So, what we might end up with is a Senate Democratic Caucus that holds 98% of its members but still fails to pass healthcare reform, AND a mob of angry progressives who are screaming for the heads of "the Democrats." This isn't fair, but more importantly, it's self-defeating. If progressives REALLY want to transform America, they'll make an issue of the anti-democratic rules of the Senate which make real change virtually impossible.
Someone around here had a crazy idea along those very lines...I would hope this is one Senator's vote liberals could count on should a filibuster reform measure actually ever reach a vote.
To chime in on Chris' ambitious proposal to kill the filibuster, I'd like to add some context, and a possible starting list for the 7 Democratic Senators that Chris argues would be needed to effect its demise.
When Lieberman announced he would filibuster the public option, it soon emerged that Lieberman had once crusaded against the filibuster, even going so far as to make an effort to significantly limit it in 1995.
Lieberman (and Harkin) introduced a measure that would effectively end the ability of minority to indefinitely delay action, by providing for a series of decreasing thresholds needed to invoke cloture, until eventually a majority (of Senators "chosen and sworn", not present) could invoke cloture. While it was not total destruction of the filibuster, it was the end of the ability of 41 Senators to kill major legislative priorities of the majority.
The amendment was introduced at the start of the 104th Senate, just after Gingrich and Lott swept into power in the 1994 blowout. His timing suggests he agreed with Chris' theory that a Republican Senate majority may be necessary to do this. After all, the Republicans had just taken over the Senate for the first time since 1986, and might be tempted to collude with a few Democrats in giving themselves the power to rule by simple majority. As it turned out, in 1995 they were not prepared to do so. A few days later the amendment was "tabled" (killed) in a roll call vote of 76-19. The 19 who voted "nay" on this motion are the most likely candidates for Senators who would be most open to eliminating the filibuster. Of them, the following Senators are still in office:
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenburg (D-NJ)
Lieberman (I-CT)
Pryor (D-AR)Update: This was the father of the current Sen. Pryor.
Additionally, Leahy (D-VT) and Rockefeller (D-WV) didn't vote on the measure and are listed as "not present."
Ruling out Lieberman of course, that leaves 7 living Democratic Senators who have actually voted to significantly damage the power of the filibuster. Pryor, as a member of the "Gang of 14" (along with Lieberman) in 2005 is probably not going to go along, but if Leahy or Rockefeller joins, and the other 6 still feel the same, Chris may already have his Gang of 7.
Inside, the text of the Lieberman/Harkin amendment, and Lieberman's complete speech that day. I rather hope if Chris' plan comes to pass, another Senator rises to support it and reads it verbatim just to spite Holy Joe.
With the Republicans becoming locked into being the party of No/Hell, No/Not Ever/Nada/Absolutely Not/Never Ever, Democrats are going to need to seriously consider revising the rules of the Senate at the beginning of next term. The gritty reality of the Senate rules minefield is making the passage of health care reform way too complicated. But it's virtually impossible to change the Senate rules in the middle of a term, so we are stuck with getting this thing done with the rules we have.
Fortunately, the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill and at the White House are completely bound and determined that they will pass a health care reform bill by any means necessary. We have come too far, spent too much time and political capital, to turn back now. I think almost everyone in the party (except maybe 3 or 4 Senators) understand the disastrous consequences of not getting a bill passed.
There are, however, two realities that in combination make getting the deal done really complicated.
The first is that the progressive wing of the party is as dug in as I have ever seen them on having some form of a public option in this bill. This reality, which has been building for months now because of stronger progressive leadership in Congress and a powerful grassroots campaign to push for the public option, has been slow to dawn on the Washington elite, but my sense is that progressives are getting more determined on the issue every day , not less, and that with their rhetoric, their promises to activists, their signatures on letters promising to oppose anything without a public option, that their willingness to give on the issue has gone out the door.
