Frank Lautenberg: Make Them Filibuster

Good, let us return to the days of proper fillibusters

Excellent. But he should call it the Jimmy Stewart bill and force Republicans to vote against a super-regular real American.

Can “Talk Like Jimmy Stewart Day” be far behind?
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W-w-w-well, y’see, m-m-my fellow Americans…

The only improvement I could see would be to require someone who wants a bill read in entirety (simply as a delaying measure) must read the bill themselves.

The clerks in the Senate would thank you for that one.

I’m all for the political theater of Mr. Smith-esque filibusters.
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But, it should be noted, what is stopping real filibusters from occurring right now is not a rule. Whenever the GOP threatens to filibuster, the Dem leadership simply withdraws the offending bill or amendment.
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IOW, Reid doesn’t need a Mr. Smith bill to get Mr. Smith results. He (up until now at least) doesn’t want Mr. Smith moments.
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It should be noted that, public perception to the contrary, it is impossible to sustain a filibuster indefinitely. Not physically impossible. The current filibuster rules just don’t allow for perpetual debate. Thus, the minority may delay, but not deny.
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So, you may ask, if the GOP could never stop an up or down vote on HCR, why didn’t they force the GOP to filibuster? Schedule a week for GOP whining then hold a vote? Well, the Dem leadership including the White House, needed an excuse for watering down the bill. If the Dems forced the GOP to filibuster, then they would only need 50 votes. And the Dems always claimed they had 50 votes for the public option or Medicare buy-in. If the Dems forced a filiuster, there would be no excuse for including the unpopular provisions like the individual mandate without a public option. So, the WH, Reid, Pelosi, and the Blue Dogs pretended that it was necessary to compromise the bill to pick up GOP or Blue Dog votes.
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It is unfortunate that KT ignores this intra-party dynamic.

square: i have written many times that it is entirely possible, under the current rules, for the majority to force a filibuster.
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For instance:
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That we don’t see these kinds of episodes nowadays has more to do with convenience than anything else. As congressional scholar Norman Ornstein once told me, “You have a different Senate now. Frankly, they’re soft. If they had the backbone and the discipline to do it, it would work.”
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To force a filibuster, the majority has to keep a quorum of 51 at the ready. That means telling its members: Sorry, guys, you won’t be making it to that fundraiser tonight. And a real filibuster also uses up a lot of time, which can be a problem at the end of a session when there is a lot of must-pass legislation, like spending bills, needed to keep the government operating.
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http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1967034,00.html

Karen is right to point out the problem of keeping a quorum at the ready. But the more serious problem is that it takes 3/5 of sitting Senators to invoke cloture. The vote can be 59 to 1 for cloture, but cloture still fails. So the minority only has to keep one (rotating) member at a time available for those quorum calls.

The rule should be amended so that cloture succeeds unless 2/5 of sitting Senators vote against it. Then it would be the minority which would have to prove the passion of their objection by hanging around in force. The majority would only have to keep enough around at a time to make up the rest of the quorum. The minority would have rights as full as they’ve got now – but only provided they really cared enough to duke it out.

KT:
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I’m thoroughly in favor of this bill, as I’m sure most Americans would be.
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Any thoughts on the likelihood of its passage?

Once Senators know that week-ends are off the table, that attending fundraisers will be a problem and the optics look bad things can change. But..step one..get a real filibuster going and don’t break for meals, a spell back home or anything like that. Just keep going. My guess: lots of Republicans will find their enthusiasm running down their pants.

KT,
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I know that you have written about the filibuster many times. I am not accusing you of ignoring discussion over the procedure. What I was semi-criticizing is that you seem to accept the explanation that Reid is simply soft and the Dems can’t be bothered to be inconvenienced by taking a stand. That doesn’t hold water.
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Lord knows the Dems are conflict averse. But are we to believe that they would prefer to go down in flames and not pass anything than cancel a fundraiser or two? That they would prefer to increase the cost of the bill by billions of dollars (by first watering down the public option and then eliminating it)? That they would prefer to waste months on end trying to bribe Lieberman, Bayh, and Nelson? That they prefer to alienate a large part of the liberal base — to the point where Howard Dean was calling to kill the bill?
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I think it is obvious that the goal of Reid and the White House was to end up with legislation along the lines of what was finally passed. They could not admit that they were not pushing for a bill more acceptable to their base so they hid behind the threat of filibusters as an explanation for why they needed more than 51 votes in the Senate.
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Even if you do not agree with that assessment, I fail to see how it can go unexplored by the media, yourself included, when it is a common if not majority view of grassroots Democrats.

And a Republican. Of course that was back in the days when there were still sane Republicans.

Maybe they can borrow diapers from David Vitter.