Speaking of filibusters, Hilzoy finds out from McClatchy Newspapers just how much the Republicans are filibustering:
Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they’ve fallen short 22 times so far this year. That’s largely why they haven’t been able to deliver on their campaign promises. By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate. This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs. Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office. [ ]
In fact, they have a nice little chart:
Recall that cloture votes represent an attempt to force an end to debate and move on to a vote — in other words, overcome a filibuster. Rising cloture votes represent rising threats of filibuster, the strategy that the Republicans were saying not too long ago was not Constitutionally defensible. But what I said yesterday about fundamentalist hypocrisy also applies to conservative politics. Hypocrisy is not a moral failing. It is a political strategy.
Now you might say “since the Democrats are in power, of course they’re against the filibuster when they were for it before, and so they are also hypocrites.” I think you would be wrong. On the Rachel Maddow show last week, Rachel asked Senator Kennedy if we ought to get rid of the filibuster since the Republicans were abusing it and he said “no.” Kennedy feels that it’s an important part of the Senate, and it would do great damage to the institution to remove the filibuster. And none of the weblogs I read have suggested getting rid of the filibuster. In fact, Hilzoy says:
It would be much better if all Senators had a sense of responsibility about using the filibuster: if they recognized that in the long run, the only way to preserve it is to use it sparingly. At present, I do not think that they do. And if we are forced to choose between requiring a 60 vote majority for all significant legislation and requiring a simple majority, I would choose a simple majority every time. But I’d much rather preserve the third option: a right to filibuster that is not abused. [ Obstruction: Update ]
That makes plenty of sense to me. Personally, I think the way we get there is through more political theater like we saw late last week. Currently, Senate rules allow for a procedural, on-paper filibuster. Republicans don’t actually have to stand there and debate for hours on end unless Harry Reid forces them to. Out of all the filibuster attempts, Reid has only done this once. So the Republicans get to pretend that the New Rule is it takes sixty votes to pass anything in the Senate, and the Democrats get slammed for not doing anything. Rather than get rid of the filibuster, I think it’s high time we forced all this stonewalling out in the open. They want to extend debate? Make them debate. Make the argument obvious. Let everyone see that the Republicans are standing in the way of the agenda a majority of Americans voted for and support.
And maybe if there was a political price to pay for being a hypocrite, we’d have fewer hypocrites in office.