The other reality is that getting the final four or five moderate Senators to vote to let this bill get passed at the end of the process- whether to take it to conference committee or for final passage- is extremely difficult. Between a range of factors including genuine policy and ideological concerns, worries about conservative home state politics, fears about money being cut off from the insurance industry for their campaigns, desire to extract every possible concession on every possible subject, and the egos of being a Senator, getting every last Democratic Senator is a massive challenge. This would be true, by the way, with or without the public option, but the high-profile symbolism of the public option just raises the degree of difficulty with some of these Senators.
I actually think Harry Reid is doing a remarkable job working with the holdouts. He has gotten a lot of criticism over the past few months, but given the Senate rules, he is doing a remarkable job working every last angle to get this bill moving (beginning of next term, you gotta get the rules changed, though, Senator). He is now really close to getting the 60 votes to get this bill to the floor for debate, and I think that will happen.
The biggest question, though, is what happens next. No one wants to go the reconciliation route because given those ugly Senate rules, it is just a convoluted mess to do things that way. It would take more time, create enormous logistical hassles and tie-ups, and almost certainly force the bill to be broken into two parts, one that would go through the reconciliation process and one that could not because its provisions aren't directly related to the budget. I can understand why Reid and the White House would rather not go down that path unless they absolutely must.
Unless all 60 Democrats stick with Harry Reid, though, that's what they will have to do. Getting this omelet done may require breaking a few Senatorial eggs. Having talked with some Senate staffers, I know they are preparing for every contingency, including reconciliation, and that's a very good thing, because I think that's what this will probably come down to in the end. I know it's a messy, irritating, uncomfortable way to get the deal done. But if any of those Senators decide they want to say no, and don't want to be players on the most important piece of legislation in at least 50 years, so be it. This legislation is too important not to pass.
Progressives rejoiced when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this week that the final Senate health care bill would include a public option. The announcement was a major victory for left-wing Democrats.
Better yet, it would be a public option without a trigger. Earlier proposals called for a triggered public option which would only take effect if private insurers failed to bring down costs on their own. Under the opt-out compromise, the public option would come on line automatically (albeit not until 2013), but states would later have the option of quitting.
The jubilation was short-lived. Alex Koppelman of Salon explains:
Progressives didn't even get 24 hours to celebrate the victory they won in getting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a version of the public option in his health care reform bill. The celebration was cut off Tuesday afternoon with the news that Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., will vote with Senate Republicans to filibuster the legislation.
The Democrats have 60 Senate votes. If they all vote for cloture, a procedural motion to stop debate, the Republicans can't filibuster the bill. The Senators who vote for cloture can still vote against the bill. Reid's strategy for passing the bill was to get all Democrats to vote for cloture and let them vote their conscience on the actual bill. Even without Lieberman, Democrats have the votes to pass the bill by majority vote if they can avoid a filibuster.
Health care is the most important domestic policy initiative of the Obama administration. Would Joe Lieberman really torpedo reform? The Senate leadership thinks Reid is bluffing, according to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly.
I understand the argument. Lieberman loves attention and power. By threatening to join the Republican filibuster, he gets both-Democrats have to scramble to make him happy, since there's no margin for error in putting together 60 votes. Lieberman gets to feel very important for the next several weeks by making this threat less than 24 hours after Harry Reid stated his intentions, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to be known forever as The Senator Who Killed Health Care Reform.
I find it very easy to believe, however, that Lieberman is capable of doing just that. He left himself some wiggle room, but not when it comes to the public option-he's against it, no matter what, even with all of the compromises thrown in.
In other words, if this is all a ploy for leverage, why would Lieberman open by swearing that he won't support a bill with a public option? You'd think he'd just say he was keeping his options open and force Reid to make him a counter-offer. Reid has already decided that the public option is politically non-negotiable. He's afraid that the base won't come out for the 2012 elections if they don't get what they want. Benen speculates that Lieberman wants to be the Senator Who Killed Health Care because he wants to drum up massive Republican support for his 2012 reelection bid. On this theory, Lieberman is joining Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-SC) and Balloon Dad in the quest to make bank on ridiculous publicity stunts.
