Can The Filibuster Be Reformed?
I’ve gotten a few queries over the past week asking me to go beyond mere whining about the sorry institutional set up in the United States Senate to asking if there’s anything that can be done about it. The answer is that yes there is. Key elements of Senate procedure have been altered repeatedly throughout history and there have been failed efforts to do it that might have worked had folks been a bit more determined.
What’s missing right now is any sign from anyone politically important of any interest in turning up the heat. As Chris Bowers explains here it seems to be possible in practice for 50 Senators backed by the Vice President to force basically whatever procedural move they want. Traditionally, that’s not the way things have worked. Instead, having key people talk seriously about going this route has produced a political crisis and encouraged people to cut a deal. That’s how the filibuster got pared back from 67 votes to 60 votes. And it’s also how, as recently as 2005, Senate Democrats were persuaded to relent on several judicial filibusters.
But I’ve seen no sign of a serious public campaign of pressure from Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or other leading figures to delegitimize this minoritarian obstruction.
70 Responses to “Can The Filibuster Be Reformed?”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
November 11th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Occam’s razor suggests that the Democratic Party does not actually want to pass progressive legislation.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Couldn’t it be something more prosaic? Maybe Senators reflexively defend their class interests?
November 11th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Awesome, thanks! Next step: let’s see what building blocks exist. Besides change-congress.org that is. I loaded the home page of MoveOn.org and saw this:
http://pol.moveon.org/hc_fund/survey.html?rc=homepage
How about a twitter hashtag: #majoritarian, anyone?
November 11th, 2009 at 11:58 am
It’s a difference in optics. When the Republicans threatened to get rid of the filibuster, Democrats defended it by an appeal to institutions and traditions. If the Democrats were to propose getting rid of the filibuster, Republicans would say that’s proof Obama is Hitler and Reid is Goebbels.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Contra Chris Bowers I think the most plausible path to getting rid of the filibuster is for Dems to lose a few Senate seats and for Teabaggers to get even more explicit control of the GOP… making the country essentially ungovernable. I think it’s really only in the extreme case of complete gridlock caused by an insane minority that you could drum up enough support to make 50 Senators see the light.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
But going nuclear would carry very real questions–it might play poorly with the public, and the Republicans would be able to grind the Senate to a halt. That’s the reticence. And doing this over health care is dicey because the public is narrowly and not overwhelmingly popular. It would look like a power grab because it is a power grab, albeit a justified one that restores power to the people by making the upper chamber more democratic.
I think a better time to try this out will be after health care passes and the focus shifts to financial regulation. My guess is that it will be hugely popular among the public, and complete anathema to Republicans. There will be a handful of Republicans that support it (I’m guessing the Maine sisters, Graham, Lugar, maybe one or two more) and a handful of conservative Democrats that oppose it. Under those circumstances, if 58 senators support such legislation and 65% of the public does, I sense that the time will be right to make an attempt on the filibuster using this method.
Of course, this just reminds me of how silly the liberal activism on health care has been. It’s all been about the public option, which is a fine idea but not terribly relevant and bad strategy. Instead, liberal activists should have made this about the filibuster from the start, and pressed hard on every Democratic senator (and Olympia Snowe) to make a public declaration not to filibuster.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
*because the public is narrowly and not overwhelmingly popular*
Should read “health care is narrowly…”
November 11th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
The filibuster should just be the beginning. The secret holds have to go too. Someone should just catalog all the various delaying tactics the Republicans have used during recent months, and just abolish all of them. I’d throw in the seniority system.
Madison et al were wrong. Government by random, self-appointed minorities is worse than majority rule. What those guys did was produce a system with multiple veto points. The idea that putting in a lot of veto points will improve deliberation is just silly. It just increases horsetrading. Veto points are toll booths for bribe collectors.
The Madisonians also hoped that their Rube Goldberg system would keep government small. Whether or not that was a good idea (I don’t think so) that didn’t happen.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
It kills me that a Senate majority leader as lame as Bill Frist was willing to threaten the nuclear option over judicial nominations, and Reid doesn’t bring it up to help the most important piece of legislation in 25 years.
