No One Really Wants Filibuster Reform

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The biggest immediate question about policy in the U.S. continues to be the filibuster. As it is, a lot of the Democratic legislative agenda is pretty much dead in the Senate, even though some pieces of it could get passed through the budget-reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority. But it’s still possible we’ll see significant changes to Senate procedures, which could allow several major bills to pass.

The latest idea for a compromise is to reduce the votes needed for cloture (that is, the number of senators needed to defeat a filibuster) from 60 to 55. Greg Sargent made the case for it last week, and then Ross Douthat endorsed the idea in his Sunday column.

It’s a reasonable idea. But … there’s no shortage of reasonable ideas for a compromise. Norm Ornstein’s proposal to shift the burden of a filibuster from the majority to the minority, while also lowering the cloture number, is a reasonable idea. My idea of a Superbill that would allow anything, and not just budgetary items, to pass through a reconciliation-like bill? I think it’s reasonable. The idea that bills essential to democracy should be specifically exempted from any supermajority requirement is reasonable too.

But again: No one in the Senate is interested in compromise. Instead, what we have is a long-term stalemate, in which most majority-party senators want to get rid of the filibuster, pretty much all of the minority party maximizes its use, and a few marginal members of the majority hesitate — because, as Greg Koger explains, the status quo allows them to duck tough votes. When the parties switch places (assuming unified government; the filibuster is far less important during periods of divided government), their position on the filibuster switches as well. In the long run, that won’t be enough to save the filibuster, because at some point we’ll have a simple majority of senators who strongly support enough of the party agenda that they’ll impose change. But that isn’t the case at the moment.

Now, compromise ideas might not be entirely irrelevant. For one thing, it’s always possible that the 50th senator from the majority party may have sincere and idiosyncratic ideas about the filibuster. If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter whether the compromise idea is reasonable or not; all that matters is finding something that gets that last vote, or perhaps the last few votes. In other words, if Senator Joe Manchin thinks that the best filibuster reform involves lawmakers standing on their heads and delivering their speeches in rhyme, and would support no other change? Yup — that immediately becomes a far better reform than the others.

But the much more likely scenario is that the swing senator is simply not on board with the entire party agenda. In that case, it’s the job of the majority to figure out exactly what that senator considers a must-pass, and to design a procedural reform that allows those bills through without subjecting that senator to too many tough votes. If there are no such high-priority bills that unify 50 or more senators, then filibuster reform isn’t going to happen. And probably shouldn’t.

One more time: If senators from both parties really wanted to put their individual influence above supporting the party agenda, then there’s an easy way to de-escalate the filibuster wars. A “Gang of 30” who agreed to support cloture on most bills and amendments with only rare exceptions would, if they actually stuck to the agreement, make any further reforms unnecessary. But it’s unlikely that such a gang could find the support it would need to work. Because senators don’t want a workable form of the filibuster.

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