Learning to Love the Nuclear Option

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/opinion/filibusters-arent-the-problem.html

Learning to Love the Nuclear Option
By STEVEN WALDMAN | APRIL 5, 2017

...Under the filibuster rules in place at the time of the New Deal, Republicans could have blocked the Security Exchange Act, the National Labor Relations Act and the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to the journalist Charles Peters’s new book, “We Do Our Part.”

And if the Senate had been operating under majority rule during the Obama and Bush administrations, the following bills would have gained Senate approval: the Toomey-Manchin background check bill for guns; the provision allowing people to have a “public option” for health care on the Obamacare exchanges; comprehensive immigration reform; an increase in the minimum wage; and the bipartisan campaign finance bill, called the Disclose Act.

If the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, eliminates the filibuster on legislation, the Democrats’ reaction may end up being less anger than regret (as in, “Why didn’t we think to do that?”). President Barack Obama’s legacy would have been different had majority rule been in effect.

...But in the long run, if Republicans remove the filibuster for legislation, they may regret it. They have been the bigger beneficiary of the practice. From 1999 to 2006, when the Republicans controlled the Senate, the Democratic minority used the filibuster 272 times. By contrast, from 2007 to 2014, when the Republicans were in the minority, they used it 644 times, more than twice as often. The average filibuster per congressional session under President Obama was 158; under President George W. Bush it was 85.

[Warpy]

1. The Republicans have abused the filibuster for far too long

It was supposed to be a last ditch effort by a minority party that found proposed legislation or appointees so reprehensible that they refused to consider them.

The Republicans have abused it, threatening to filibuster just about everything that has Democratic support or nominees proposed by Democratic presidents. I agree it's got to go until this crop of religious fanatics and other crazies who refuse to negotiate in good faith and compromise are all dead, buried, and forgotten.

Bringing it back in a saner period could always happen. But yes, the Democrats should have abolished it when they were so briefly the majority.