The Haunting Specter

By Carl 

I need to digest some of what he said yesterday, but Arlen Specter left a flaming bag of poop on the Senate doorstep:

Partisanship, a quest for ideological purity, and the "abuse" of procedural rules have bled collegiality from the U.S. Senate and mired "the world's greatest deliberative body" in gridlock, Specter said.

This was not the usual flowery goodbye and trip down memory lane. 

There's some merit to his point of view, and Specter lays out his case like the prosecutor he was, but is it correct? Is too partisan a bad thing?

Forget the chicken-egg argument. It really doesn't matter who started the partisanship ball rolling. We can track echoes of it back to the McCarthy hearings, to Watergate, to any number of incidents that brought us incrementally to where we are.

Is the legislative process compromised when, well, there is no compromise?

My first observation is that Harry Reid finally seems to have grown a set. So much legislation has been passed in the last few weeks, it's hard to keep track of it all, including the showcase piece, the repeal of DADT. Why he squandered this forcefulness over the past two years will go down in history as one of the greatest blunders a Senate majority leader could ever make.

(Side note: Imagine if Hillary Clinton had not accepted the secretary of state post, instead focusing on rallying the troops for the 2006 election and then lobbying for the Senate majority leadership job...)

In the next Senate, Reid will have to contend with a Republican House that will have a large element of combativeness in its arsenal. Reid squeaked out a win this year against a nutcase who put her foot in her mouth more times than a yogi with a toe fetish. Reid's Senate may not be so lucky next time around if Reid doesn't carefully extract the good from his dilemma while shirking the bad off onto someone else.

A formidable job even for a deft politician with muscle. For Reid, a real challenge.

The twin questions of ideological purity and abuse of procedural rules seem to go hand in hand, in my opinion, and I delineate them differently from simple party line distinctions. Voting along party lines is expected, which is why I'm not sure the last Congress, or even the Congresses under Bush, were "too partisan."

The difference, noticeable over the past twenty years, but in particular a problem during the Clinton administration, has been the severe punishments proferred to a maverick. It has gone from shunnings over minor quibbles, to outright hostility. I've never seen so many incumbents face primary challenges in which fellow Senators and other national party figures have actively campaigned to remove a fellow party incumbent.

This, in my view, is unhealthy, and guess what? For every Lisa Murkowski in the Republican ranks, we have a Joe Lieberman in the Democratic camp. It's not a right-wing problem only. There's a bubbling undercurrent in this pressure cooker that threatens to explode the entire process, causing entropy at best and chaos at worst, but of much more impact will be the quiet before the storm. The attempt to keep a lid on it.

It started in the 1990s, of course, when the GOP leadership suddenly decided to put a thumb on the scale of negotiation and compromise, forcing their Senators to toe a party line first, and only clear compromises second. It was aided and abetted by the right wing blast fax/talk radio Golem, which spewed venom left and right... ok, mostly left... and forced legislators to either deal with the voters (and others outside their districts) or deal with the leadership. The only way to keep things quiet was to memorize talking points, spew them on cue, and vote Republican only.

That wasn't enough, even though Republicans were generally pretty successful with this strategy. As the Congress did nothing through the first Bush administration, and people watched their savings and jobs drift away on this tide or that, Democrats started to put together two and two and actually come up with five when it came to winning an election or two.

The clamps in the GOP tightened. In response, clamps were applied in the Democratic Party as well. The Fifty State Strategy of Howard Dean's DNC tenure really had two effects: it welcomed moderates and even conservatives while at the same time tried to get them to come to some consensus on issues so that Democrats could present a unified front on issues that people wouldn't be too embarassed by in Wyoming or Utah.

This pissed off everyone, from conservative Blue Dog Dems to us liberals.

In Congress, procedural rules became a weapon, rather than a tool. The use of the filibuster is the most notable, and both sides have gone to that trough healthily. I include, however, reconciliation votes in this. It was used to shove Bush's tax cuts down our throats, and some aspects of healthcare reform also utilized this. Here, a bill is deemed passed already for purposes of making cosmetic budgetary amendments to it, which only require a 51 vote majority and no filibusters allowed.

I'm sure in caucus, worse abuses of procedures occured.

Specter comes off as a bit of a whiner in his speech, but he does point out the signal changes in protocol and custom over the past thirty years, mourning the loss.

But things change, Arlen. One can't expect the world to freeze just because you're in the Senate. And one might point out that there were plenty of moments when you could have shown great courage, opting instead to hew to the party line.

But among his "why mes?" he has made several very cogent and valid points. Go read his speech.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

If it's broke...

By Mustang Bobby

Here's Rachel Maddow last night on the broken Senate and what it's costing us not just in terms of getting things done but in terms of how our country works:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I'm not sure that there's ever going to be any reform in the way things work on Capitol Hill. I know people who work there on both sides of the aisle and the one thing they agree on is that yes, the process sucks but neither side is willing to make the changes to get it to work as intended because if they do, they would have to give up something and, more importantly, they don't trust the other side to act in good faith when they achieve the majority. In other words, they are sure that all of the checks and balances that one side advocates for, i.e. the protection of the minority, an end to the secret holds and the arcane rules of procedure, would be used against them when they're not in power.

We saw this played to a fare-thee-well last winter during the healthcare debate. The Republicans carried on about how the bill was "rammed down their throats," just like the stimulus bill and the bank bailouts, conveniently forgetting that all of the bills passed through the legislative process without any slight of hand.  Indeed, those of us who wanted the bills to pass were frustrated at the tortuous and tortoise-like process. This is in stark contrast to the GOP's thrill of getting the Bush tax cuts and agenda swept through both Houses back in 2002 while at the same time darkly threatening to invoke the dreaded nuclear option, something the Democrats never even brought up last winter.

There will be a lot of talk about reforming the rules of the Senate and changing the filibuster rules to allow debate to go forward and putting an end to secret holds. That's all it will be, though. Every election cycle brings in new faces and tyro staffers who are determined to shake up Washington and change the way it does business. And then they get in office, they get invited to dinner with a few lobbyists, and, two years later, someone else is running against them because they're part of the problem.

And so it goes.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

In praise of Scott Brown (again)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

First, just a couple of weeks ago, it was for voting with the Democrats to move a jobs bill forward, now it's for announcing he'll vote to end a Republican filibuster on an unemployment benefits and tax credits bill. It's for coming out generally against the filibuster and for supporting simple majority rule even when it means he, and his party, will lose:

I have very serious concerns about the overall cost of the bill, but my vote for cloture signals that I believe we need to keep the process moving... [T]here has been a week of debate and allowing this bill to receive an up-and-down vote, would be a step, I feel, in the right direction.

Well done, Sen. Brown, Republican from Massachusetts. Maybe you're more of an independent than many of us thought you were.

**********

Look, it's not that I've done a 180 on Brown.

Let us not forget that, shortly after 9/11, he voted against Red Cross volunteers.

Let us not forget that he ran aggressively against Democratic health-care reform (even though his own state has a system, introduced by fellow Republican Mitt Romney, that is close to Obama's).

And let us not forget that he has a history of playing to the Palin-teabagging far right and that he won Ted Kennedy's seat largely because he successfully tapped into seething Republican anger and resentment (oh, and because Martha Coakley was a horrible, horrible candidate).

He may have an independent streak in him, but that doesn't necessarily make him any less noxious.

Still, his opposition to the filibuster, and more specifically to Republican filibusters, is admirable, and, for that, he deserves some serious praise.

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"The numbers are astonishing in this Congress." -- Political science professor Jim Riddlesperger, commenting on the record-breaking filibuster abuse by Republicans in the 111th Congress.

Evan Bayh on the Senate, campaign financing, and the filibuster

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From an op-ed in yesterday's NYT:

Challenges of historic import threaten America's future. Action on the deficit, economy, energy, health care and much more is imperative, yet our legislative institutions fail to act. Congress must be reformed.

There are many causes for the dysfunction: strident partisanship, unyielding ideology, a corrosive system of campaign financing, gerrymandering of House districts, endless filibusters, holds on executive appointees in the Senate, dwindling social interaction between senators of opposing parties and a caucus system that promotes party unity at the expense of bipartisan consensus.

Of course, Bayh has long been a big part of the problem himself, and what he fails to understand, it seems, is that his brand of centrism is a major impediment to action. Along with helping Republicans block Democratic efforts, it prevents the majority from governing -- for example, on health-care reform, where a small group of Democratic centrists have held the process hostage, demanded concessions, and blocked their own party, a party with a solid majority in both houses of Congress, as well as with the White House, from passing reform supported by an overwhelming majority of that party's members on Capitol Hill.

And it's not like these centrists have been able to work collaboratively with like-minded Republicans, what few of them there are, because, when push comes to shove, as over health-care reform, Republicans circle the wagons and refuse to compromise, while they themselves, as when Bush was president, are often more than willing to break with their party to back the Republicans on any number of issues.

I'm not sure what would good would come of "a monthly lunch of all 100 senators," but I do applaud Bayh for coming out strongly against "[t]he recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allowing corporations and unions to spend freely on ads explicitly supporting or opposing political candidates," as well as in support in filibuster reform:

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

For this reason, filibusters should require 35 senators to sign a public petition and make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

Filibusters should also be limited to no more than one for any piece of legislation. Currently, the decision to begin debate on a bill can be filibustered, followed by another filibuster on each amendment, followed by yet another filibuster before a final vote. This leads to multiple legislative delays and effectively grinds the Senate to a halt.

What's more, the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.

Sounds quite reasonable to me.

