End Filibuster or give California 60 Senators.

[Kid Berwyn]

I did the math. Based on the 2010 census, figures from Infoplease,...

California’s population was 39,512,223 or 11.91% of US population of 321,418,820 (excludes PR, USVI, Guam, American Samoa).

To equal California’s population requires adding up the smallest 30 states’ populations, from Wyoming up to Connecticut, which total 40,326,920. That means 30 states and their 60 Senators have 30 times more legislative power than a state that just about equals them in population.

And one of the odd coincidences in the arcane rules of the Senate is that 60 Senators are required to end the obstruction of the filibuster. When important measures are needed to form “a more perfect Union,” that creates a real problem for the Republic.

So, until California and its two Senators get the legislative chops of the 30 states that are needed to equal its population, Democracy has a problem, thus the suggestion: DUMP THE FILIBUSTER.

PS: If Mitch doesn’t like it, he can cram it up his shell.

[thx64536]

1. Filibuster is unconstitutional to boot

The Constitution says each Senator takes one vote NOT two:

"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote."

I heard it argued we need the filibuster in case the Republicans gain a majority of the Senate they will get rid of social security and every other social program. If they do then they will face a severe political backlash. This is why we have elections!

If we get rid of the filibuster in the Senate elections will matter again. As it is now, the Senate does absolutely NOTHING which is not what the framers intended.

[Silent3]

8. You could say the filibuster goes against the spirit of the Constitution, and I'd agree...

...but as stupid and annoying as the filibuster is, I doubt you could successfully make the case the it's explicitly, technically unconstitutional.

[Bettie]

12. If they want to get rid of Social programs

they will nuke the filibuster themselves.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Thank you, thx64536!

The filibuster, from what I can tell, has done little but support the interests of the propertied class. The nation’s interests aren’t the same as that of the few who happen to hold title over lion’s share of the land, mineral rights, and bank deposits.

Most important: A hearty welcome to DU!

[Fullduplexxx]

2. The Senate is not population based each state gets 2 and that's it

The house though
The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative;

[Kid Berwyn]

18. Checks and balances are brilliant, to a point.

Each state has a great voice based on population, each has a voice based on itself as a unique entity.

That idea worked well in 1789, when there were 13 states. Big states like Pennsylvania and New York were guaranteed by law to “respect” the interests of smaller states, like Delaware and Vermont.

Today, it seems to me, a few conservative states have banded together in the Senate to represent the interests of the propertied class — the wealthy — to the detriment of the nation as a whole.

[Demsrule86]

29. I want 60 unicorns...and I have as much chance of getting them as California does of getting 60

senators. The constitution mandates 2 per state.

[Kid Berwyn]

34. Thanks! I really do get that. It's more of an idea exercise.

How do you propose we pass critical legislation needed to address the problems faced by 330 million US citizens when 41 conservatives shitstains like Ted Cruz or Mitch McConnell can simply say, “No”.

[Demsrule86]

39. Elect more Democrats. Vote in every election and always vote blue if you are a Democrat. It is the

only way. Also,we need to work on states or the gerrymanders will become worse.

[Funtatlaguy]

3. Make DC, PR, and USVI, states. That adds 6 Dem Senate seats.

[Kid Berwyn]

19. A great proposal.

US citizens in the territories don’t enjoy equal rights with those who live in states — including representation in Congress. I’m all for Democratic Senators, as long as they’re voted in and not appointed.

[Polybius]

21. Sure

But wouldn't that require 60 votes, thus meaning we need to end the filibuster anyway?

[NurseJackie]

4. One is possible, the other is not.

[Kid Berwyn]

20. If that's the case, let's give it a go.

Democracy may not survive, otherwise.

[dutch777]

5. This will continue to be a tough nut and doesn't help when 8 Dem Sens defect on things like min wage

which should be close to a no brainer. Other real option, which I still cannot believe we failed on considering Dems were running essentially against the Trump record and painting his supporter with it, is get over 60 SOLID Dems in the Senate.

[Kid Berwyn]

22. That bothered me, too.

Even Fox News couldn’t cover up the Russia thing or 500,000 dead due to COVID. Yet, the voters brought back the likes of Joni Ernst and Lindsey Graham. Nuts.

