No Change To Senate Filibuster Rule

Yesterday the United States Senate decided on its rules for the next two years. Some Democrats, upset by the Republicans abuse of the filibuster in the last two years, had wanted to change those rules. Senator Harkin (D-Iowa) wanted change the rules and virtually eliminate the filibuster. Senator Merkley (D-Oregon) wanted to keep the filibuster, but make it a real talking filibuster like it used to be. Both efforts failed.

This should come as no real surprise to those who've been paying attention to the Senate. It would have taken all of the Democrats sticking together to get the filibuster rule changes, and that's something they haven't been able to do for years now -- there are just too many "blue dogs" willing to vote with the Republicans. In the end, Majority Leader Reid just caved in and let the filibuster rule stay as it is.

This actually may not be a bad thing. The Republicans can still abuse it to block anything they don't like, but so can the Democrats. And with the Republican House sending over insane bills (like health care repeal), the real Democrats may need the filibuster to stop Republicans and "blue dogs" from joining together to pass some of the crazier House bills. Especially since the Democratic majority in the Senate is so slim now (and has too many "blue dogs").

Instead of changing the filibuster rule, Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell came to a "gentleman's agreement". Reid promised to allow more amendments to be submitted by the minority, and McConnell promised to not use the filibuster as much as they did in the last two years. But the agreement is not binding and there are few gentlemen in the cutthroat world of the Senate, so the agreement will probably have a very short life-span.

They did make a couple of fairly minor rule changes though. In the last Congress, a single senator could put a secret hold on a bill or appointment. They can still put a hold on, but now it will be public knowledge who did it. This is a good, if minor, change. All the business of the Senate should be open to the public and not done in secret. Only four senators voted to keep doing business in secret -- DeMint (South Carolina), Ensign (Nevada), Lee (Utah) and Paul (Kentucky). That makes me wonder what nefarious thing they are planning that they didn't want the American people to know about.

The other change was about amendments. In the past, a senator could delay proceedings by demanding that every word of every amendment be read aloud by Senate clerks. The new rule would prevent this as long as the amendment was submitted at least 72 hours before debate or vote.