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) says that she will side with the Republicans to filibuster the bill "if she has to," as Evan McMorris-Santoro reports for TPM. Snowe was the only Republican to vote for the Finance Committee's health care bill.
Reid must walk a fine line. The administration really can't afford to alienate organized labor before the 2012 elections. Newly elected AFL-CIO President Ricahrd Trumka continues to push for his three core demands for health care reform: a public option, a mechanism to make employers pay their fair share, and no taxes on health care benefits. Last week, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said that his union would oppose legislation that taxed benefits, but Trumka hasn't gone that far, as David Moberg reports at Working In These Times.
Finally, in other health-related news, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the division of the Labor Department that oversees workplace safety, has issued a sweeping new report condemning Nevada's state-level OSHA program. As I report for Working in These Times, the investigators found that NOSHA inspectors were being pressured by their superiors to write up employers on lesser charges, even when their repeat offenses killed workers.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
This week's biggest health care story shouldn't even be making headlines: Democratic leaders in the Senate are finally pressuring the entire caucus to help bring a health care bill to the floor by sticking with the party on procedural motions. Astute readers will ask: "But aren't Senators supposed to stick with their party on procedural motions?" Yes, of course they are.
Health care reform is the Democrats' biggest political battle in two generations and the crown jewel of the president's domestic agenda. It's hardly unreasonable to demand that Senate Democrats side with their party to defeat a filibuster.
Democrats knew Republicans would filibuster a health care bill no matter what. So the central political question was how to thwart them. The options were: Pick off enough Republican votes to defeat a filibuster, pass the bill with a simple majority through budget reconciliation, or demand that all 60 Democratic senators vote as a bloc to defeat a filibuster. (These senators could still vote against the bill, if they so chose, but without a filibuster the bill would pass by majority vote.) The first strategy failed spectacularly, and the second was controversial and difficult to execute. The last option is the simplest and most obvious. It's scandalous that it took Senate leadership all summer to lay down the law.
At TAPPED, Mori Dinauer argues that "'moderates' who are holding out are uninterested in how their intransigence looks to the rest of the Democratic party, but knowing the pressure's on makes it all the more likely reform passes a floor vote." They don't care how it looks, but they certainly care if the party leadership is prepared to cut off their fund raising dollars to make a point.
A bill is beginning to seem like a fait accompli to some Democrats, but the opponents of health reform aren't giving up without a fight, reports Christina Bellantoni in Talking Points Memo. The GOP-allied Tea Party Express is undertaking a massive fund raising drive for "The Countdown to Judgment Day," which is one year to the day before the 2010 elections. The Tea Party Express is a major force behind the disruptive town hall health care protests.
In Salon, Mike Madden argues that the prospects for passing a bill with a public option are looking up as Democrats begin the horsetrading that will combine the various health bills passed by Congress into a single piece of legislation:
Congressional aides and outside activists say the White House is still pushing for the public option in private talks. A growing number of Democrats in the Senate say they think the bill will include some form of public option, including Majority Leader Harry Reid and health committee chairman Tom Harkin. "President Obama has said all along that the public health insurance option is his first choice" for making health insurance affordable, said Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, a union-backed coalition that supports reform. "We want to make sure he gets his first choice."
Switzerland and the Netherlands are frequently cited as examples of countries that contain costs and cover everyone without a public option. However, as The Nation's Eyal Press explains, these countries have only managed to do so by eliminating for-profit health insurance, which in the American context, would be a far more radial solution than a public option.