Imagine how much better the bill could have been if the filibuster only required 55 votes. Or if we just had majority rule in the Senate.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
http://www.slate.com/id/2119502/
The money quote:
Or is it because the filibuster, and the exaggerated power it gives to both minorities and individuals, is the basis for much of the Senate’s–indeed Washington’s–corrupt cash economy?
November 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
@J.W. Hamner: I think there is something to this; Nate Silver has written about it from a game-theory perspective.
@Lev: the whole point is that “Republicans [are] able to grind the Senate to a halt”, and are doing so, NOW, due to rules subject to revision by 51 Senators. WRT the optics of it, it’s hard to see how the cure could be worse than the current disease.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Madison et al were wrong. Government by random, self-appointed minorities is worse than majority rule. What those guys did was produce a system with multiple veto points. The idea that putting in a lot of veto points will improve deliberation is just silly. It just increases horsetrading. Veto points are toll booths for bribe collectors.
I doubt Madison et al. ever conceived of a system where Congressmen could be bought and sold the way they are today. In my opinion, the pervasive influence of money outweighs any structural flaws that might exist in the Constitution.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Steven Pearlstein did an excellent column about this in today’s [11/11/09] Washington Post on page A17 [I'm sorry but i don't know how to link yet]. he basicly says that the Democrates should call the Republicans and have debate on the Senate floor for the next few weeks and then to have a vote.Instead of chasing the magical 60 votes that are needed to cut off debate.
My own personal opinion is that Reid should call the Republicans bluff and make them have a real round the clock filbuster just like the old days of Strom Thurmond in the 60’s.I do not know if this is still possible.I’m no constitutional scholar.If anyone knows why this wouldnt be possible i would be interested to know why and why the laws have changed since the 1960’s .
There are aspects of the health bill that i like and don’t like.But as far as im concerned the most important thing is to stop every bill from having to get 60 votes just to pass.In my opinion this goes against majority rule.The Senate was created to “cool down” legislation.Not kill it cold.
Obviousely,Steven Pearlstein’s column says it better than i can. He is defintly one of the better columnists out there , in my opinion.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I find it difficult to get excited about a minor procedural issue like the filibuster when Obama is raping the public in much more direct ways.
Obama is shoveling public wealth to the big banks. He is sending Americans to die in Iraq and afghanistan. He is trashing our civil liberties. Those actions have nothing to do with a filibuster.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Nor will you. American democracy is not, and was never intended to be, simple majoritarianism. It includes a variety of minoritarian checks and balances on the power of the majority. You just don’t like this particular one because it’s usually used against your personal political preferences.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Most of the public won’t know, notice or care. That’s left to those of us in Bloggyworld and Politics-junkie world.
Of course, Reid (HAH!) and the Dem leadership could prepare the ground, a lot, if they would pound on the obstructionists every day and every way.
I can’t believe, after all the election and politics cycles going all the way back to Lee Atwater and to Nixon, that the Dems haven’t learned the lessons and value of plain old boring, annoying repetition.
Well, Pelosi would piss off a lot of people by opining on the Senate’s business. T’isn’t done, you know.
And the Pres can cajole, persuade and comment, but he doesn’t have a single vote.
Remember Will Rogers: “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat!”
November 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I think there is an excellent case for making sure that government is relatively immobile and unable to accomplish much. We are all excited about government efficiency when it comes to health care, but we would be wise to remember that the same efficiency can easily be applied to do awful things. We don’t know who is going to hold the reins next so we should make sure that at least they can’t do that much harm very quickly.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I would have to agree with John Emorson at comment #8.It’s bad enough that one senator can block an appointee. But i fail to see why they can keep their name secret while doing so.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
A Senator has to do it, from within the majority, with a national campaign.
It cannot be a big-state Senator — that is, not from California or NY.
Nor can it be a small-state Senator — so, it can’t be Nevada, either.
It has to be a Senator from a medium-sized state, someone in the majority who generally agrees with the majority.
That’s the only one who could make the point that if you add up all the people and votes represented by the minority of Senators who are blocking action (e.g., the 40 Republican Senators) equal something between a quarter and a third of America, and therefore it is wrong for them to stop the majority from voting.
A President can’t do it, because it’s a Senate thing.
