Here’s something you won’t often read on these pages: We agree with The New York Times.
Specifically, we agree that the modern Senate filibuster has made a hash of the legislative process. And we suspect the Times would agree with us that the compromise reached Thursday to limit the filibuster does not go far enough.
In the old days, a senator who wanted to stop a bill that would otherwise pass could prevent a vote so long as he was speaking on the Senate floor (think: Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”). Today, a senator need only threaten a filibuster to stop action — unless the majority can get 60 votes to override.
These past four years, the Republican minority in the Senate has been using the filibuster to gum up President Obama’s agenda. The Times says this is not just an “abuse” but an “unprecedented abuse.”
Funny, we don’t remember the Times protesting when a Democratic Senate minority made history by using the filibuster to stop the confirmation of a federal appeals court nominee, Miguel Estrada.
The Times has had a tortuous relationship with the filibuster. In 1995, seeing how Republicans had used it against Bill Clinton in his first two years of office, the Times rightly plumped for reform. Then, when George W. Bush became president and Democrats were using it, the Times discovered it was a vital political instrument — and said it had been “wrong” to want to get rid of it. Now that Republicans are again using it, the Times is back to filibuster reform.
The virtue of the filibuster is that it offers a minority on the verge of being rolled over by the majority a chance to make its concerns heard. The modern filibuster, alas, has been used to deprive judicial nominees of an up-or-down vote and impose a de facto supermajority requirement for any important piece of legislation to pass — without even requiring the filibustering senator to stand on the floor and filibuster.
In other words, the filibuster is one of those weapons (the independent counsel is another) that liberals change their minds about once they see it applied to a liberal Democrat. Like the Times, we wish the Senate deal had ended the silent filibuster. Unlike the Times, we favor reform regardless of which party benefits.