I hope Bayh will indeed "advocate for the reforms that will help Congress function as it once did" during his final year in office, but I also hope he will press his fellow Democratic centrists (Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln, etc.) to let the Democratic majority -- their own party -- govern without having to strip its agenda down to appease their every last whim or to cave in to Republican demands at every turn.

Many of us liberals and progressives have come to dislike Bayh immensely over the years, to put it mildly, but he has a chance now to end his time in the Senate by working hard for what is right both for that august body and for his party. Let's hope he succeeds.

With one foot out the door, Bayh comes out in support of filibuster reform

By Creature

Strange. It's a little late for Bayh to be wooing liberals, but I'll take it.

Dan Quayle, still stupid after all these years

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Appearing on Fox News (where else?) yesterday, former VP Dan Quayle argued, or "argued," against the use of reconciliation to deal with health-care reform:

They're gonna go to budget reconciliation, which I believe would set a very bad precedent, because essentially -- if they could do it, and I don't know if they can do it, but if they could do it -- what you have done, effectively, is to take away the filibuster in the United States Senate. So, therefore, you have 51 votes in the House and 51 votes in the Senate. That is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind. That is not the constitutional process.

Okay. Let's go through that.

First, Democrats don't intend to use reconcilation to pass health-care reform, just to make so-called patches to a bill that both houses of Congress have already passed, including with 60 votes in the Senate.

Second, as TPM's Rachel Slajda notes, George H.W. Bush, Quayle's boss, used reconciliation "regularly." So how would using it now "set a very bad precedent"? Or is only bad when Democrats do it?

Third... 51 votes in the House? D'oh!

Fourth, as Slajda further notes, while the filibuster "seems to have been around since Congress began," it is not mentioned in the Constitution, which "gives both houses of Congress the power to set their own rules." Those rules include not just the filibuster but reconciliation, do they not?

"I would imagine wiser, cooler heads will prevail and this process will not be attempted," Quayle added.

By "wiser, cooler heads" he presumably means fearful Democrats who cave in to Republican objections and demands, and who will let Republicans set the double standard that Quayle seems to want in place: Republicans can do what they want when they want, and use the rules as they see fit, but Democrats can only do what Republicans tell them to do.

Shelby backs down, American democracy makes slight recovery

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama has ended his "hold" on 70 of President Obama's nominees, effectively filibustering them (and requiring 60 votes for confirmation).

And why? Is it really because he got "the White House's attention" on a couple of issues, as his office claims? Or, putting aside the spin, is it rather because his largely indefensible tactic got some negative media attention, Democrats pushed back, and he was forced to cave?

You have to be a partisan fool to take him at his word.

**********

But what of the tactic itself? As TNR's Jonathan Chait explained the other day, the rise of the "hold," like the rise of the filibuster (or, rather, the more common usage of it), is a sign of historic "Senate dysfunction":

The "hold" is a now similar tool to what the filibuster was forty years ago. It's a sparingly-used weapon meant to signal an unusually intense preference. A Congressional scholar reports that putting a blanket hold on all the president's nominees has never been done before. But there's no rule that says you can't. It's just not done, until it is.

Shelby is using his blanket hold to demand pork for his state. It's a telling sign of the decay of the process, another indication of the power parochial interests have to block rational policymaking. But what's to keep the minority party form simply blocking all the president's nominees, from day one? Sure, they might catch some heat. But the president would eventually catch even more heat as his undermanned administration slid into dysfunction. And politics is a zero-sum game.

That may sound like a crazy scenario. But history shows that you can't count on social norms to prevent competing parties from trying to maximize their advantage. The only way to change this kind of behavior is to change the rules.

It's a sign of "the decay of the process," yes, but also, and more dramatically, of the corruption and decline of American democracy. This is what it has come to, after all -- at least as long as Republicans try to prevent the majority party from governing, that is, as long as they try to grind America's federal government to a halt.

And they call themselves patriots?

Paul Krugman makes an apt historical comparison (with more here):

So, here's the news from the Senate. Martha Johnson was nominated to head the General Services Administration, and was confirmed by a nearly unanimous vote -- but only after having had her nomination held hostage for nine months by Senator Kit Bond, who wanted more pork for Kansas City. And now Senator Richard Shelby has placed a hold on -- are you seated -- all, all, Obama administration nominees, until he gets some pork for Alabama.

What's going on? The Senate has rules based on the idea that it was a chamber of gentlemen who would find ways to work together. But now, 41 Senators belong to a party that has no interest in a working government, no desire to work with the majority in good faith.

There's a precedent for all this. In effect, we've now become 17th-century Poland.

Things weren't good there and then, and they aren't good here and now.

Back then, you could blame various "Polish magnates" for taking Poland to "the brink of collapse." Now, you can blame the Republicans for doing just in a country that is supposedly, and still proudly, a "democracy."