And it cannot be limited to a particular issue — that is, it can’t be about health care, much less a public option, or judicial nominations, etc. It has to be framed simply — the people vs privilege — and every Senator who defends “tradition” has to lose prestige IN THEIR STATE for it to work.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
What might be easier than changing the filibuster would be changing the Democratic response to it. Historically, the filibuster has been a protest against perceived unconstitutionality, or against really bad actions that can never be undone. They are in that way useful in forcing the majority to be really sure that it wants to go to the trouble of breaking the filibuster. But they have also ensured a huge political risk on the part of the person engaged in the filibuster.
But the way the Democrats handle the procedural filibuster is all backwards. There’s no risk to the protesting party, and there’s every risk to the majority. As a result, you’ve got what amounts to an unconstitutional 60% requirement for legislation.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
@Pete from Baltimore: thanks for the reference; here’s the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111018739.html
November 11th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Most people here would have strongly opposed this sort of thing a few years ago.
It takes very little guts to oppose the filibuster when you’re in power. It takes a LOT of guts to oppose it when you’re not. I’m a big fan of forcing people to lie in the beds they’ve made.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
MR Sam Penrose at comment 21
Thanks for providing the link.I appreciate that.I’m sorry that i could not do it myself.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I think there is an excellent case for making sure that government is relatively immobile and unable to accomplish much.
As someone living in California throughout the last budget crisis, it’s become rather hard for me to take this argument seriously.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
If anyone knows why this wouldnt be possible i would be interested to know why and why the laws have changed since the 1960’s .
It’s a Senate rule XXII thing. Reid thinks he can’t force an actual filibuster, but those rules are hard for anyone to read who doesn’t already know what they’re supposed to say. Suffice it that he’s not interested in forcing the issue, regardless of whether he’s doing his constitutionally appointed job.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Folks,
There is a bright side to all this delay. It lets the rest of the world see clearly that it is not just the Republicans who are willing to rake them over the coals. It’s nearly all Americans.
The final result of our archaic politics will be a worldwide alliance against the US. The GOP will cheer when the United Nations moves to Geneva, but when the US is kicked out along with its veto they’ll have cause to lament.
Why do the hate us, George? Because we’re jerks of the first degree.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Lev @6: going nuclear would carry very real questions–it might play poorly with the public
As Alan Grayson has said, the public doesn’t care whether health care reform passes with 80 votes, or 60 votes, or 50 votes plus Biden. Failing to pass a bill that is seen as a success would be far worse for the Dems than overturning a poorly-understood, extraconstitutional delaying tactic.
As an example of how poorly understood it is, Pete from Baltimore @13, who reads and comments on relatively sophisticated political blogs and reads the Washington Post, writes:
My own personal opinion is that Reid should call the Republicans bluff and make them have a real round the clock filbuster just like the old days of Strom Thurmond in the 60’s.
This is not what it takes to actually mount a filibuster. The Senators who want to cut off the filibuster actually have to be present on the Senate floor, while those who want to filibuster just have to send one of theirs to talk. Or not even talk continuously — just stand around and occasionally observe that there are insufficient votes to close debate.
If someone like Pete from Baltimore, who is probably more knowledgeable about these things than 98% of the public, misunderstands the filibuster, then I doubt that Uncle George and Aunt Edna in Peoria are doing to give a damn.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
it might play poorly with the public
Partly because, about three seconds ago, the Democrats were hailing the filibuster as the most important right advanced since the founding of the Republic.
Now, of course, we know that the Democrats have absolutely no shame in reversing their positions for pure political power. For example, the Massachusetts Democrats took the power to name a replacement Senator away from from the Governor a few years ago and then gave it back to the Governor a few years later simply because the Governor was a Republican then and a Democrat now. But the Democratic Party has always been purely about holding power, so that type of thing isn’t too much of a surprise.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
There’s no risk to the protesting party, and there’s every risk to the majority.
This is precisely the problem. The point of parliamentary maneuvering is to burn some goodwill and political capital on something important to you. The payoff is that you are willing to go the extra mile. The risk is that you get ostracized as an asshole that no one wants to work with and are unable to call in future favors.
Unfortunately, it does not work like this in practice– the Sebators are reluctant to make enemies with each other or punish malefactors. This is especially acute in Coburn’s case– his decision to put a blanket hold on all budget amendments has just meant that senators come to him first for his approval before introducing anything on the floor.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Never mind the filibuster, let’s get rid of the Supreme Court. Talk about “minoritarian.” Twelve unelected judges overturning the will of millions of people. It’s undemocratic! It’s unconscionable! It has to go!
