Obstructionism is the major culprit that the legislature is not working the way it should, and here we’ll see why.
At the time of writing this note, the United States Senate was listening to the reading of the 628 pages of the US $ 1.9 billion Emergency Economic Relief Act that President Joe Biden was promoting to prevent the consequences of the pandemic. This stimulus package includes checks for $ 1,400 for citizens in need of federal assistance and a check for $ 400 a week for the unemployed.
Most notable about this is reading the 628 pages of the bill on the Senate floor, which was enforced by Republican Senator Ron Jonson (Wisconsin) and will take at least ten hours. This is also the perfect opportunity to talk about the so-called ‘filibuster’.
What is the filibuster?
We can interpret the filibuster in Spanish as a filibuster tool used to delay or block a bill or prevent a resolution from being voted on. So this is the main culprit that the law is not working the way it should, and here we will see why.
In the early days of the country, Vice President Aaron Burr changed the rules so that the House and Senate had unlimited time to debate bills. Nothing could stop them, and this became a big deal as the number of lawmakers increased as they needed the whole session to spoil the debate. Some senators in modern times have read the Bible, the phone book, and even prescriptions.
In 1917 came the first major change in the rules of the Senate. President Woodrow Wilson needed Senate approval to participate in World War I, but a group of senators used the filibuster to lengthen the debate. President Wilson, in dire need of approval, ordered one change: that the debate would end if a simple majority allowed it. The Senate made a counter-proposal: the debate would end with the approval of two-thirds of the Senate.
Since then, this archaic rule that governs the modern Senate has dictated that, in most cases, a super majority agree to vote and that a simple majority approve the document before voting on a bill. What this does in the context of a polarization as strong as the one we live in is that it gives tremendous power to the minorities in the Senate to rule. To get a vote, a project needed the support of 66 senators. If 34 objected, there was no vote.
In the 1960s, Senate Leader Mike Mansfield was fed up with the nonsensical speeches of lawmakers blocking a bill by the hour, so he made a change to the filibuster: he scrapped the debates. With this, the senators who wanted to oppose did not have to speak for hours, but threatened to do so, as long as they had enough 34 votes to prevent the vote on the project. Thus, the Senate began to malfunction. And while the number needed for obstruction changes as governments pass, the underlying problem is still there: One party challenges every project of its counterpart and makes it nearly impossible to pass a new law.
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Why is this a big deal now?
We return to the debate on Biden’s stimulus package. What Senator Johnson did this afternoon is an unusual kind of filibuster. He didn’t have to speak for hours, but instead let others speak for him to torpedo the debate because, like all Republicans, he is vehemently opposed to tax support. Meanwhile, millions of workers in the country facing liquidity problems will have to wait for the Senate to debate and pass the bill.
Most likely, the aid package will be approved. Democrats used a mechanism called “budget reconciliation,” which can be used for legislation related to taxes, expenditures and government debt. In this way, the threshold of votes needed to pass the legislation is lowered from 60 to a simple majority. And the Democrats are counting on this thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaker vote. They have a total of 51 votes. But for the rest of the large-scale legislation that is on Biden’s agenda, the outlook is not so positive, as “ budget reconciliation ” cannot be applied in this.
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One is the Electoral Rights Bill, now known as House Resolution 1 (HR1), the most ambitious project to protect voting rights in a generation. With this, Democrats will ban partisan gerrymandering, a tool that draws constituencies in the country and that Republicans use to maintain an edge in elections, protect minority rights and set limits on campaign funding, among other things. This is very important because right now, the Republican-controlled state legislatures have waged a war to diminish the ability of minorities to vote in order to win elections in the future.
But if the filibuster continues, it will be nearly impossible for this project to progress, so calls among Democrats to end obstructionism are mounting.
Can obstruction be ended?
The Senate can change its rules of the game. Just as in the 1970s the threshold to promote the voting process was lowered from 67 to 60 votes, the Senate could again lower the threshold to less than 60 votes or create exceptions for projects of a certain type, as happened with the financial matters fall under the mediation mechanism. A simple majority is enough to change the laws. The problem for Democrats is that not all of the bloc agrees. The fact that the Senate is split 50-50 gives a lot of power to senators like Joe Manchin, who is against eliminating the filibuster. Manchin is considered one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate today, although his name is not very well known to us here. But talking about him will be the subject of another El Espectador explains.
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