American lawmakers are in the throes of a heated debate about one fundamental rule change that would shift so much of the country’s politics.
What happens next to the Senate’s decades-old filibuster rule could not only decide Joe Biden’s presidential legacy but the fate of a slew of bills that have been stalled for years.
It’s the rule that requires 60 per cent of senators to agree to even hold a vote on a bill, making it a silent legislative killer over the years that has created a graveyard of bills.
Gun control, climate change, immigration reform, electoral reform, statehood for Washington, D.C., Medicare access — bills addressing all these issues could hinge on one procedural choice.
Democrats now face a career-defining dilemma while they hold the rare trifecta of power: control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser testified at a day-long congressional hearing this week on the question of statehood for the capital. It’s not happening with the filibuster rule in place. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
Will they preserve the Senate’s filibuster tradition, or gut it in the hope of passing big bills between now and next year’s congressional elections?
“It’s ridiculous,” said Brian Higgins, a Democrat in the House who wants the filibuster gone. In the interview, he also used stronger, less-printable language to describe the rule.
“What Republicans want to do is make this administration fail. So they’re not going to co-operate on anything.… Democrats have to learn a lesson here. And the lesson is: Do big things.”
This debate that will shape all other debates in U.S. politics is playing out inside the Democratic Party, and it could come to a head within weeks.
Most Democrats agree with Higgins. And there’s mounting peer pressure on the few who don’t. One idea gaining steam among the holdouts is to keep the filibuster but to weaken it, or limit when it can be used.
Making that change would require every single Democrat to vote together and use their party’s one-vote majority to force the so-called nuclear option in amending chamber procedures.
Big decision will shape key bills
The stakes of this decision have been glaringly obvious these past few days. Democrats are working on bills that, without procedural change, risk going nowhere.
Under the Senate math, Democrats would need 10 Republicans to reach the magic 60-vote mark required to pass just about anything (aside from annual, short-term spending bills).
Biden announced his plan for green infrastructure in this campaign speech last September. It faces tall odds in the Senate under the current rules. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
On Monday, a House committee spent the day discussing a law to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state — but, for now, D.C. statehood is DOA.
Similarly tall odds face immigration bills passed by the House, and political reforms that include an overhaul of political financing and voter registration.
Ditto climate change. Democrats plan to introduce a $2-trillion infrastructure bill that would spend heavily on green technology, which Republicans oppose.
How we got here
So, how did the U.S. Senate wind up with this rule?
The truth is a bit more muddled than it’s made out to be — by detractors who call the filibuster a recent aberration, and by defenders who call it a critical feature of American governance.
In fact, even trained historians who sit in the U.S. Congress offer different takeaways.
One Harvard-educated student of American politics and former history teacher, Higgins, detests the filibuster.
Another Harvard-educated historian, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, vigorously defended it this week and warned that ditching the filibuster would have devastating effects.
The issue even divides historians who sit in Congress. This one, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, says ending the filibuster would be a terrible turn in American politics. (Drew Angerer/Reuters)
Sasse said it would make American politics even angrier — instilling a winner-take-all mentality, closer to a parliamentary system than to the consensus-based chamber designed by America’s republican founders.
“It’ll be the end of the Senate,” Sasse said. “[We’d] be committing institutional suicide.”
From its very creation, the engine of American lawmaking, the U.S. Congress, was built with a gas pedal (the House) and brake pad (the Senate).
The Senate is supposed to be slower, more deliberative, with members elected every six years, isolating them more from the political passions of the moment — compared to the House and its two-year terms, with members constantly in campaign mode.
The two chambers were pushed further down divergent paths early in the country’s history.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is one of two key Democrats to watch. She and Joe Manchin are rare defenders of the filibuster in their party. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
The Senate eliminated a British-based parliamentary rule that allowed a topic to be revisited, called the previous question rule.
That rule evolved in the places where it continued to exist, such as Canada and the U.S. House, becoming a tool for calling a topic for a vote.
The Senate was left without a similar means to end a debate.
That made it possible to delay votes indefinitely, and in 1917, a frustrated President Woodrow Wilson, eager to arm U.S. merchant ships during the First World War, disparaged senators as a little group of wilful men who rendered the U.S. government helpless and embarrassing.
At his urging, the Senate created a rule to cut off debate, the cloture motion, with a two-thirds majority.
This system was strained to a breaking point decades later by civil rights debates.
