Take Back the Senate, Senators
By IRA SHAPIRO
NYT
The current condition of the Senate constitutes a national emergency. Not long ago, Americans looked to the Senate to be, in Walter Mondale’s words, the “national mediator,” reconciling regional and ideological differences through thoughtful legislating, serious debate, hard bargaining and principled compromise. Today, however, after a 20-year downward spiral, the once great Senate is polarized, paralyzed and dysfunctional. Last month, as she announced her decision to retire, Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, described a Senate that “routinely jettisons regular order,” “serially legislates by political brinksmanship” and “habitually eschews full debate and an open amendment process in favor of competing, up-or-down, take it or leave it proposals.” In The New Yorker, George Packer described the Senate as “the empty chamber.”
Senator Snowe expressed doubt that the situation would improve any time soon, and there is evidence to support her pessimistic assessment. In response to President Obama’s strengthened political position, George Will used his column in the Washington Post to advise conservatives to focus on keeping the House and capturing the Senate, where 23 of the 33 seats being contested are held by Democrats, in order to thwart Obama’s second term agenda. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has described how he would run the Senate if Republicans gain the majority, and he has already shown that a determined, unified Republican caucus can paralyze the Senate even without having a majority. In other words, if the Republicans lose the presidential election, they are gearing up for four more years of political obstruction.
This prospect raises profound questions about our political system. In a parliamentary system, the party that is elected gets the opportunity to put its program in place, and to be judged accordingly. We have a different system, based on the separation and sharing of power between the Congress and the president. Our minority party is not supposed to form a shadow government; some cooperation by the minority party is essential to making our system work. The right amount of cooperation between the president and the opposition party is difficult to quantify, but it should be considerably more than zero. Governing in our system is always bone-crushingly difficult; it should not be impossible. The Republican rejection of the concepts of minority cooperation and “loyal opposition” is anathema to the way our political system is supposed to work, and did work.
(More here.)
NYT
The current condition of the Senate constitutes a national emergency. Not long ago, Americans looked to the Senate to be, in Walter Mondale’s words, the “national mediator,” reconciling regional and ideological differences through thoughtful legislating, serious debate, hard bargaining and principled compromise. Today, however, after a 20-year downward spiral, the once great Senate is polarized, paralyzed and dysfunctional. Last month, as she announced her decision to retire, Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, described a Senate that “routinely jettisons regular order,” “serially legislates by political brinksmanship” and “habitually eschews full debate and an open amendment process in favor of competing, up-or-down, take it or leave it proposals.” In The New Yorker, George Packer described the Senate as “the empty chamber.”
Senator Snowe expressed doubt that the situation would improve any time soon, and there is evidence to support her pessimistic assessment. In response to President Obama’s strengthened political position, George Will used his column in the Washington Post to advise conservatives to focus on keeping the House and capturing the Senate, where 23 of the 33 seats being contested are held by Democrats, in order to thwart Obama’s second term agenda. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has described how he would run the Senate if Republicans gain the majority, and he has already shown that a determined, unified Republican caucus can paralyze the Senate even without having a majority. In other words, if the Republicans lose the presidential election, they are gearing up for four more years of political obstruction.
This prospect raises profound questions about our political system. In a parliamentary system, the party that is elected gets the opportunity to put its program in place, and to be judged accordingly. We have a different system, based on the separation and sharing of power between the Congress and the president. Our minority party is not supposed to form a shadow government; some cooperation by the minority party is essential to making our system work. The right amount of cooperation between the president and the opposition party is difficult to quantify, but it should be considerably more than zero. Governing in our system is always bone-crushingly difficult; it should not be impossible. The Republican rejection of the concepts of minority cooperation and “loyal opposition” is anathema to the way our political system is supposed to work, and did work.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
That's because the Senate is no longer a deliberative body it once was. It is like the House - a spoil system. Years ago, members of the Senate were elected by the state legislatures and not by the citizens of each state. The 17th Amendment sadly changed that. Also, the filibuster used to be 67 meaning that in order to enact legislation in the Senate, broad, broad consensus was needed.
The current filibuster is 60.
Walter Mondale has argued for reducing this number to 55. If the Senate is merely going to be a simple majority body, what point is there in having two bodies that operate more or less on a simple majority?
The people should take back the Senate by demanding a repeal of the 17th amendment sending the choice of Senators back to its original legislative function and demand the filibuster be moved up to 67 from 60.
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