F is for Filibuster

It wasn't all that long ago, before the Democrats took over the majority in Congress and history was rewritten, that the Republican majority castigated the Democrats for using, or threatening to use, the filibuster. See e.,g, Fight for the Filibuster and The Democrats and the filibuster. Former (oh, I still love saying that) Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum even suggested that they were unconstitutional -- in the hands of Democrats, of course. Democratic Filibuster Unconstitutional?

Santorum was correct about one prediction -- that the Republicans would freely use the filibuster when the GOP was back in the minority. As he said "we will have filibusters as far out as the imagination can comprehend." True, that.

Of course, since the Republicans still control the discourse in this country -- even if not Congress -- you will never see the "F word" used in polite media company, whether newspaper, TV or radio. Oh no -- it cannot be called a filibuster.

As was noted at Talking Points Memo, A Filibuster By Any Other Name . . .:

The AP story I linked to below in the post on habeas corpus rights for detainees being rejected by the Senate says the vote was 56-43 "against the bill." ZK writes, "Last I checked that meant 56 Senators voted FOR the bill. You should put up a warning about that - the media sure has changed how they report these votes." Indeed it has, as we noted back in July.

McClatchy Washington Bureau addressed the issue not too long ago, analyzing the unprecedented use of the filibuster by Senate Republicans, Senate tied in knots by filibusters:

This year Senate Republicans are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever before, a pattern that's rooted in — and could increase — the pettiness and dysfunction in Congress.

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Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 "cloture" votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority's right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they've fallen short 22 times so far this year. That's largely why they haven't been able to deliver on their campaign promises.

Although the trend has been upward over the years, Republicans have made it a way of life. In addition to votes on the War in Iraq, McClatchy observes:

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., forced an all-night session on the Iraq war this week to draw attention to what Democrats called Republican obstruction.

"The minority party has decided we have to get to 60 votes on almost everything we vote on of substance," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "That's not the way this place is supposed to work."

Providing a historical background, the article continues:

Associate Senate Historian Don Ritchie said that since the nation's start, dissident senators have prolonged debate to try to kill or modify legislation. The word "filibuster" — a translation of the Dutch word for "free-booter" or pirate — appears in the record of an 1840s Senate dispute about a patronage job.

From Reconstruction to 1964, the filibuster was largely a tool used by segregationists to fight civil rights legislation. Even so, filibusters were employed only rarely; there were only three during the 88th Congress, which passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 after two months of filibustering.

Filibusters were infrequent partly because the Senate custom of civility prompted consideration of minority views — and partly because they were so hard to overcome that compromises were struck. In 1917 cloture rules for ending filibusters were put in place, but required a two-thirds vote — so high it was rarely tested.

Post-Watergate, in 1975, the bar was lowered to three-fifths, or 60 votes, and leaders began to try it more often.

By the early 1990s, tensions between then-Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine and Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas upped the ante, and the filibuster-cloture spiral has soared ever since as more partisan politics prevailed. The use of filibusters became "basically a tool of the minority party," Ritchie said.

What is as bad, if not worse, than the use of the tactic, is the fact that the press does not accurately reflect the effect of the Republican's actions, allowing the GOP and the President cover, while making the Democrats look like do nothings (as though they needed help in that area).

Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly, commented on this phenomena in looking at two recent filibusters:

I see that Republicans have successfully filibustered two more bills today: one to give a House seat to the District of Columbia (57-42) and one to restore habeas corpus rights to terrorism suspects (56-43).

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As things stand, though, Republicans will largely avoid blame for their tactics. After all, the first story linked above says only that the DC bill 'came up short in the Senate' and the second one that the habeas bill 'fell short in the Senate.' You have to read with a gimlet eye to figure out how the vote actually broke down, and casual readers will come away thinking that the bills failed because of some kind of generic Washington gridlock, not GOP obstructionism.

So, for the record, here are the votes. On the habeas bill, Democrats and Independents voted 50-1 in favor. Republicans voted 42-8 against. On the DC bill, Democrats and Independents voted 49-1 in favor. Republicans voted 41-8 against. Would it really be so hard for reporters to make it clear exactly who's responsible for blocking these bills?

The negative impact of this lack of reportage is noted by Hullabaloo:

The fact that this new 60-vote gambit is purely to protect the president to ever have to veto anything that's popular never comes up. Neither, however, does the the press bother to report this as unusual or that the Republican congress is, in effect, vetoing popular legislation by filibustering everything in sight. In fact, the press is reporting this as if the democrats have failed to move their popular legislation even though they have a majority --- never mentioning that a majority is no longer enough, something that I doubt the public knows.

Tags: News, News and Media, Journalism, Politics