#Filibuster
If anybody’s paid even a bit of attention to American politics the last few months, they’d know that people are yelling loudly about the Senate filibuster, which would remove the 60-vote threshold needed for the majority of legislation, including voting rights, gun control, healthcare, and immigration.
In layman’s terms, in the United States Senate, there’s a thing called the filibuster, which allows one or more senators to delay or block a vote on a bill by extending debate on a measure, and under cloture, the Senate limits their time to 30 hours at which point the bill is thrown out. Currently, that means that in order to pass bills without any chance of a Republican objecting, we need 60 yes votes and every single Republican bar none voted against the American Rescue Plan, so the chances of getting 60 yes votes on any piece of legislation on voting rights, gun control, or immigration are slim to none. Every year though, the Senate can adopt up to 3 reconciliation bills that aren’t subject to the filibuster and pass them with a simple majority (51 votes including VP Kamala Harris), and since the Democrats already used reconciliation to pass the ARP, we have just two more bills left. And, more likely than not, Chuck Schumer will have to use reconciliation to get infrastructure through as well.
Currently, Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate with VP Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote, and currently, they can’t get 10 Republican votes for pretty much their whole agenda, so the majority of Democratic senators are calling to nuke the filibuster to make legislation pass with a simple majority. However, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are the two major holdouts who want to keep the 60-vote threshold and as a result, every resistor is losing their shit at them for lack of better term.
Personally, I take a bit more moderate approach to all of this. I want the filibuster modified for sure since I’d love for Joe Biden’s agenda to pass. However, I’m also extremely wary of going all out and killing the filibuster due to the consequences of unequivocal Republican power, and would rather move the threshold down to 55 so we only need 5 and not 10 Republican votes. But, the issue with abolishing the filibuster outright is that if the Dems lose the Senate (which is likely at some point given that the Senate is so biased towards Republicans), Republicans can basically gut the healthcare system, make abortion access impossible, and so much more with a simple majority. But conversely, Democrats can do a lot of good when we have a majority if we don’t have a filibuster and we can just push through everything we want without Republican obstruction including DC and Puerto Rico statehood, which might give us more of a cushion in terms of Dem senators.
I did appreciate this article though, which suggests not eliminating the filibuster but democratizing it, writing:
The filibuster exists only because a Senate rule requires the support of a three-fifths majority to cut off debate and hold a final vote. The Senate could change this rule so that ending debate would instead require the support of a majority of senators who collectively represent a majority of the U.S. population, with each senator considered to represent half of his or her state’s residents. This rule, which should be extended to all legislation as well as confirmation of judicial appointments, would allow a bare majority of senators to overcome a filibuster — if those senators together represented a majority of the American people.
Democratizing the filibuster in this way would empower Senate majorities that represent a popular majority to pursue their agenda, while erecting a safeguard against minority rule when a Senate majority represents only a minority of Americans. By doing so, a democratized filibuster would finally bring the Senate into line with foundational principles of equality between all citizens in our democracy.
Of course, 18% of the population holds 52% of Senate seats, which means that the 50 Democratic Senators represent over 40 million more people than the 50 Republican ones, and this idea would help Democrats a lot, which means that the Republicans will never take it. In any case, if you’re interested, here is the white paper the article is based on and yes I read it.
We’ll definitely see what happens though, and one can only hope that it all works out.