Constitutionally Problematic
- Posted by ryan on June 15th, 2009 filed in Policy/Politics
Felix looks at the damage the Senate has been doing to key administration priorities and wonders when Obama lost Congress, writing:
How did Obama manage to spend all his political capital so quickly? Did it all go on the stimulus bill? Wasn’t the whole point of bringing Rahm in as chief of staff that he could work constructively with Congress to pass an ambitious agenda? And isn’t Obama himself the first president since JFK to have entered the White House from the Senate? I’m not sure when everything went wrong here, but I fear that the damage is now irreparable — and that Obama’s agenda is going to be severely scaled back as a result.
This is not the right way to look at the issue. Rather, the appropriate question is, “When did the Senate get so undemocratic?” If legislation only had to pass through the House of Representatives, then the laws which resulted would be more progressive and much closer in principle to administration ideas. This difference isn’t due to the fact that Obama has “lost” the Senate but has somehow maintained control over the House. Instead, the House is much more reflective of public opinion, because representation is determined by population, all members are elected every two years, and there are no supermajoritarian rules, as there are in the Senate. Over in the upper house, a member from Wyoming has as much influence as one from California, which has 50 times the population. And that member from Wyoming has a number of parliamentary tools for disrupting popular legislation at his disposal, and he might have been elected in 2004, when conditions in the country looked quite a bit different.
The best question to ask is why world has so complacently accepted the entrenchment of the filibuster as a standard tool of legislative strategy, such that virtually every bill requires a 60-vote majority for passage. This change has very serious and obvious consequences for national policy across the policy spectrum, and it very clearly changes the distribution of power in the legislature (and, by encouraging gridlock in times of crisis, across the branches of government). Any overt change in the constitution generating these effects would be greeted with a firestorm of protest, but since this seems like little more than a matter of internal rule-making it gets ignored. That’s simply inexcusable.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Wow, Ryan. I just posted pretty much the same dissent in Felix’s comment section. Not sure what he was thinking when he made that post.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
The older I get the more I like my Democracy undemocratic. I would encourage considering whether it helped the Bush administration to get their heads so much. If after three months of debate, no health reform can get out of the Senate I’ll agree, but I don’t mind this taking a while. If Waxman-Markey passes in its current form, I’ll wish for even less Democracy.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Obama lost the Senate when, by forgiving Joe Lieberman, he demonstrated that people who defy him would suffer no consequences. Now Lieberman, who it was said is with us on everything but the war, is arguing against a public health option. Quelle surprise!
June 15th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Not exactly a new problem. Historians generally believe the Roman Republic fell, and a dictatorship emerged, because over a period of about 70 years the Roman Senate was unable to deal with the largest and most pressing questions facing the Roman state.
Some of the problems might look a little familiar. For example, the Roman citizens, all of whom were members of the original Roman tribes (hence, tribunal), were unwilling to extend citizenship to their allies. By 100 BC these allies comprised the vast majority of the population and military forces under Roman sway. The allied veterans in particular formed a dangerous flashpoint, as they had been promised land and citizenship in exchange for their service in Roman legions. The Roman Senators, however, were owners of vast latifundia and opposed to any reform of landholdings.
Nuclear states such as our own, however, cannot simply fail. The “failure” most likely would take the form of an incredible plunge in living standards for civilians who hadn’t hitched their carts securely enough to the warfare state.
This actually would be very interesting to see, if we didn’t live here.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I think you underestimate the Senate’s institutional ego, Vadranor. It’s the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, after all, and none of its members will hesitate to tell you so. Political grandstanding is the order of the day. Senators don’t need to take any cues from the President to become pains in the ass.
June 15th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
You may well get your wish, Doug. Waxman-Markey barely made it out of committee, let alone a full House vote. The Senate won’t do anything with it until September.
Hopefully by then, no one will remember Henry A. Waxman, the toady little Congressman from your beloved California.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Karen, my wish isn’t it that it die but that it improve. It seems to be exactly the bill I was afraid would come out if we did cap-and-trade, but I like it better than waiting a year for a new carbon-control bill.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Yes, Doug. I am aware of your feelings concerning the current Waxman-Markey. My wish is that the bill improves by the time it winds its way through both Houses.
I’ve never liked Waxman’s ideas, regardless of which state he represents.