One more moderate voice for filibuster elimination, Alice Rivlin
Link to the Brookings FIXGOV Blog.
The filibuster—the Senate rule that sets a 60-vote threshold to cut off debate allowing a majority of senators to pass a law—has been intensely debated for many years but had become especially controversial in the last Senate where Democrats held exactly 50 seats (with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break the tie by casting the 51st vote). Some progressive Democrats advocated eliminating the filibuster so Democrats could pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, protect abortion rights, and pass robust legislation to reverse climate change by majority rule, but moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) disagreed, arguing that the filibuster makes the Senate more deliberative and bipartisan.
Alice Rivlin, who passed away in May 2019, wrote a plea for greater bipartisanship in her final book, “Divided We Fall: Why Consensus Matters” published in 2022 by Brookings Institution Press. In it she rejects the view that the filibuster rule makes the Senate more deliberative and bipartisan and calls for complete elimination of the filibuster. She came somewhat reluctantly to the conclusion that the filibuster rule is being abused when it is invoked routinely for nearly all legislation, as it has been since the Obama administration. This has had the effect of raising the Senate threshold for passage to a 60-vote supermajority, which is not what the Founding Fathers intended.
Continue Reading on the Brookings FIXGOV Blog
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2023/02/09/one-more-moderate-voice-for-filibuster-elimination-alice-rivlin-2/
All good pints David and we thank you for commenting. It seems January 6th scared some sense into Mitch McConnell and he reversed over a decade of using the filibuster as a tool of obstruction including blocking a long list of judges. As of 2019 when Alice passed or 2021 when we wrote this summary of her position, there was little case to be made that the filibuster was facilitating compromise. We welcome the change in McConnell’s behavior in 2022, and elimination of the filibuster is less necessary if he maintains this new strategy BUT America needs voting rights protections and immigration reform and a sustainable climate policy and the writers of the Constitution never intended to give a minority of Senators the ability to block the majority’s efforts to solve those problems.
While the filibuster evolved over time it also stands the test of time and its elimination in judicial appointments has shown the danger of eliminating it in the Senate. While in today’s politics it can be a mechanism for blocking progress, it also ensures that small majorities do not push through extreme legislation (on both sides) - effectively keeping legislation somewhat centrist, and at least requiring some minority party support. Ensuring the minority party maintains some level of power is an excellent check and balance against extremism from the other side. It also helps ensure the Senate looks forward rather than backwards - negating a tendency for subsequent Senates to revisit and reverse extremely partisan laws passed in a prior Senate with small majority representation. In today’s world of an evenly divided Senate, which reflects a politically divided country, the “majority” party does not have a mandate to push through extremely partisan legislation. The last several years have also proven that even with the filibuster in place it is possible to pass legislation with bipartisan support.