In Mother Jones, James Ridgeway takes the New York Times to task for a story about the conflicts within the AARP over health reform. Members in their fifties have a different perspective on private vs. public health insurance than those over 65 who already qualify for Medicare. As Ridgeway explains, it's the status quo that's pitting Americans of different ages against each other. If Medicare covered everyone, age would cease to be a third rail in future health policy discussions.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Ed. note: The Weekly Pulse is becoming the Daily Pulse for September. Every weekday, we'll bring you highlights from the health care reform debate, including exclusive video interviews with leading experts and independent journalists each Friday. Even better, you can be a part of the conversation. Stay tuned to find out more!
A power shift is underway in Washington. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick announced on Monday that a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would not take place until January 19, 2010. With Kennedy's seat empty, the Democrats no longer have the 60 votes they need to break a filibuster in the Senate. Up until this point, the White House was hoping for a compromise bill that the entire Democratic caucus, and maybe even a few Republicans, could agree on.
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes that the Gang of Six has made itself irrelevant. These powerful members of the Senate Finance Committee were in charge of hammering out a bipartisan health care bill. They forgot that they were only powerful if people believed a bipartisan compromise was attainable.
Talking Points Memo reports that the White House has given up on Republican gangster Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY). They finally got the hint when Enzi told a radio listeners that Democrats wanted to kill the elderly with comparative efficacy research. The White House should have cut its losses two weeks ago when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) repeated the "death panel" meme at a town hall meeting. Grassley has also been raising money campaigning against "Obama-care."
It's looking more and more like the Democrats will have to look to budget reconciliation, a special parliamentary procedure that could sidestep a filibuster and pass a healthcare bill by a simple majority vote.
America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's top lobby group, dispatched 50,000 employees to town halls to fight the public option. Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones took a cue from Michael Moore in Sicko. She asks AHIP what kind of insurance their top lobbyist has. Mencimer says AHIP was so standoffish you'd think she had a preexisting condition.
In Mother Jones, Ben Buchwalter and Nikki Gloudeman take a closer look at the corporate megabucks behind the town hall brawls. Corporate enemies of healthcare reform are using front groups like FreedomWorks to organize angry mobs at town hall meetings. Zach Roth of TPM Muckraker reports that "legendary GOP bamboozler" Howard Kaloogian has launched a tea party bus tour to protest healthcare reform.
Speaking of frauds, you've probably heard about so-called crisis pregnancy centers that pose as abortion clinics in order to cajole women into having babies. Ever wonder what happens to those babies? In the Nation, Kathryn Joyce goes inside the world of high-pressure Christian adoption agencies that support desperate women, as long as they promise to give up their babies.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on health care affordability, health care laws, and health care controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Will healthcare reform include a public health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance? President Obama campaigned on the promise of a public option, but over the past week he and his top advisers have repeatedly signaled that they aren't willing to fight for it.
On Saturday, Obama told a town hall meeting in Colorado: "Whether we have it or we don't have it, [the public option] is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it."
"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," an unnamed senior White House official gripes in this morning's Washington Post.
The White House is sorely mistaken if it thinks that the public option belongs in the "nice but not necessary" category. Josh Holland of AlterNet explains why the public option is the pillar of healthcare reform. Without it, there's little hope of containing costs or reigning in the power of insurance companies:
It may be just one "aspect" of health reform, but without it, the legislation promises to be a massive rip-off; a taxpayer give-away of hundreds of billions of dollars to an unreformed 'disease care' industry.
The industry would get millions of new customers thanks to generous government subsidies and a law requiring that (almost) everyone carry insurance. And that windfall would come without the structural changes needed to bend the medical "cost curve" in years to come -- without any provisions that might endanger the industry's bottom line.
In Salon, Robert Reich agrees. Competition between private insurance companies and the public option is the only hope to controlling costs. A public plan could bargain with providers to reduce costs and pass the savings on to taxpayers. The private insurance industry would have to slash its prices to compete.
Without a public option, "reform" would likely involve subsidies to private insurance companies, temporarily dulling the pain as premiums rise unchecked. That's the worst of both worlds.
Progressives shouldn't be surprised at the White House's noncommittal stance, though. Obama campaigned on a public option, but he has always framed it a darned good idea, not as a non-negotiable demand.