Wait…
November 11th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Bush had no problem passing massive tax cuts for the rich during 10 years with 50 votes + Cheney. Let’s pass a real public plan insuring tens of millions of Americans for 10 years and we will see if any politician runs against it in 2020.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
The anti-majoritarian nature of the senate is already embedded in it’s structure of equal representation of all states. If anyone wants to advocate for supermajorities to pass legislation in exchange for making the senate a proportionally representative body, go to it.
As it is, the purpose of the filibuster is for one side to threaten to use it and the other side to either decide that the matter isn’t important enough to steamroll the minority or to decide that the matter is so important that the minority needs to be cut off at the knees for obstruction. It does not work if the majority just says ” that’s the way it is, I guess we need 60 votes for everything.” The use of the filibuster must carry risk along with it. If it doesn’t , then the purpose is lost. If the filibuster is allowable, so is cutting off the electricity in McConnel’s office and subjecting his staffers to body cavity searches in order to enter the Capitol and cutting farm aid to Kentucky.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
The filibuster should just be the beginning. The secret holds have to go too. Someone should just catalog all the various delaying tactics the Republicans have used during recent months, and just abolish all of them. I’d throw in the seniority system.
Madison et al were wrong. Government by random, self-appointed minorities is worse than majority rule. What those guys did was produce a system with multiple veto points. The idea that putting in a lot of veto points will improve deliberation is just silly. It just increases horsetrading. Veto points are toll booths for bribe collectors.
The Madisonians also hoped that their Rube Goldberg system would keep government small. Whether or not that was a good idea (I don’t think so) that didn’t happen.
Actually, Madison HATED the Senate – he was bitterly opposed to the idea of one chamber based on equal representation. And until his death he believed it had been a huge mistake. He only supported it because it was the only way to win ratification.
Moreover, he certainly didn’t anticipate a 3/5 supermajority requirement to advance legislation.
My own guess is that rather than a formal end to the filibuster anytime soon, you’ll simply see vastly more pieces of legislation pushed through the reconciliation process.
I sometimes wonder if Democrats were actually cursed this round by having 60 votes – that reduced the incentive of the majority caucus to get rid of the filibuster because it dramatically magnified the individual power of each Democratic senator. With 55-56 votes, it would have been virtually impossible to pass anything and they may well have decided to force health care through the reconciliation process.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
But there is always an assumption, when talking about the Senate, that these people need to pander to the rich for campaign money. A far more important thing to remember is that most of them are themselves very, very rich.
And they have a public plan! What incentives do these people have, really, to reform the health care system?
November 11th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
hmmm… seems to me that having a House whose members are elected by other politicians, and not by the general public, is a guarantee that seats will be bought and sold.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Two things are, imho, germane here: A) filibusters can be defeated and 2) actual filibusters are, strictly speaking, rare.
It seems to me that the filibuster is less of a problem than weak-sauce Senators who simply don’t want to do the work and thus capitulate to the mere threat of a filibuster: The number of threats to filibuster is rising while the number of actual filibusters isn’t.
A third point: filibustering is merely an extension of the rule of length of debate. In the Senate there is no set length of debate. The HoR used to have filibusters, but killed it, not directly, but by changing (limiting) the length of debate. Nobody, as far as I know, wants to make that much a drastic change to the Senate…
November 11th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
The anti-majoritarian nature of the senate is already embedded in it’s structure of equal representation of all states.
And the anti-majoritarian nature of the House is embedded in its structure of equal representation of all districts regardless of differences in population. In other words, the filibuster is just one form of anti-majoritarianism. If the filibuster is illegitimate because it’s anti-majoritarian, the entire American system of government is illegitimate.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Foresight #37,
What are you talking about? House seats are reapportioned every ten years at the census. Are you carping because we don’t have a census and reapportion every two years?
Or are you upset because every state has at least one Representative? I can’t imagine that anyone would agree to disenfranchise the people in one seventh of the states.
Other than those two relatively minor deviations from equal representation, the House of Representatives is quite majoritarian. The Supreme Court has seen to that.
