Senate Democrats are on the right track in considering revisions to the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rules rather than elimination of the filibuster altogether. Still, the Senate should make no such procedural reforms unless they are broadly bipartisan.
As our editors have argued, killing the filibuster outright, especially by a party-line vote, is an awful idea. By requiring a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate to pass most ordinary legislation, filibusters ensure minority rights against precipitous action by a bare majority. They also help maintain stability in law while promoting bipartisan consensus-building when the need for change is evident.
Multiple Democratic leaders, eager to grab unprecedented power no matter what the damage to tradition, comity, and systemic stability, have, in recent months, openly pushed the idea of ending filibusters altogether. Apparently, though, the blowback is making them reconsider. The Tuesday Wall Street Journal reported that Democrats are now considering reforms of a less sweeping nature. Good.
One proposal would reduce the filibuster’s threshold from 60 to some smaller supermajority, reduce the amount of time provided for debate, and reinstitute rules that allow the minority party more chances to amend legislation on the Senate floor. For years, I myself have advocated various versions of what once was a mostly Democratic proposal to reduce the needed supermajority percentage incrementally with each cloture vote — thus allowing a minority the chance to delay a bill’s passage long enough to rally more public support, but not permanently kill a bill supported by a determined majority.
Philosophically speaking, that’s the point: We should want at least a sizable minority to have the chance to make a full public case, thus perhaps winning converts to their side, rather than having important legislation rammed through in the heat of political passion. The point isn’t power, but fairness. The long-term health of this constitutional system depends on all sides, both winners and losers on each individual issue, to “buy in” to the system’s reasonableness and be dedicated to its stability.
Toward that goal, both major parties should desire an end to the escalation of almost vicious partisan hardball, relating to the filibuster, that began in 2003, when Senate Democrats broke 214 years of tradition by using a filibuster to kill a judicial nomination enjoying clear majority support. Both parties now know that each time they have escalated, the other party has found ways to use the new rules to hurt the original party’s prerogatives and values. Both parties, therefore, should want an accord on Senate rules with which either party can be satisfied no matter whether in the majority or the minority in future years.
The solution should be obvious: Before this year’s election results are known, the Senate should deputize an equal number from each party to a small, ad hoc committee to revise the filibuster and related rules. The goal should be to make it slightly easier for a determined majority to win the day eventually while expanding opportunities for temporary minorities to participate meaningfully in legislative give and take.
A nation frazzled by apparently unbridgeable partisan divisiveness would be reassured by such an agreement, and faith in the constitutional system would begin to be renewed.
The Senate’s stature and the public weal both would be augmented by such bipartisan reforms.
