My piece on the Senate’s opportunity to take up filibuster reform is now up on The Morningside Post:
Not everyone is onboard with an overhaul of Senate rules, however. Unsurprisingly, Senate Republicans are concerned that restricting the filibuster will eliminate their party’s most potent weapon against the Democratic majority. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s spokesman warned, “We hope Democrats will work toward allowing members of both sides to be involved in the legislative process — rather than poisoning the well on the very first day of the next Congress.”
Filibuster reform comes with its own set of caveats for Democrats as well. “Forcing the minority to [be present in the Senate] in order to actually mount the filibuster also requires that the Senate stay in session endlessly,” Lieberman notes, creating a burden borne equally by both parties. “In order to go down that road,” he says, “Democratic senators would have to be willing to spend more time in Washington, spend more time hanging around the Senate floor and actually participating in this nonsense than they’re probably willing to do.”
Post Revisions:
There are no revisions for this post.
I argue in my essay that if the U.S. Senate is to represent govenments, then there is a basis for needing a supermajority, for otherwise we would have federal encroachment on the states. But this has already happened, and the senators are elected rather than the state leaders themselves or their delegates, in which case as the Senate is presently situated the filibuster should be eliminated rather than merely made slightly more difficult. See http://www.thewordenreport.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-us-senates-filibuster-minoritys-bomb.html at the Worden Report.