There are certainly problems with Gerrymandering, but that’s a political issue, not anti-majoritarian. If anything its “pro-majoritarian” since the majority party in each state tries to maximize its representation by lumping all the members in the minority party into as few districts as possible.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
One thing worth noting here is that the routine demand to force formal cloture votes is not some archaic tradition, but an innovation of V**gr* Bob Dole’s tenure as minority leader. The normalization of the Senate’s supposed 60-vote supermajority requirement — particularly its acceptance in the media — is a remarkable bit of salesmanship.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
And because the radical transformation in the way it’s been employed is crippling the very possibility of national governance, damning us to stagger forward on sheer inertia alone.
It’s not illegitimate.
It’s just bad policy.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
With everything equal, I would gladly support abolition of the filibuster no matter who’s in the majority.
Here’s why everything is NOT equal: The next Republican “majority” will be from small states representing a small minority of the U.S. population. So a filibuster-free Senate IS majoritarian while we hold the majority but not with a GOP majority.
Therefore progressives should listen to that inner voice that worries about what will be done with 51 votes… because it’ll be sparsely-populated Red States whose Senators will wield that power.
Consider this factoid from 2006: if each of every state’s two senators is taken to represent half that state’s population, then the Senate’s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Democrats prefer to be seen as weak and ineffective rather than be too critical (oh my!) of their Republican colleagues. It’s mind-blowing.
Senate Dems have their own bully pulpit. They could speak out against this unprecedented abuse of the filibuster and make sure every pundit and reporter in America knows that Republicants are abusing the filibuster. But they are too damn timid.
Jon Stewart kicks ass on this subject:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/01/stewart-destroys-dems-for_n_305948.html
So glad I dropped my membership in the Dem Party!
November 11th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
That’s why I posted #19 — it has to be a SENATOR who wants to make this his (or her) cause, from WITHIN the Senate’s majority, and not related to any particular issue.
But maybe somebody will check my math:
In round figures, the 60 Democrats in the Senate in 2009 (counting Lieberman and Sanders) represent 208 million Americans, while the 40 Republicans represent 140 million. (The numbers exceed the total population of 308 million, because one Senator from each party represents Ohio, North Carolina, and Louisiana, so the populations from those states get double-counted, since each Senator gets to say they represent ALL the people of those states. But you can’t say that a Senator doesn’t represent all the people of the state, even those who didn’t vote for him, and double-counting all the states is transparently biased.)
So the math says that the imbalance between 40% of the Senate representing 45% of the population is not enough to make the case stick.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
If you really think the filibuster is a threat to our whole political system and you aren’t just changing your mind because currently the dems are in power then propose that the filibuster rules be changed in 7 years. Neither party would know whether they were going to be in control (though I’d bet heavily on the dems) and the republicans would be assured that barack obama wouldn’t be able to take advantage of it.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
12. James Gary: No, Madison didn’t envision the outcome of what he did. That’s why he was wrong.
15 Fred S: It includes a variety of minoritarian checks and balances on the power of the majority.
To the constitutional checks have been added additional Congressional procedure checks (not in the constitution) and other checks resulting from the two-party system, graft, and corruption. Too much is too much.
If you rdefine the purpose of the anti-majoritarian checks and balances as protecting property instead of protecting minorities, then the whole system, including the veto-point bribe collection locations, makes sense. But as far as minorities go, the most significant effect of the filubuster during the last 150 years has been to protect segregation. (Crackers are a minority, you see.)
November 11th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Spolati: Why not two birds with one stone? That’s silly.
Political people are never idealistic, but they always demand idealism from their opponents> Screw that.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
[...] Yglesias noted this morning, "I’ve gotten a few queries over the past week asking me to go beyond mere whining about [...]
November 11th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
And because the radical transformation in the way it’s been employed is crippling the very possibility of national governance, damning us to stagger forward on sheer inertia alone.
Oh, stop being so absurd. There’s been no “radical transformation” and the idea that the filibuster is “crippling” our government is just beyond laughable.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
What are you talking about? House seats are reapportioned every ten years at the census.
So what? Yes, seats are periodically reapportioned. That doesn’t alter the fact that there is huge variation in the populations of House districts. Montana has twice as many people as Wyoming, but each state gets only a single Representative in the House.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
49 Foresight: that only affects about ten of the smallest states, with one or two reps.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I don’t think the rules need to be changed. I think the Dems need to speak out against the Republican abuse of the filibuster.