The current filibuster rule was an attempt to stop long speeches that monopolized the Senate calendar, a tactic developed to block civil rights legislation by segregationists like Strom Thurmond. (Mike Theiler-Files/Reuters)
Southern segregationists stalled civil rights bills with interminable speeches. Strom Thurmond took steam baths to dry out his body so he wouldn’t have to go to the washroom during a 24-hour speech in which he killed time by reading the phone book.
A changing Democratic Party, with scores of younger members elected in the post-Watergate 1974 midterms, vowed to clamp down on long speeches, which, having earlier delayed civil rights, were more recently stalling other progressive bills such as the creation of a new consumer protection agency.
Walter Mondale, a future vice-president, led the reform.
Walter Mondale played a key role in adjusting the Senate filibuster rules in 1975. Here the senator is seen during the 1976 election, which made him vice-president. (Getty Images)
He warned that faith in government was plummeting and lawmakers needed to prove they could still respond to the voters’ will.
“The threat of the filibuster … hangs over this body like a heavy cloud,” Mondale said.
“[It’s] repeatedly used to block, delay, or compromise important social, economic, and governmental reform legislation favoured by an overwhelming majority.”
After weeks of impassioned debate, on March 7, 1975, the U.S. Senate passed the current rule: Out was the 67 per cent requirement, lowered to 60 per cent.
It created a new compromise: Most bills are now automatically blocked unless they get 60 votes, so there’s no need for hours-long speeches clogging up the chamber.
And that’s where things stand today.
Opinions were split from the start. Even on the pages of the New York Times, one editorial called the change a pathetic compromise that didn’t go far enough.
But one of the paper’s most famous columnists offered a mournful lamentation of the destruction of the Senate’s intended spirit.
Arguments for and against
One of the southern Democrats who fought hardest against the reform, James Allen of Alabama, delivered multiple speeches, sucking down cherry-flavoured glucose for energy.
He warned this was one step toward the eventual abolition of the filibuster.
“It is like cutting off a dog’s tail an inch at a time,” Allen said, warning that the 60-vote requirement would someday be eroded to a 51-vote majority rule.
He was prescient there: the filibuster has eroded.
Progressives are parsing this man’s words. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the other key Democratic senator to watch, is dead-set on keeping the filibuster. But he’s open to changing it. ( Jim Watson/Reuters)
Democrats dropped the filibuster rule for cabinet and low-level judicial confirmations in 2013, frustrated by stall tactics from Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell returned the favour when he gained the majority and ended the filibuster for Supreme Court justices in 2017.
All that’s left to the filibuster is the biggest remaining piece: legislation.
If the Democrats go down that route, McConnell has threatened to paralyze the chamber with tactics never before imagined.
Wielding reform as a threat against the GOP
Many Democrats want to call what they see as a bluff.
One reason progressives are keen to test McConnell’s threat is they’re convinced their priorities will win public support.
But there’s a broader argument about the basic structure of modern American politics.
Their argument is that partisan voting blocs are an essential fact of life now. Even if the founders never intended for the U.S. to have political parties, they exist now, elections are almost always close, and it’s increasingly impossible to get anything important done.
It’s been almost a half-century since a single election gave one party control of the White House, the House, and 60 Senate seats.
So progressives are now parsing every utterance from their party’s remaining filibuster-defenders, upon whose votes a rule change hinges: the key ones are Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Don’t expect the elimination of the filibuster. But some reform sounds possible.
WATCH | Biden calls for tougher guns laws after recent mass shootings:
A 21-year-old man has been arrested after 10 people, including a police officer, were killed in a mass shooting inside a Boulder, Colo., grocery store on Monday. Court documents say the suspect, Ahmad Alissa, bought an assault rifle six days before the shooting, renewing calls for an assault-weapons ban in the U.S. 2:56
Manchin says he won’t budge on the 60-vote requirement, but he has said he’s open to making the filibuster harder — “more painful” — to use.
That puts him in line with President Joe Biden.
The longtime senator has defended the tradition but wants to do away with the automatic filibuster introduced in 1975, and force obstructionists to stand up and talk.
In the meantime, the mere threat of reform is being wielded as leverage. One filibuster defender, Sen. Angus King of Maine, writes that he’ll make a decision based on how McConnell behaves on other bills.
In a Washington Post op-ed, the senator, an Independent who mostly votes with Democrats, concluded with the implicit threat: “Over to you, Mitch.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
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