Thoughts On The Filibuster

Get rid of it. Pretty simple.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good points to be made on both sides of this debate, but I think the right answer is to either get rid of the filibuster entirely, or to at least reform it to the point where it can no longer be used to completely kill popular legislation.

As many have pointed out, the filibuster has not always been a tool in the Senate’s tool belt. It has a long and complex history, but it gained its popularity during the Jim Crow era when southern Senators used it repeatedly to halt legislation that would have benefited black people at the time, like the federal criminalization of lynching or the outlawing of requirements that people pay to be able to vote.

Getting rid of the filibuster entirely is a scary concept, because then a simple majority in the Senate would be able to pass whatever legislation they wanted. However, I think it would also force more cooperation from the minority party, who would have to be less hostile towards their across-the-aisle colleagues in order to have a say in amending the passing legislation to benefit their constituents. You would also see more unique coalitions of senators who could come together to pass legislation that isn’t perfectly aligned with one party’s platform or the other, instead bringing together more specifically focused factions of senators whose aims would be to help their constituents rather than to toe the party line. It would free up a lot of the gridlock in Washington, and even if you don’t agree with everything the party in power wants to do, at least progress could be made, unlike the past several decades of stagnation. If a law were passed that proved to be unpopular or to have negative consequences, then a faction of senators opposing the legislation would be able to remove it from the books the next time they take power (assuming the legislation in question is actually unpopular with voters, and not just the special interest groups who fund the senators’ campaigns). Everyone says they hate Congress because they never get anything done, and the filibuster is to blame for that.