The Filibuster

The Senate filibuster has been the subject of my blog posts in the past and I have been against ending it. There were good reasons for retaining it. Those reasons no longer convince me. It should go. 

Why?

I used to think that it was a vehicle for protecting the voice of the minority in Congress and that it aided in keeping things consistent after changes in administration. Once upon a time a filibuster meant that a Senator or Senators actually held the floor, extending debate and preventing a vote on a bill until a cloture vote, a three fifths vote to end debate, but it has become a de facto supermajority requirement. It has become nothing more than obstruction and legislative extortion. 

"Yeah, but if the Democrats end the filibuster when they have the majority, that will empower the Republicans if and when they regain the majority" is what the institutionalists say. I've got bad news for the institutionalists: the Republicans have been making end runs around the filibuster requirements for years. There is a Senate rule, called reconciliation, whereby the 60 vote threshold can be disregarded if the bill is a budget bill which adds less than a certain amount to the deficit over ten years. (I forget what that amount is) Republicans have gotten huge bills passed in both of Trump's terms by categorizing them as budget bills and artificially massaging the numbers to make it look like the cost was under the ten year threshold. Their main strategy was to have specific aspects of the bill expire before the ten years were up. They did this in 2017 with the tax bill, in which tax decreases for individual taxpayers were set to expire in 2025. They, of course, voted to extend them permanently in 2025, classifying them as cost-neutral. The 2025 so-called Big Beautiful Bill did something similar, sunsetting the tax credits on tips and overtime, as well as the additional senior deduction, in 2028. Republicans have consistently used creative accounting to use this "reconciliation" process to circumvent the filibuster.

So, while the filibuster technically still exists, it's fairly easy to get around it by lying about what a bill will cost. Let's not forget that Senate confirmations on cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and most importantly, Supreme Court Justices, have been by majority for a long time. Republican majorities in the Senate have thumbed their noses at the nomination process, refusing to consider an Obama nominee during an election year, handing the nomination to Trump; then four years later rushing through a nomination while early voting was already occurring in order to deny Biden a nomination. 

The last time the Democrats had a Senate majority there were two Democratic Senators who opposed eliminating the filibuster, so it never happened. With a 55 seat majority (Alaska still hasn't been settled and Fetterman is threatening to change parties) they could do it without the voodoo accounting and outright lying in order to get around the 60 vote requirement.

Trump will still be the president for the next two years. It's unlikely that he will work with the Democrats on legislation, and will likely veto anything that they pass. But they can challenge the authoritarian way he has been governing. They can investigate and hold him and his people accountable. If they can convince Americans that they are a viable alternative and a Democrat is elected in 2028, they can not only undo most of the Trumpian damage, but actually do some good.