Why is it so difficult to get a healthcare bill through the Senate with the supposedly filibuster-proof majority? The simple answer is that the Dems need 100% of their delegation to cooperate in order to break a filibuster. So, the Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate but no way to advance their agenda without capitulating to the conservative Blue Dogs. The Republicans can be counted on to filibuster whatever the Democrats come up with. Which means that conservative Democrats like Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) hold the balance of power.
As Ari Melber of The Nation explains, Baucus and his Republican counterpart Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also rule over the powerful and conservative Senate Finance Committee, which has been tasked with writing the Senate version of the healthcare bill.
Also in The Nation, Tom Geoghegan argues that it's time to break the stranglehold by abolishing the procedural filibuster. Unlimited debate in the Senate is enshrined in the constitution. In an old school filibuster, senators simply refuse to shut up until the session ends and the bill dies without a vote. In 1975, a group of liberals wrote a rule of Senate procedure that effectively allows senators to "filibuster" simply by saying they want to. In the old days, a filibuster was a grueling public ordeal. Senators slept on cots and spelled each other off. Today, "filibustering" means signing a form. It's private, easy and cost-free. The Republicans can, and will, filibuster all major Democratic legislation without having to stand in public and risk being branded as obstructionists.
As a result, 60 is the new 50 in the Senate. Since it's just a rule, the procedural filibuster could be abolished by a simple majority vote. Friends of the filibuster defend it as a bulwark against tyranny. Abolishing the procedural filibuster would discourage frivolous obstructionism, but keep the filibuster for cases when legislators actually care enough to lose sleep over it.
Ever wonder why the strongest public option, single-payer, was never on the table? Maybe because even the strongest proponents of the public plan are taking money from the insurance and biomedical industries. Mother Jones Rachel Morris wants to know why UNITEDHealth consultant Tom Daschle was on Meet the Press Sunday. A former Democratic senator, Daschle is a senior adviser to Obama on healthcare reform and a leading advocate of a public plan. However, he recently resumed a private consulting arrangement with UNITEDHealth, America's largest health insurer. Even public plan champion Howard Dean is a strategic adviser on healthcare policy to the lobby firm of McKenna, Long, and Aldridge. Dean won't disclose his clients, but McKenna represents a number of clients in the biomedical and health science industries.
The prospects of a public option are dimming, but not necessarily because of any rapid about-face by the White House. The Senate bill is in the hands of the Blue Dogs, who say they won't have legislation until November. Obama won't put the screws to the Blue Dogs, but there's still plenty of time to for citizens to make their voices heard.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about healthcare and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
There is a lot of discussion right now about how Senators from small states hold too much power compared to the percent of population they represent. There's a lot of truth to this. Alex MacGillis of The Washington Post wrote in an analysis column in their Sunday Outlook section, and David Sirota and Nathan Newman have done good pieces on the topic as well. The simple facts are that the key gang of six negotiating health care in the Senate Finance Committee represent less than 3% of the nation's population; that the 10 largest states are home to over half the country's population but represent only 20% of the Senate; the 21 smallest states together have less total population than California does.
It's good that people are raising these issues, and pointing out this unfairness. The plain fact of the matter, though, is that absent a constitutional convention suddenly being held, there is no changing this particular injustice. It would take 2/3 of the Senate, after all, to pass a constitutional amendment to restructure the Senate, and virtually all of the Senators from small states would vote against it. So we are stuck for now.
What we ought to be focused on instead are strategies that might work.
This seems like Framing and Political Strategy 101 to me, but since few other people are talking in this way, let me just lay out a basic idea: all this talk about doing a stimulus package versus not doing a stimulus package is fundamentally besides the point. What we need is a comprehensive policy package that is very simply focused on one thing and one thing only: jobs.
