the president of the Senate, Joe Biden. And obviously his support would depend on whether his boss goes along.
So we’ll see. But this is actually a suprisingly auspicious time to take action. On the Democratic side, you have a lot of anger caused by the relentless obstruction and bad faith from the Republican caucus over the past two years. On the Republican side, you have the fact that they control the House, which means they don’t have too much to fear from a filibuster-less Senate in the immediate future. The real benefit of reform would come sometime down the road when a single party once again controls both houses of Congress and the presidency, and there’s no telling which party will be in charge the next time that happens. In any case, January might turn out to be pretty interesting. Stay tuned.
