Oregon senator mounts a one-man crusade to reform filibuster

Saying that the U.S. Senate has become dysfunctional is like suggesting that water is wet or the night sky is dark.

The body, which bills itself as “the world’s greatest deliberative body”, is expected to act as a cooling chamber, softening the more irritable House by using its weight and wisdom in addressing the Great Issues of Our Time. Instead, it has devolved into an ugly mess of gridlock and partisan hacking.

Part of this is due to one of the Senate’s most distinctive features, the filibuster; it has been abused and misused over roughly the last decade until it has become, in the words of congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein, a singular “weapon of mass obstruction.”

Democrat Jeff Merkley, the senior U.S. senator from Oregon, has spent years waging a mostly one-man campaign aimed at reforming the filibuster and returning some sunshine and self-discipline to the chamber.

In 2022, Merkley and her allies came up with two votes to replace the filibuster on voting rights legislation. It continues to seek support for a broader revision.

Speaking at the Capitol after the Senate vote, Merkley said, “This is very important for people to see what their representatives are discussing and then have the opportunity to comment.”

“Before the public could see the obstacle,” he said, “they [can’t] actually answer this.

What follows is a discussion of the convention process, but before you get glazed over, understand this: The process is what determines how many things are completed in Washington, DC.

The filibuster, which varies over time, involves how long senators are allowed to speak on the Senate floor. Unlike the House, which has rules limiting debate, the Senate has no restrictions unless a vote is taken to specifically end debate and resolve an issue. More on this in a moment.

In the broadest sense, the filibuster is a way to protect the interests of a small number of senators and their constituents by allowing a small but determined number of lawmakers (or even a single member) to block a vote by taking the floor and talking nonstop.

Perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most romantic, version of thuggery occurred in the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Fictional Senator Jefferson Smith, played by James Stewart, talks about his exhausted breakdown as a way to attract national attention and expose political corruption.

The best man wins in the Frank Capra classic. (This is Hollywood, after all.) In real life, thuggery has often been used for less noble purposes, particularly to obstruct civil rights legislation for decades.

Banditry used to be a rare thing; its power provided protection against all but the most important matters. However, in recent years this situation has changed greatly. Banditry – or rather, the threat of banditry – has become almost routine.

This is partly due to how easy it is to fool the Senate.

Members no longer need to stay at the podium and talk endlessly, testing not only the strength of their arguments but also their physical prowess and bladder control. Nowadays a legislator need only express his opinion. intent to commit banditry. Typically, legislation is set aside while the Senate moves on to other business.

Ornstein said this painless approach changed the nature of the filibuster and altered the functioning of the Senate, largely to its detriment.

The burden “needs to be on the shoulders of the minority” who “put themselves at risk … to really insert themselves into the larger debate”—in the style of the fictional Jefferson Smith—”and hope that they can turn opinions around in the process,” said Ornstein, a retired scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “What happened is that the burden was passed on to the majority [to break a filibuster]This is a bastardization of what the rogue is supposed to be about.

Using Senate terminology, it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster by initiating cloture. This means the legislation now requires a supermajority of the 100-member Senate to pass. (There are workarounds, for example, that would allow President Trump’s massive tax and spending bill to pass on a 51-50 vote, allowing Vice President J.D. Vance to make the tiebreaking decision.)

It gives enormous power to the rogue minority.

There is strong public support for universal background checks for gun buyers and greater transparency in campaign finance, to name just two examples. Both issues have majority support in the Senate. It doesn’t matter. Legislation to achieve each has been doomed over and over again.

This is where Merkley will come into play.

It would not eliminate banditry, a privilege jealously guarded by members of both parties. (In a rare show of independence, Republican senators rejected President Trump’s call to repeal the filibuster to end the latest government shutdown.)

Instead, Merkley would eliminate the so-called “silent bandit” and force lawmakers to actually take the floor and publicly press their case until they prevail, give up, or physically give up. “My reform is based on the assumption that the minority should have a say but not a veto,” he said.

Merkley suggested that forcing senators to stand up and surrender would make it more difficult to commit the filibuster, end its indiscriminate overuse, and – ideally – attract public attention by private messaging senators – I disagree! – not.

“Because it’s so publicly clear,” Merkley said, “American citizens are weighing in, and there are consequences. They can frame you as a hero or a bum for obstruction, and that reflects in the next election.”

The power of self-repair rests entirely with the Senate; Here, lawmakers make their own rules and can change them as they see fit. (Good job if you can manage it.)

Filibuster has been set before. In 1917, senators adopted the rule allowing cloture if a two-thirds majority voted to end debate. In 1975, the Senate reduced this number to three-fifths of the Senate, or 60 members.

More recently, Democrats changed the rules to prevent fraud in most presidential nominations. Republicans extended this to Supreme Court nominees.

Reorganizing the banditry is hardly a panacea. The Senate has degraded itself by giving up much of its authority and becoming little more than an arm of the Trump White House. Fixing this will require more than a procedural overhaul.

But forcing lawmakers to stand their ground, plead their case, and rally voters instead of raising their pinky finger and bringing the Senate to a halt? This is something worth talking about.