A quick take on filibuster reform

[Thanks to news articles and Jay Bookman's column in today's AJC for the background on this.]

In commenting on the Democrats pushing through a reform of the Senate rule to limited use of the filibuster, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) expressed his displeasure, saying:  "It's pretty obvious the Senate's going to be converted into the House.   That's not the way the people who wrote the Constitution intended it to be."

Excuse me, Senator.   Your understanding is wrong.   There is no mention of filibuster in the Constitution;  and the only provision for anything other than a simple majority vote in Congress are a few specific instances, such as ratification of treaties, removal from office of a president or other federal elected officer.

As to "the people who wrote the Constitution," they also wrote the Federalist Papers, a series of explications of their understanding of what they had written.   In Federalist Paper No. 75, Alexander Hamilton wrote this:

". . . all provisions which require more than the majority of any body to its resolutions, have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government, and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority. . . .  [T]he history of every political establishment in which this principle has prevailed, is a history of impotence, perplexity, and disorder."

James Madison, called the "Father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper No. 58:

"It has been said that more than a majority ought to have been required . . . in particular cases, if not in all, more than a majority of a quorum for a decision.

"In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed.  It would be no longer the majority that would rule:  the power would be transferred to the minority. . . . all interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifice to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgencess."

Sound familiar?  It's pretty clear which side the Founding Fathers would be on in this one.  Let's get Elizabeth Warren to sit these Republicans down in a room and read these papers to them.

Ralph