Bipartisanship is overrated
Calm down, calm down. I appreciate the concept behind bipartisan efforts. I just think that maybe we get too preoccupied with the idea from time to time.
All the news coverage I come into contact with (radio, TV, internet, occasionally paper) about health care reform feels overblown. All the flurry over Olympia Snowe’s personal opinion on the bill even when a 13-10 committee vote would have been sufficient… and the uproar about Joe Lieberman promising to vote with Republicans…. Everyone’s asking, will there be enough votes in the Senate to pass the health care bill? But I’m asking, why are we panicking about this so much?
It takes a majority to pass regular legislation in the Senate. That means that our country has decided, if 51/100 senators think something should become a law, it ought to be a law. Presumably it’s ideal that 100/100 senators like a law, but we realize that is virtually impossible to achieve. The more votes the better, in general, but the bar is set at simple majority. Now, there’s this other little feature called the filibuster. Senators can block a bill’s passage by speaking for as long as they choose. However, if at least 60 senators support the bill, they can vote to invoke cloture and prevent a filibuster. This has apparently resulted in 60 votes being thought of as the new bar. You don’t have “enough votes” unless you have enough to prevent a filibuster, and you assume that your opponents will filibuster if they have the opportunity. Hence all this talk of bipartisanship, and all the coddling and cooing over any Republican senator that sways leftward in a gentle breeze momentarily.
This is nuts. There are 60 senators in the Democratic caucus. Yes, one of them is Lieberman, but even 59 is still substantially above the simple majority requirement. There are plenty of Congresses in which 59 Senate votes for something would have indicated an astounding bipartisan effort. But it really doesn’t matter what party everyone is from. If that was the real requirement, the Senate could just be made up of one Democrat and one Republican (or if you like, a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, and a Green?), and as soon as the two (or four) of them agreed on something, it’d become law. No, what actually matters is that each senator represents their constituents, and having “enough votes” to pass a law is a proxy for having enough popular support for that law to make it valid democratically. The fact is, having close to 60 senators in one ideological camp is a strong, meaningful statement that that ideology has majority support in the nation. We shouldn’t presume to need any more than that.
I’d like to see Harry Reid go ahead with his 59 votes, or whatever it is now. Maybe it’ll actually be 60, depending on Olympia Snowe’s present whimsy. But even if another Democrat or two doesn’t want to vote for it, and Reid can’t convince a handful of Republicans to break party lines… so what? Make them actually filibuster. Show the country that these 57, 58, 59 senators really want to provide a better standard of living for their constituents, really do want to do something about all the people who end up having to resort to the big plastic jug health care plan, but that these clowns would rather read from the telephone book for hours and hours and hours. Please, Senator Reid, make them read recipes and recite poetry for days.
Maybe the Democrats will flinch first, and the Republicans will win via the filibuster. But they’ll have made themselves look terrifically foolish in the process, discrediting their side for the next time around. (Just imagine the PAC ads… “Here’s a picture of a little baby denied health insurance for a stupid reason… and here’s Senator So-and-So who thought that the Senate had more important things to worry about.”) But maybe the Republicans will flinch first. It’s not exactly strawberries and cream, this whole filibustering experience. And maybe, just maybe, they’re all talk. Maybe they realize how unpleasant the task actually is, and would rather not actually go through with it. Do they feel as strongly against health care as Strom Thurmond felt against racial integration? We ought to find out.
There’s a time to be conciliatory, to “reach across the aisle” and try to build consensus. But when something as important as health care reform is dragged out so long, and no compromise seems to be good enough, it’s time to go for it with whatever you’ve got. Whatever we’ve got now ought to be enough.
Comments
5 Responses to “Bipartisanship is overrated”
Leave a Reply
I think you’re missing one key point here: the desire for bipartisanship from the Left is partially about breaking the fillibuster, but it’s also about political cover. The more Republicans you have on board, the less your party can bear sole blame if the bill fails. It’s mostly about that. Right now we have both sides willing to entrench their positions. The Left really believes their bill will work and are willing to press for a vote. The Right really believes it will fail and they are willing to take the risk of being on the No side. I think they just need to let it go through and let the chips fall where they may.
Political cover? If that’s true, it’s terrifically misguided. Enough prominent Democrats have gone on the record about how essential it is that we pass this bill, what a marvelous thing it would be for the country to have this legislation, etc. etc. that I think Democrats will be seen as bearing sole blame even if one or two Republican senators end up voting for it. And really, would Olympia Snowe’s vote really make the Republicans equally able to take the blame, or to take the credit if/when turns out splendidly? I think not.
Two observations:
1) The longer a filibuster goes, the more likely that senators like Snowe or Lieberman will be able to push through significant modifications in the bill in exchange for their vote(s) to end debate. No doubt that is why Lieberman said he would vote to open debate but not to end it. Remember what happened earlier this year with that economic stimulus bill and how just three GOP senators were able to substantially change it. I am concerned about a bill which mandates that everyone purchase health insurance through monopolistic corporations that are exempt from the Federal Anti-Trust Act. That would be a regression, not reform (in my opinion). But if Snowe and Lieberman get their way, I’m afraid that’s what we’ll finally get (with Obama signing it into law with much fanfare).
2) On the other hand, every time a party gets into power, they act as if they will always have it. For now, having the votes to filibuster health care reform favors the minority Republicans. But 3-4 years ago, the Democrats often employed this strategy to further their own agenda. I guarantee you that the Dems will some day (hopefully later, not sooner) once again be in the minority and will gladly use the filibuster and all of the other delaying tactics that the GOP is currently taking advantage of.
1) Perhaps, if my memory/intuition is wrong and the Republicans would look like heroes during a filibuster. And I absolutely agree with you that some “reforms” to health care wouldn’t be for the better, and that they’d probably be championed as such regardless. But “significant modifications in the bill in exchange for their votes” is exactly the situation we’re in now, and have been in for some time … and we’re still not getting their votes. I think it’d be preferable to get the Republicans to put up or shut up.
2) Yes… and I think you might have misunderstood my point. I guess I’d be less eager to encourage Republicans to force Democrats to make good on their filibuster threats, but only for personal preference reasons. I still think it would be good strategy for Republicans to go ahead with 59 votes on something and make Democrats decide if it was really worth a real live filibuster. I think the political system as a whole is healthier if the mere possibility of a filibuster isn’t enough to make it as good as real, regardless of which party is the majority.
On frequency of filibusters – the last two Congresses, in which the Republicans were the minority party in the Senate, saw a huge increase in filibusters. Claims that the two parties have behaved similarly are specious.
The thing to keep in mind when talking about the use of filibusters is that it requires strong party unity on the part of the minority. That simply doesn’t exist nowadays in the Democratic Party. We’ve been living that reality for the last few months on health care and the various finance measures. There are also very few real liberals (or progressives) in Congress. Many Democrats are conservatives who just couldn’t meet the ideological purity requirements of the modern GOP. They tend to vote with Republicans. Democrats vs. Republicans isn’t the only way to look at how power is distributed in DC. Progressives vs. conservatives is another way, and progressives are on the short end of that power lever.