Today, the US Senate under the leadership (if one can call it that) of Mitch McConnell is attempting to change Senate Rule 22, Cloture.
Why? Because even though the GOP Caucus in the US Senate has used and abused Rule 22 for over 20 years now, they don’t like it one whit when the Democratic Caucus decides to use that rule for their benefit for a change (to filibuster and obstruct any vote to put alleged plagiarist Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court).
The Media and a lot of Senators are decrying this action as “historic” and a massive change to how the US Senate has “historically worked” since the founding of the nation.
They are, one and all, wrong.
The Filibuster is not a written rule in the US Senate, nor has it ever been. It has been accepted since the founding of the nation an unwritten rule in the US Senate however, one which allows that any Senator may take the Floor and speak in an unlimited fashion on any subject they so choose.
A century ago, in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson got tired of a Senate which was divided much as our current Senate is divided on an ideological basis. So he petitioned the leadership of that Senate to create a Rule to allow for interrupting a Filibuster and stopping the debate and moving to a vote.
Thus was Cloture born.
It was seldom used to end filibusters until the Bill Clinton Administration, when the Republicans began to use it more and more and more.
The Obama Administration saw a huge increase in use of Filibuster and Cloture votes to obstruct the progress the Democrats attempted to make after dragging the nation up out of the disaster the Bush Administration left us in, both fiscally and politically.
Today, when the Democrats are in the minority in both Houses of Congress and a Republican sits upon the chair beneath the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, the one tool they have to slow or stop the Republican Horde is Rule 22. So of course there has been talk about how the Republicans will now change the Rule and make Democratic obstruction impossible.
So is this an “historic” change? Or is it a return to the way the Senate was designed to work?
I put it to you — will it be worth the change for future Democratic majorities?
I believe it will. Because when the Democrats come back into power, the Republicans will NO LONGER have any ability to obstruct and stop them.
Today it will seem like a terrible blow to our side.
But in just a couple of years? It will be the path to actual progressive change in legislation in the US Congress. We get a Democratic President back in the Oval Office and we’ll finally see some change in the direction we want it to go.
End of an era? Hell no, end of obstruction, which has been aimed at only OUR legislation for over 20 years now.