The Case for Busting the Filibuster

The Nation by Thomas Geoghegan | Aug. 12, 2009 (Opinion)

This past spring, Senator Claire McCaskill wrote to me asking for $50 to help elect more Democrats, so we could have a filibuster-proof Senate. Now that Al Franken has finally been declared the sixtieth Democratic senator, her plea may seem moot. But even with Franken in office, we don't have a filibuster-proof Senate. To get to sixty on the Democratic side, we'll still have to cut deals with Democrats like Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and others who cat around ... Full Story »

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by Doug Greer - Aug. 31, 2009

But the procedural, or pretend, filibuster is an even worse form of piracy, an open invitation to senatorial predators to prey on neutral shipping, to which they might have given safe passage before. After all, why not “filibuster” if it’s a freebie—if you don’t actually have to stand up and talk in the chamber until you’re not only half dead from exhaustion but have made yourself a laughingstock? That’s what post-1975 senators began to do. In the 1960s, before the procedural filibuster, there were seven or fewer “old” filibusters in an entire term. In the most recent Senate term, there were 138.

The procedural filibuster creates less transparency of how the Senate works. As the complexity of government increases, transparency must increase, or we will lose our ability to even know what is going on.

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