The "ominously dysfunctional" senate

Paul Krugman hit it square on yesterday, referring to health care reform:

. . . the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional.

After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster — a requirement that appears nowhere in the Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule — turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the bill. . . .

But it wasn’t always like this. Yes, there were filibusters in the past — most notably by segregationists trying to block civil rights legislation. But the modern system, in which the minority party uses the threat of a filibuster to block every bill it doesn’t like, is a recent creation.

The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.

In the mid-1990's Senators Tom Harkin and -- guess who? -- Joe Lieberman introduced a plan to change the filibuster to a less obstructive plan. At the beginning of a debate it would still require 60 votes to end debate and vote on the bill. After five days, another vote could be taken and it would take 57 votes; then progressively down until it would only require a simple majority.

Seems like a very good plan to me, and Harkin is talking about reintroducing it. But don't count on HolyJoe to sponsor it this time. He's still taking his victory lap, grinning like an ugly kewpie doll.

Ralph