I know the policy wonks on Capitol Hill may be confused by that paragraph because, they would say, well, a stimulus program would create jobs. Well, yeah, that is the idea of stimulus. But my point is this: the politics of a second stimulus package are a dead end. The politics of having a debate about a policy package that will create jobs is a helpful thing. Announcing a second stimulus package gets Democrats into a defensive crouch about why the first one failed, and gets us into that same "can we get to 60" dance with Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins that caused the first stimulus bill to be pared back and rendered less effective.
Voters don't know what it means to say you are going to stimulate the economy, but they do know what a job is. And right now, what we need is jobs sooner rather than later. My point here is not to just rename the stimulus bill the jobs bill. In fact, there are quite a few things the White House and Congress can do to focus on jobs that don't involve just spending more, although more money will certainly need to be spent. Here is what I would include in a comprehensive package:
On top of, and in response to, the newly formed Senate Progressive Bloc forcing the Democratic leadership to include a strong public option in health care reform legislation, Senate leaders Harry Reid and Dick Durbin are now pressing all Senate Democrats to stick together on "procedural votes." That is, the Senate Democratic leadership is now telling conservative Senate Democrats to not join with Republican filibusters, especially on health care. Doing so would mean Democrats only need 50 votes to pass legislation:
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) said Tuesday that he and Senate Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) will be asking the 60-member Democratic caucus to "stick together" on procedural votes that would allow the chamber to begin or end debate on legislation. Sixty votes are needed to close debate, or invoke cloture, on a measure and avoid a filibuster.
The message to Democrats, Durbin said, is: "Don't let the Republicans filibuster us into failure. We want to succeed, and to succeed we need to stick together."(...)
"They may vote against final passage on a bill. They may vote with Republicans on amendments," he said. "But on this idea of allowing the filibuster to stop the whole Senate, I think, we have persuaded them more often than not that they shouldn't let the Republicans control our agenda. We ought to control our own agenda."(...)
Reid and Durbin placed a special importance on the looming health care debate; the Majority Leader is hoping to bring a bill to the floor by July 20.
"Believe me, this is not a binding rule in the caucus," Durbin said. "It's just a plea to our Members that if we're going to face an historic vote on health care reform, we're urging Democratic caucus members to support us on the procedural issues."
Good. This is reiterating another point the progressive netroots have made for some time. Democrats don't need 60 votes to pass legislation in the Senate. Instead, only 50 votes plus Biden are required to pass legislation, while 60 votes are required to bring a bill to a vote. Now that we have 60 votes in the Senate, conservative Senate Democrats need to allow all Democratic bills to come to a vote.
Senate Democrats need to use the "nuclear option" to force a rule change in the Senate that keeps the filibuster in place, but requires all filibusters to be actual, obstructive, reading the phone book, talk-a-thons. This is the only politically feasible option to dealing with the 60-vote rule in the Senate, which currently is the main obstacle to sweeping progressive change in the federal government.
This week, the healthcare reform debate churned on behind the scenes as the economic crisis and treasury secretary Geithner's latest bank rescue plan dominated the news cycle. Meanwhile Democrats weighed various strategies to advance healthcare reform even without a filibuster-proof majority in the senate. Drug policy made headlines this week. Attorney General Eric Holder expanded upon the administration's new found tolerance towards states that permit medical marijuana. The morning after pill will soon be available over-the-counter to 17-year-olds nationwide, thanks to a ruling by a New York federal judge.
Why is it that Senators, the news media who cover Congress, and lobbyists take as an article of faith that Democrats need 60 votes to pass their legislation in the Senate and the Republicans only need a simple majority?
The press has been reporting the need for 60-vote majorities as if it has always been a given -- because 60 votes are needed to close down debate if the minority objecting decides to filibuster.Under Majority Leader Harry Reid, the idea of upsetting the Senate by daring the Republicans to actually carry through on their threats to filibuster is out of the question.When I asked a 30- year veteran Senate staff person this week how this phenomenon has come about, he said, "comity in the Senate is valued more than taking a stand for something."