But the Democrats are too timorous and afraid of offending Republicans. They put a higher value on THAT than on serving the people in our time of need.
Again, mind blowing. Not a party worthy of support.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
49 Foresight: that only affects about ten of the smallest states, with one or two reps.
No it doesn’t. There is huge variation in the populations of congressional districts, period. And that’s just one other undemocratic feature of the American political system. As others have observed, probably the single biggest undemocratic feature of American government is judicial review. Strangely, Matthew doesn’t seem terribly concerned about the power of unelected judges to thwart the will of the majority.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
foresight: More evidence, please. The Montana-Wyoming example was the outcome of both states having tiny populations by U.S. standards, with Wyoming tinier.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Getting rid of these ridiculous holds is easy and should be done tonight.
A more difficult, but necessary, change is for the Democrats to stop electing Majority leaders from relatively conservative states who have to look over their shoulder and worry about reelection all the time.
Daschle had that problem, and now Reid does. Let’s get someone who’s not walking on eggshells all the damn time.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
John Emerson:
500-600,000 – 22 districts
600-700,000 – 243 districts
700-800,000 – 127 districts
800-900,000 – 30 districts
900,000+ – 5 districts
November 11th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Foresight: where are you finding your stats?
California’s congressional districts are @ 640k. NY’s are 650k. Arizona’s are 640k. Nebraska’s are about 570k cuz they’re about to lose a seat, while Connecticut’s are 680k (cuz they just lost one).
There are 8 states which have just one US Rep: Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, the Dakotas, Delaware, Montana, and Rhode Island, ranging in population from @550k to just over a million. You claim FIVE districts that have more than 900,000 people in ‘em — and yet there aren’t even five STATES which have just one rep for 900k people.
Hawaii through Idaho have just two Reps each, and range in size from 1.3 million to 1.5 million….
Let’s face it, you’re full of shit.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Even accepting your stats, Foresight, 87% of the districts are in the 600 k — 800 k ranges, and it looks like most are pretty close to 660 k or so.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Actually what needs to be fixed? The filibuster has been a great tool for generations. What Reid needs to do is actually make the Republicans filibuster. Stop caving to them and going (in a Droopy voice) “oh well we don’t have the votes”. No! Instead I am talking about the filibusters we all grew up to. Blow the dust off the cots and bring them all in.
It might not end the obstructionism, but it will certainly show the majority of the public exactly what is going on.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
The filibuster has been a great tool for generations.
For segregationists, certainly.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Why is everyone so down on whining these days? It’s free. It feels good. It doesn’t hurt anyone. And most importantly, it really annoys those self-identified positive constructive types who probably would rather be whining than always looking for solutions to things.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
No, Emerson, that’s not good enough: for many years, the law has been “one person, one vote”.
That means WITHIN states, Congressional districts have to be pretty much exactly the same size. There are NO states which have the unequal districts he describes. None.
BETWEEN states, you have discrepancies — as noted, each state must have at least one representative in the House, so that’s all 7 states get: ranging in size from 550k to just under 1 million with one rep each. (I had Rhode Island in the wrong column before.)
Then you have IIRC five states that have 2 US representatives: Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, and New Hampshire, ranging in size from just over 1 million to 1.5 million.
So the widest possible discrepancy is between Wyoming (with 1 for 500k), or Rhode Island (2 for 1.03 million), and California, with 53 for 38 million, or one for each 640k. That’s it.
It’s just math — it’s called Equal Proportions, the method by which (since 1941) states have gotten the same 435 Representatives divided fairly. Basically, since each state starts with 1, there are 385 to be divvied up amongst the 50 states (or more precisely, the 43 that get more than one).
Foresight is either lying, or doesn’t know what he’s talking about: there is nothing REMOTELY like the discrepancies he’s talking about.
Well, Foresight?
November 11th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Two more corrections — there are six states (not five) with two reps: i named ‘em, I just didn’t count ‘em.
Second, the state that gets stiffed the worst in US representation at the moment is Utah, which was 3 reps for 2.7 million people, or 1 per 900k. Nevada is close (3 for 2.6, or 1 per 8.7k), but after that it drops to New Mexico, which has 3 for 2 million.