Lesson there for 2022: Run Like Democrats and support Democratic programs like justice and integrity in public office, universal health coverage, a sustainable and fair economy, and peace through prosperity. Pin the insane fascist warmongering gangster tag where it belongs — on the GQP — and make it stick.

[Demsrule86]

30. Wrong lesson...you run like that in states that won't support progressives, you elect Republicans.

[Kid Berwyn]

33. No, act like Democrats when running and when governing.

It’s the winning formula.



“Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.” — Harry S. Truman

[Demsrule86]

36. That was more than 70 years ago... you kind of made my point...no recent examples are available.

You are wrong...hopefully most Democrats understand our situation...wishing and pretending we are in a left leaning country against all evidence merely causes us to lose elections and have unreasonable expectations of what can be accomplished particularly with a 50 50 Senate. And the reason we have moved right is because too many GOP types have been elected. When Democrats are in power, we move the country left. Trump was particularly awful.

[Kid Berwyn]

52. So, I'm wrong for saying we campaign and govern like Democrats?

That’s not what the facts show. People — including a large swath of the deplorables — are ticked because government doesn’t do much of anything to make the quality of life better. If they were smart, they’d have figured it out.

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

BBC, April 17, 2014

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

"A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time."

On the other hand:

When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.

Continues...

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

Ans that is why I propose bringing back the New Deal approach to government.

[roamer65]

6. This is why I don't see the United States lasting under its current configuration.

States like NY and CA aren’t going to tolerate this imbalance in representation much longer.

The small red states are like leeches on the back of larger blue states, and will block any equitable constitutional change.

[Kid Berwyn]

23. I love Wyoming and South Dakota, most of the smaller population states...

Driven to and through most of the lower 48 plus Hawai’i and Puerto Rico. We must approach the problems working together — even when the Senate doesn’t support it.

[radius777]

24. Agree, it is taxation without representation.

The counties that Biden won represent 70% of GDP. The 50 Dem Senators represent millions more than the 50 Repub Senators.

The Founders could've never envisioned the outsized role the Senate would have on issues of national concern, and how unbalanced population would become between the states.

[Stuart G]

32. I wonder how many of the founders could have envisioned the U.S.A. as it is today?

Not 13 states, but 50 states..I wonder how many knew where Alaska and Hawaii were? (perhaps those places had different names then..)
...Maybe Jefferson could have imagined it, but what about other founders?..What was the thinking in the 1780s?
How were people getting around?....No electricity, no cars, not much of stuff we take for granted today..think about it.

[roamer65]

42. Yes, it was very different.

A collection of 13 East Coast former British colonies.

[roamer65]

41. We are outgrowing certain parts of a very old compact.

It needs major progressive revisions, but here is the conundrum:

Do we dare open up the Constitution for changes via a convention?

My answer is a definite NO under the current political environment.

So the imbalance will continue to fester and as John Kennedy said:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”

[Demsrule86]

37. And what can California and New York do about it exactly?

[roamer65]

40. Secession referenda.

It will get to that point when the imbalance becomes intolerable.

Think 1770’s...taxation without representation.

[Celerity]

7. Your US population figure is approximately 11 million short. 332.33 million atm

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/

[Kid Berwyn]

25. The data come from 2010 census.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division.

https://www.infoplease.com/us/states/state-population-by-rank

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. Greatest Page for your important post! ♥

[Kid Berwyn]

26. My dear CaliforniaPeggy, thank you!

The United States has just survived an attempted fascist putsch, thanks in large parts to Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the Democratic Party, voters of all political stripes with integrity, and the men and women in government service who take their oath of office seriously.

Next time, the “hostile takeover” may be better planned, its leadership more talented, and the nation’s condition even more dire. To help prevent that, we need a New Deal for the 21st Century. That includes legislation that will literally protect and serve all citizens, rebuild the nation, and lead the planet to a sustainable future. As you, I don’t see the likes of Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson being any part of that.

[liskddksil]

10. At least give them as many as the Dakotas nt

[Kid Berwyn]

28. There once was talk of splitting California in two.

Just LA County has almost 4 million people, about an Oklahoma.