Over the past week, there has been grumbling among some Democrats and progressives that we should have let the Republicans destroy the filibuster back in 2005. Matthew Yglesias is an example of this, writing today that the recent difficulties with the stimulus package are yet another reason to get rid of the filibuster.
I admit, such calls are pretty tempting right now, but overall I have to disagree. The Senate is, fundamentally, an undemocratic institution that was created to protect small states by providing them with more representation than the principle of "one person, one vote" could ever possibly justify. In the context of such an institution, it makes perfect sense for there to be another mechanism to protect minority viewpoints, and the filibuster fits that bill nicely. While I would rather see the Senate turned into a proportional representation institution where all 100 members are elected every four years during mid-term elections, that just isn't going to happen--like ever. So, let's work with what we have.
There are two ways that the filibuster needs to be fixed. First, the relevant Senate rule needs to be changed from "three-fifths of all sitting Senators" to "three-fifths of all Senators voting." The "all sitting Senators" aspect of the rule creates two logical problems with the filibuster.
Republican senators let their hatred for organized labor overwhelm the need to keep more than two million Americans working in the automobile industry when the Republicans blocked a loan package to help American carmakers stay in business into 2009.
This is just one more case of Republican abuse of the filibuster, a practice that has become an excuse for Democrats not passing more progressive legislation in the Senate. But it is within Majority Leader Reid's power to stop the abuse.
Republican senators let their hatred for organized labor overwhelm the need to keep more than two million Americans working in the automobile industry when the Republicans blocked a loan package to help American carmakers stay in business into 2009.
This is just one more case of Republican abuse of the filibuster, a practice that has become an excuse for Democrats not passing more progressive legislation in the Senate. But it is within Majority Leader Reid's power to stop the abuse.
Okay, I have not seen too much on this with all the talk of the Democrats trying to get to 60 Senate seats, and with three races still undecided.
Lets say we are one or two Senate seats shy from the magic number. What if Obama pulled a Republican Senator from a state with a Democratic Governor?
Kind of a sneaky way to get to 60. So who should he consider?
I know there is talk of Lugar, but Indiana has a Republican Gov. Snowe is progressive enough, and Maine has a Dem Gov. But she might be of better use in the Senate, since she will often vote for the Dems and will not likely filibuster.
Chris's current front-page blog points out that we may need 59 seats to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed. I shouldn't need to convince anyone about the importance of this bill for unions, working families, and the Democratic Party. The question is, can we get to 59?
Right now it looks tough. A run-off in Georgia doesn't necessarily favor us, as a low-turnout election probably favors Republican white voters compared to Democratic black and poor voters. Minnesota is a toss right now. Alaska is a joke.
60 - it is just a number, but it is an important one.
If the Democrats can get 60 members in the Senate, they can disallow filibustering, and allow progressive legislation to follow a much quicker route through the Senate.
Consider this - for all of Obama's intelligence, charisma, and drive, he needs legislators who are willing to live up to the challenges we face: ending the war in Iraq, fixing the economy, ramping up production of renewable energy. The laundry-list goes on and on.
That will not happen if the Republicans can filibuster bills to death in the Senate. And they will. The Republican Party has been hijacked by such a messianic movement that passage of legislation that they do not author is not only bad policy, but an affront to America in general.
They will stop and nothing to thwart an Obama administration's progressive agenda.
Per Politico: VA, NM, CO, AK, NH, OR, NC, MN, KY, MS & GA are all either going to go to the Democrats or states were Republican numbers are falling, and the races are becoming competitive.
Todd Beeton and the crew at MyDD have put up their 'Road to 60' Actblue page to raise money to get to 60 Senators in the Senate. The justification is that we need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome Republican filibusters. Moveon is also organizing its strategy around getting to 60 votes in the Senate, as is the DSCC. This sounds like a reasonable argument, since the number of votes needed to get to cloture - 60 - is routinely used as justification for not passing progressive legislation.
