Majority or Minority Rules?

Majority rules: Filibuster reform now
By Kelvin Wade February 18, 2010
The Other Side, Fairfield Daily Republic

Is there something wrong with majority rule? Whether it be at work, school or on the playground, when groups decide what to do they usually take a vote and the majority, 50 percent plus one, carries the day. We don't require 60 percent or a two-thirds vote to make a decision.

So why do we put up with that in Congress? Now I realize the filibuster is a longtime Senate tradition but you can't find it in the U.S. Constitution. True, the Founding Fathers wanted the Senate to be a deliberative body that slowed and leavened the passions of the House but they didn't want government to come to a halt.

After losing Congress in 2006, Republicans doubled the number of filibusters as the previous Congress. In fact, they've now made getting 60 votes for major legislation the norm.

Requiring every serious vote to have to meet a 60-vote threshold renders the will of the people moot. It allows minority rule. It doesn't allow the Senate to function as the cooling saucer that Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders meant it to be.

There will come a time when Republicans will control Congress. What if Republicans have a 55-45 seat majority like they enjoyed in recent years? Democrats will be anxious to repay the favor by requiring 60 votes for legislation and appointees to move. Republicans, you want tax cuts, tort reform, and less regulation? Sixty votes.

What happens when a party decides they will just filibuster a president's Supreme Court nominees? What if they decide the best strategy is just to run out the clock with a filibuster on a nominee until after Election Day? Would the country stand for that?

Elections should matter. Majorities should matter. If America decides to hand control of Congress to the Republicans in November, should the Democrats enact a 60-vote rule, too? Is that what Republican voters want?

We operate under the principle of majority rule while protecting the rights of minorities. We don't require politicians to get supermajorities to be elected to office. We don't require presidential candidates to achieve supermajorities to carry states. The barest, simplest majority in Florida in 2000 was enough to hand the presidency of the United States to George W. Bush but a majority in the Senate isn't enough to seat the head of TSA or other nominees?

Through filibuster abuse, the Senate is now closer to what we have here in Sacramento where we have a two-thirds vote requirement to pass budgets. How has having a two-thirds vote requirement worked in California? Has it made us more governable?

When is the last time we've passed a budget on time? Once again it allows for minority rule. Some would say that it's saved us from tax increases. What it's really done is forced Sacramento politicians to raid local governments and devise a bunch of new accounting tricks.

Unfortunately, since Repair California, the movement that would've placed an initiative on the ballot to have a state constitutional convention to rewrite our governing documents, is on hold, we can count on more chaos from Sacramento.

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll out last week, 6 in 10 say the Republicans aren't doing enough to compromise with President Obama. Four in 10 think the president is not doing enough to get GOP support. Even 44 percent of Republicans say GOP leadership isn't doing enough to strike deals with the president.

Doesn't a nominee for a political post deserve an up or down vote? Doesn't legislation deserve to be voted on? In the rest of America, that's how we do things. We hear both sides of an argument and then we vote yea or nay. Let Congress vote and then the voters will decide whether we like what they decided to do or not.

That's real democracy. The perversion we have going on right now in Washington is not. Peace.
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NOTES: It's in the air. Everyone is talking about it. It's obvious this was not the framers' intent. Elections should matter, no matter who wins. An administration pushes their agenda and of course, the opposition party should offer opposition. It's important for our democracy that other voices are heard. In the past we've ended up with good moderate legislation by compromise between parties and interests. But flipping our democracy on its head so we have minority rule? Uh uh.

Now if the Republicans took over the Senate in November, you can bet that the Democrats will be ready to filibuster everything the majority wants to do. And suddenly, those who are for filibuster reform right now, won't be so vocal about their support then. That's the nature of politics. That's human nature. But it needs reform. Abuse is abuse whether Republicans do it or Democrats.

There is talk of a graduated filibuster/cloture system that would call for a series of votes with diminishing majorities necessary for cloture each time. The devil is in the details, as always, but a system where the majority party can stop all votes has been asking to be abused.

I like it when political parties push their agendas. I love it when they make things happen. Two things are going to occur: the public is either going to embrace them for what they've done or punish them. That's how are democracy should work. What we have in Washington is a farce, a mockery of what the Senate should be.