To make things fair, let’s split it into 30.

[dansolo]

48. I realize that you are joking a bit

But if California did hypothetically split into 30 states, most of those mini-states would end up electing Republican senators. California has a few massive population centers, which are heavily Democratic, but large portions of the state are red.

[sarisataka]

11. Giving California 60 Senators would make sense if

the Senate was based on population. But it is not.

[Kid Berwyn]

31. Absolutely correct.

Don’t want to take anything away from any state, just the ability of 41 Senators to stop progress.

Do you think we can repeal the filibuster this session in order to pass critical legislation?

I believe this is an existential issue for the nation.

[sarisataka]

38. I believe it is quite possible to repeal the filibuster

though I do not know what the full cost might be. Changing the requirement back to having to speak to hold the floor might be an acceptable compromise. I don't think many Senators would filibuster if they actually had to inconvenience themselves.

[BSdetect]

13. The imbalance is due to sloppy thinking by the founders. They never imagined such discrepances

of population

Like all the other faults it's difficult to fix.

[Kid Berwyn]

43. Thus the Senate must scrap the filibuster.

Otherwise, the smaller red state conservatives will continue to “stick it” to the liberals in the “big cities” cough and all their welfare recipients.

Sadly, the reality is blue state economies support the rural red states through fiscal policies.

Continuing 40 years of trickle-down economics means and the nation’s important issues go unaddressed.

[rownesheck]

14. How about

base representation in the senate on population density? And maybe some states shouldn't get Senators. I'm looking at you Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, etc.

Probably an unfair idea, but I believe people should be represented, not vast areas of empty land.

[Kid Berwyn]

45. Interesting suggestion, rownesheck.

Perhaps the Senate can represent regional interests...West Coast, Rocky Mountains, Great Lakes, Midwest, Great Plains...

What the historic corruption trail shows, the Senate serves the wealthy.

Disturbing data: The rich and powerful get their policies adopted, even if opposed by most voters

Whether or not a government policy is favored by most Americans “matters not a whit,” an eminent political scientist tells a University of Minnesota audience.

By Eric Black | columnist
MinnPost, May 8, 2015

You won’t be shocked to learn that wealthy people get the policies they want from government more often than those of low or moderate means. Nor will you be surprised that organized special interests — the kinds of groups that send lobbyists to Washington to advance pro-business agendas — have an impact. But, at least if you’ve been watching your old Frank Capra movies, you might think these tendencies can be overcome, or at least partially offset, by the power of the people, the ordinary voter, without whose support no one can reach high office in America.

Even a legislator who sympathizes with or has sold his political soul to the rich and powerful (you might think) has to take into account the policy preferences of the ordinary voter.

You might think that, but according to research by an eminent political scientist presented at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School, you would be wrong.

Whether or not a proposed change in government policy is favored by the majority of Americans “matters not a whit” in leading to the adoption of such policy changes, Princeton professor Martin Gilens has concluded. On the other hand, the support of a proposed policy change by wealthy Americans, or by organized lobbies, matters quite a few whits.

Continues...

https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2015/05/disturbing-data-rich-and-powerful-get-their-policies-adopted-even-if-opposed/

I propose they wear official clothing similar to race car driver fire suits, appropriately labeled with the sundry and colorful corporate logos of the lobbyists who sponsor them.

[marie999]

15. The House is set up to give the population power

and the Senate is set up to give the states power. It will never be changed because they would not get 2/3 of the Senate and 3/4 of the states to vote for it.

[Kid Berwyn]

47. It seems that way to me, too. How about abolishing the Senate?

One suggestion that seems impossible is to eliminate the Senate, altogether. Going by its rarified atmosphere and elitist nature, got to agree.

The Case for Abolishing the Senate

The upper chamber has become far more undemocratic than the Constitution's framers could ever have imagined. What would American government look like without it?