I'm somewhat skeptical. There are two reasons I don't buy the 60 vote narrative. The first is that conservatives don't need 60 guaranteed Republican votes to pass their legislative priorities, they don't even need a Republican majority. The Patriot Act in 2001 passed overwhelmingly with a Democratic Senate majority, just as FISA did in 2008. The Iraq war authorization passed overwhelmingly in 2002 with a Democratic majority, just as war funding did in 2007. The second is that we don't need 60 guaranteed Democratic votes to move our legislative priorities; the Webb GI Bill passed with 75 votes in the Senate and the Bush tax cuts will sunset in 2010 unless they are reauthorized.
Here are some more examples of critical pieces of legislation around national security and civil liberties that passed with a much larger than 60 margin.
The 'Road to 60' argument is premised on a fundamentally misguided understanding of Senate dynamics. It assumes that the body is a two team rugby scrum wherein brute head-on force rules absolutely at all times. While sometimes brute force does rule, and yes there is some validity to getting to 60, it is not the dominant determinant of what kinds of legislation passes. What is very clear in the Senate is that one Senator can operate with reckless abandon and hold up all sorts of legislation, but that this Senator will then create enemies which could stymie his or her priorities for decades. It is why bipartisanship is genuinely a concern in the Senate.
The Senate, in other words, is a network and operates as a network. Democratic and Republican caucuses are one and only one way of grouping Senators, and certainly not the only way of grouping them. Just look at the vote totals on the winning side of those key votes: 72, 75, 80, 80, 75. These are not breaking down along caucus lines, they are breaking down by 'clumps', as are the losing vote 'clumps': 24, 25, 15, 14. And these clumps link to each other, financially and through co-sponsored legislation and shared filibusters. For instance, a single hold or pledge to filibuster a bill will bring retribution, because the target is fixed. But it is much harder to be vindictive against three or four Senators all working together to hold up a bill. And it is impossible to be vindictive against 80 Senators working to hold up a bill.
In other words, power in the Senate in some ways operates according to Metcalfe's Law, in which the number of nodes on the network increases the value of the network exponentially rather than in a linear fashion. Only, the networks within the Senate are not party caucuses but ideological in nature. The progressives have a small number of dedicated stalwarts, sometimes only one, and that makes retribution easy. The far right-wing have a larger number, but the center-right clump within both parties routinely works within itself and builds constant power. They have by far the most power in the body, not because they are Republicans or Democrats but because they have the largest set of interconnected nodes.
If any of this is true, a very different strategy makes sense for progressives (as opposed to Democrats). The goal is not to put into office Democrats, but to put into office people who meet the following criteria:
Those who have a demonstrated willingness to work with other progressives within a chamber.
Those who have a demonstrated willingness to 'break' with centrist clumps and take the attendant retribution.
Those who have a demonstrated willingness to dish out retribution to centrists or conservatives and weaken their networks.
All three of these are necessary to build out a progressive power center in the Senate and actually begin to assemble the 70 or 80 vote clumps we need to pass legislation. We need people who will group with other progressives, like Jeff Merkley or Sherrod Brown. We need people willing to attack party leadership and other Senators, which is why I supported Steve Novick, and why we found Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone so appealing, and we need a progressive Tom Coburn or Ted Stevens, who is willing to act as the cranky porcupine that you cross at your peril.
This theory of the Senate as a network explains why it is so critical for anonymous Senate aides to attack crazy liberals on the internet, and why we glom on to the most outspoken Senators rather than people like Barbara Boxer. A centrist saying that standing up to Moveon is critical is working to destroy a progressive network connection, while an outspoken Senator on our side is using outside actors to work to break up centrist 'clumps'. There is a war within the body, in other words, one in which partisan affiliations are basically a distraction.
So no, we don't need 60 votes to move progressive priorities. What we need are a committed group of Senators - perhaps as small as 25 or 30 - without whom the other clumps can't get anything done.