ABOVE the 3 rep states, you start with Kansas with 4 for 2.8, which is 1 per 700k.
I’ve been arguing for more US representation for 20 years — the cause doesn’t need Foresight’s bullshit. He says there are THIRTY districts with 800-900k people in ‘em?
There are nine: the 3 in Utah, the 3 in Nevada, and one each in Montana, Delaware and South Dakota.
Well, Foresight?
November 11th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
TheAmericanist
You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. You’re an ignorant blowhard. You’re full of shit.
There are NO states which have the unequal districts he describes
There is huge variation in congressional district populations within states as well as between states. For example, LA02 has 469,000 people, while LA06 has 701,000 people. CA53 has 622,000 people, while CA45 has 860,000 people. AZ05 has 689,000 people, while AZ02 has 991,000 people.
Not that it matters to the point whether the variation is between states or within states. House members represent districts, not states. Some districts have many more people than others, but all districts have only a single representative. The idea that the House provides equal or near-equal representation of the people is a myth.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:01 am
The constitution calls for majoritarian rule for passing legislation & leaves supermajorities for abnormal things like impeaching presidents & amending the constitution.
The filibuster is just a senate rule that has metastasized. There is nothing intrinsic to american democracy to it.
And ANYONE who thinks that requiring supermajorities to pass legislation is a good idea is a fucking idiot. Just look at California & its budget mess.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:07 am
Foresight, did you really think you could get away with posting crap like this?
The 2000 Census had California’s 53rd Congressional district with 639,087 people in it; the 45th had 639,088 people in it.
Arizona’s 5th Congressional district had 641,329 people in it; the 2nd had 641,329.
Louisiana’s 2nd had 638,562; the 6th had 638,324,
If your bullshit boils down to ‘gee, we should constantly revise Congressional districts BETWEEN the 10 year Census cycles’, you should say so, instead of pretending to know what you’re talking about using CPS data (which are by law explicitly NOT to be used for apportionment, cuz they aren’t an “actual enumeration”).
So — IS that what you’re doing? Mis-reading CPS data about population projections for places hit by Katrina, guesses about rapid declines in population here, and gains there?
You’re simply lying — or ignorant, take your pick — that one-person, one-vote doesn’t require representation WITHIN states that are within literally a person or two of exactly equal districts, not only for US representation, but also for state and even county and municipal districts. Being more fair to you than your stooopidity deserves, you may simply be trying to argue from bogus preliminary data that extraordinarily rapid population shifts (the sort that happens after a natural disaster) has created a couple in-state discrepancies, after the 2000 Census but before 2010.
You’re just not honest or smart enough to say that’s what you’re doing.
But like I pointed out, you claimed that THIRTY Congressional Districts had 800-900,000 people in ‘em.
I counted NINE — and I named ‘em: 3 in Utah, 3 in Nebraska, and one each in Montana, Delaware, and South Dakota. The reason for the last three is simple — each state must have one rep, and, like Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota and Alaska, those states get the minimum: but UNLIKE them, the three I named had between 800-900k in population. (Wyoming through Alaska are in the 530k-700k range.) The reason the first get 3 seats, but not 2 and not 4, is Equal Proportions — but you’re having so much trouble is 2+2=4 arithmetic, let’s leave that until after you’ve answered something more basic correctly.
So, name your 21 other Congressional districts with “800-900,000″ people in ‘em: or tell us — did you just make ‘em up?
November 12th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
[...] Yglesias: Can The Filibuster Be Reformed?Kevin Drum: Reforming the [...]
November 12th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
LOL — last chance to come clean, Foresight: 21 more Congressional districts with 800-900,000 people in ‘em?
(crickets)
November 14th, 2009 at 2:44 am
temperature without glacial pre live provisions direct
November 14th, 2009 at 2:46 am
address suggests model union state
November 16th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I agree that secret holds have to go. I think that if someone wants to put a hold on legislation or a nomination, they should be required to show up in the Senate chamber every single day – including Saturdays and Sundays – to justify it openly. Every 24 hours. If they miss even a single day for any reason whatsoever then the hold expires permanently. And the Senate gets to vote once a week on the hold – 60 votes to overturn it. A roll call vote, too.
It’ll never happen, though. Senators think the Senate is there for them, not the other way around.