BY JAY WILLIS
GQ, October 16, 2018

The United States Senate exists today because the Constitution's framers did not trust America to function without it. Unlike the House of Representatives, the "people's House," whose members were expected to be as prone to extremism and shortsightedness as the constituents they would represent, the plan was for the Senate to be the dignified, deliberative body that operated above the fray of politics. As Virginia delegate and noted optimist Edmund Randolph put it at the Constitutional Convention, a good Senate would "restrain, if possible, the fury of democracy."

By this ambitious metric, the Senate is a failure.

Today's upper chamber has completed its transformation into a smaller version of its more populist sibling, the House—except this one does not come close to reflecting the actual population, or for that matter, the actual population's actual interests. The Senate's once-celebrated hallmarks of comity are history. Blue-slipping is on the way out. For judicial and executive branch appointees, the filibuster is gone, and I believe that once a party that holds the White House, the House, and a slim Senate majority feels so moved, it will abolish it for legislation, too. This Republican-controlled Senate's efforts to pass the tax bill and repeal the Affordable Care Act—its two most important policy goals—proceeded under a process that is not subject to filibuster, because Mitch McConnell knew he'd be unable to earn 60 votes for either one, and therefore didn't bother trying.

Only two years ago, when faced with the most significant Supreme Court vacancy in a generation, the majority leader decided to hold it open for over a year, offering no coherent justification other than his desire to have it filled by a president who shares his ideology. It was maybe the most brazen power grab in Senate history, and not one of his purportedly solemn, fair-minded GOP Senate colleagues breathed a word of dissent about it. Three weeks ago, Lindsey Graham—once one of the alleged pragmatic dealmakers—saved another Supreme Court seat for his party by screaming at his colleagues across the aisle while on national television. To the extent that this place was ever some hallowed clubhouse of nonpartisan decorum, it is not one any longer.

When the Constitution was written, the Senate's other primary purpose was to preserve the power and autonomy of smaller states, whose representatives feared that their voices would be drowned out altogether in national politics. Senators would resolve this fear because each state would receive an equal number of them, regardless of population size. Their mandate was to represent the interests of their states, not necessarily the interests of the constituents in those states; before 1913, it was state legislatures, not voters, who were responsible for selecting their two representatives in the Senate.

Continues...

https://www.gq.com/story/the-case-for-abolishing-the-senate

Wish someone had thought of it sooner.

[BannonsLiver]

16. While we're doing things that will never happen, I'd like $10 million and a chocolate river.

[Kid Berwyn]

51. Steve Bannon's Golden Showers Corral

Unending Chocolate Fountainhead with All-Female Professional Staff and Vladimir Putin videotaping proceeds live from the next room.

[The Revolution]

27. The senate isn't supposed to be representative

But the house is supposed to be. The fact that the house really isn't anymore is part of the problem. We should pass a new reapportionment act that essentially limits the size of a district, rather than limiting the size of the house.
If we say that states get 1 representative for each full 500,000 people, then the house goes from 435 to 662.

This doesn't fix the Senate issue by itself, but would hopefully force rebulican senators to moderate at least a little, as they would have to work with the house to get anything passed. This also helps with the electoral college, since it will increase the number of electoral votes accordingly, and dilute the unrepresentative (senate) portion of the EVs.

This change doesn't require a constitutional ammendment, so is much more realistic. However, it probably would still require removing the filibuster. Perhaps if we have 50 senators agreeing to the apportionment change though, they may also agree to eliminate the filibuster for reapportionment acts.

[Kid Berwyn]

50. Thank you, The Revolution. Fascinating suggestion.

The problems facing the nation require rational approaches. They also demand creativity.

[BGBD]

35. Incredibly short sighted

Do you think there will not be another time of united republican government?

[Kid Berwyn]

49. Yes. That's why I proposed it.

To prevent a GOP majority in the Senate or House, we need to pass vital legislation. Otherwise, Corporate McPravda will beat us over the head because we were unable to solve the problems that require vital legislation.

As for the ideology of current Republicans: it’s whatever Trump deigns and that means, “fascist.” Unlike many on DU, I’m proud to write I’ve been ahead of the curve in fighting those bastards.

[iemanja]

44. Good luck amending the constitution for changing the senate numbers

Have you heard of the constitution?

[Kid Berwyn]

46. Excellent observation.

That’s why I suggest ending the filibuster.