Reforming the Senate Filibuster
Washington Post columnist, Ruth Marcus, has a noteworthy column this morning offering a four and a half step process in fixing the filibuster. The filibuster, of course, has been used more and more in the legislative process over the last decade as a tool of minority party obstructionism.
As such, it has led some—like blogger Ezra Klein—to argue that it is one of the various reasons why Congress is broken. Indeed, between 2007 and 2010, the Senate has had to call 214 cloture votes to break filibusters, far more than the 57 years between 1919 and 1976.
On Why Congress is Broken
When the Founding Fathers designed the structure of the federal government and its major institutions, they designed a system where the legislative process was necessarily slow. They designed a system of checks and balances that promoted a division power and a network of shared responsibility among the different branches of government. It promoted institutional competition and legislative gridlock.
Despite the Framer's intentional design, there is the overriding perception that Congress today is broken. There is the sense that Congress' legislative paralysis isn't the result of institutional competition, but something unintended and potentially pernicious to the sacred body.
Truth and Reconciliation
As Senate Democrats contemplate an end-game strategy for pushing health care reform over the finish line, reconciliation---the parliamentary process used to circumvent filibusters and bring budgetary legislation to a simple majority vote to pass--has become hail Mary intended to get a bill on President Obama's desk before the mid-term elections. Yet, Senate Republicans are vitriolic in their opposition to the use of reconciliation.
Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said the the use of reconciliation for a bill like health care reform is unprecedented, while Senator John McCain has said that reconciliation would have "cataclysmic effects." And in a much discussed Op-ed piece published in the pages of the Washington Post last week, Senator Orrin Hatch wrote,
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