WASHINGTON — Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken diplomatically welcomed changes to the Senate filibuster on Thursday, even if, reading between the lines, they joined fellow reformers in wishing the new rules had been bolder.
Democrats, now holding 55 seats in the chamber, had hoped to at least make significant changes to the Senate’s procedural rule requiring a bill receive at least 60 votes before it can advance on the floor. The Senate’s top Democrat and Republican, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, hatched a plan that preserved the 60-vote threshold, effectively allowing the minority party to block legislation it disagrees with, but instituted new rules to at least speed the process up.
For example, under the old rules, a bill cannot even come to the floor for debate unless 60 senators vote for it to (the so-called “motion to proceed”). Now, the Senate can bypass that vote (and at least one of the days required before such a vote takes place) if it’s either a bill with bipartisan support or if the minority gets the chance to vote on at least two amendments to it first.
All that does, though, is bring a bill to the floor. Senators can still filibuster final passage of a bill — meaning the majority party still needs to find 60 votes to pass legislation.
(A more technical breakdown of the new rules can be found here).
Past efforts
The use of the filibuster began ticking up in the 1970s and has since become virtually routine when the Senate takes up even semi-controversial bills. Over the last two years, the Senate was forced to hold 73 cloture votes (that is, the vote requiring 60 ayes to move legislation along). It held all of 69 such votes between cloture’s advent in 1917 and 1972.
In the past, both Klobuchar and Franken have advanced plans to overhaul the much-maligned filibuster. In 2011, before the last Congress convened, Klobuchar worked with New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall on a five-point filibuster reform plan, sections of which were included in this year’s rule changes. But the hallmark of the plan — a ”talking filibuster” in which the filibustering senator holds the floor until he exhausts himself, a la “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” — was left out.
Franken had pitched an idea to turn the filibuster on its head. Rather than requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster and advance to final debate and passage of a bill, senators looking to delay bills would have to find 41 votes to keep holding up the process.
That idea reportedly gained traction among some Democrats, but on Thursday, Franken said, “This, again, was a compromise, if Harry could have gotten it, he would have gotten it. He couldn’t get it.”
A diplomatic response
In a short statement, Klobuchar said: “While this compromise doesn’t include everything I would like to see, it will help reduce unnecessary delays and gridlock so we can get to work and produce the results the American people expect and deserve.”
That seemed to be the mantra repeated by most moderate reformers on Thursday. When the rules came to the floor for a vote, they passed on 78-16 and 86-9 votes, with all but one of the no votes coming from conservative Republicans.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” Franken said in an interview. “The Senate has been dysfunctional for some time now because of the unprecedented number of filibusters that we’ve had in the last two Congresses, and the purpose of these filibusters has been to really, deliberately gum up the works and slow things down, to run out the clock so the Senate couldn’t get things done. … I think this will speed things up.”
Even Democrats who had demanded tougher rules were diplomatic in the end. Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, who worked with Udall on a more robust package of reforms this month, told the Oregonian, “It's a few modest steps … I absolutely thought we should have gone further,” but he would go on to vote for the package.
Mondale 'disappointed'
Off Capitol Hill, however, Democrats were distressed by the compromise. Common Cause, a liberal group challenging the constitutionality of the filibuster in court, said Reid had “gone missing in the fight for filibuster reform … It’s now clear that the Senate will not fix the filibuster and the President lacks authority to fix it. We must turn to the judicial branch to enforce the Constitution.”
Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who helped steer the last major filibuster reform package through the Senate in the 1970s, said he was disappointed Democrats couldn’t — or wouldn’t — put together a bigger package.
Mondale has long advocated the use of a controversial procedure that allows Senators to change the chamber’s rules by a simple majority vote. Supporters call it the “constitutional option,” because it’s permitted under the Constitution. Detractors call it the “nuclear option.”
Semantics aside, Mondale said Democrats, with their 55-vote majority, could have used such a tactic to push new rules through. Standing in the way, however, was Reid, who preferred to broker a compromise with Republicans. He told the Washington Post he wasn’t in favor of a massive overhaul, anyway.
“I’ve been there. A lot of senators are afraid that next time around we’ll in the minority and they’ll jam through all sorts of legislation,” Mondale said. “I’m for a filibuster and a hill to climb, but I think this is too high.”
Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry