Previously, I’ve written about the great cost of the filibuster to the American body politic, and specifically criticized it as one of the primary barriers to successful adaptation to the various challenges faced by American Society. Norman Ornstein in an article entitled “Our Broken Senate” covers the evolution of immobilist Senate practices including the filibuster in an illuminating way, saying: “The expanded use of formal rules on Capitol Hill is unprecedented and is bringing government to its knees.”
(From: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/our-broken-senate)
Ornstein’s figure graphs the number of cloture motions (highly correlated to filibusters) against Congressional Terms and time periods since 1959. During the 1960s period of Governmental activism, there are very few filibusters. One reason for this was that Senate rules then required actual 24/7 physical filibusters, which were very costly to those opposing legislation. Rule changes dating from the middle ’60s, made it easier to implement and maintain a filibuster. And beginning in 1969, we see it becoming a major problem, sometimes increasing, sometimes declining in frequency, but always maintaining a level not seen before 1970, until a sudden period of extreme growth in the 2007-2008 term when the Republicans had lost control of Congress. The last period of real activism on the part of the American Government was in the 1960s. Since then we’ve had an immobilist legislature that hasn’t been able to respond to any major problem requiring an activist Government, other than a foreign policy problem that Congress thinks requires an armed response.
Today, we again see much of the policy agenda of the new administration, and with it economic recovery and progress toward social justice, threatened by immobilism in the Senate, and the filibuster. We see talk of meeting the Administration’s priorities by using the Budget Reconciliation process, where agreements can’t be filibustered, but in connection with which there is a five year limit on legislation. And we also see Republicans screaming that it is somehow unfair and tyrannical for the majority party to pass its agenda by majority vote in the Senate. Excuse me if I think that it is the filibuster that is unfair and tyrannical in frustrating the results of democratic elections and in subjecting the will of the duly elected majority in Congress, to the minority. How does that old song go, again? “When will they ever learn?”