Harris wants to end the Legislative Filibuster
Here we go again
For those of you who do not know, my first novel, What Can One Man Do? deals with the topic of removing the Legislative Filibuster. This is really the LAST of the major checks the framers put in the Constitution to ensure we would not have a ‘tyranny of the majority’.
It is not a partisan book. There is no mention of current candidates nor even of current political party’s names. I did this intentionally, because I want folks from all sides to read it and understand why we have a legislative filibuster. It protects all of us and has been used by both sides frequently.
The novel is set in the near future and does deal with topics we are seeing today (I wrote it in 2021, published in 2022). It is the first of four novels in the America at the Brink series. I just published the fourth one in the series (dealing with a contentious presidential election) in August. The audio book for What Can One Man Do? will be available later this fall. To be followed shortly by audio books for the other three. I will make an announcement here when the audio books are out!
Now back to our reality…
Harris claims to want to end the filibuster to pass legislation in Congress regarding abortion. Democrat Senator’s Manchin and Sinema both previously stopped Chuck Schumer’s attempt to remove the legislative filibuster. In my opinion, it is why both of them had to leave the Democrat party and become independents.
They also realized it also put them in an untenable re-election position. Providing ammunition for the cancel culture vultures of the left to use against them if they tried to be re-elected. If nothing else, we owe them both a thank you for standing up for the Constitution.
It should also be noted, that many times in the past, these same democrats have yelled loudly about the sanctity of the filibuster, including Senator Harris. Always when they are in the minority and want to use it to ensure the republican majority cannot ram through its partisan bills.
During the Trump Senate majority, it should be noted, the democrats used the filibuster over three hundred times to stop Republican led, majority legislation. And that was just in the last year of his presidency.
The framers were really smart. They put a bunch of checks and balances in the Constitution to ensure change would be difficult.
The House would be elected every 2 years by the people. This was to give the people a voice and to force them to face elections every two years when their crazy populism or antics irritated their voters. There are too many examples of embarrassing congress people to list. From both sides. Thank goodness we only have to put up with most of them for short terms. Though some seem to get rubber stamped every year thanks to gerrymandered congressional districts where a paper clip with the right letter after their name could get elected.
The Senate was beholden to the states. Each of whose state government chose their Senators. They were there to represent the States AND to be a check on the crazy Congressmen with those wild populist ideas. They could vote against any of these bills without having to face the angry mobs of voters. And this was a good thing, because lots of times, the bills in Congress have unintended and costly consequences. Again checks and balances. Radical change would not be easy or quick.
The President had very little power and was chosen by the state electors. The number of these electors was based on the size of the states. The electors were chosen by a number of different ways prior to the states deciding to do winner take all selection of the electors based on the outcome of statewide popular votes. The President was never and is still not selected directly by the people. He or she represents the states and through their elected officials, the residents of the states. This too was intentional to keep too much power from being concentrated in one branch.
The Supreme Court justices were given lifetime appointments for the sole reason the framers knew they would be called upon to judge the constitutionality of laws enacted by wildly partisan Congresses. Especially in those cases where both the house and the senate were dominated by a single faction. The SOLE role of the Supreme Court was to judge the constitutionality of a bill. Not it’s merit, intended outcome, or any other measurement. Only if it followed the law of the constitution.
By the way, this is why Roe was overturned. It was unconstitutional. They did not ban abortion or even pass judgement on whether it was right or wrong in what it contained. Just that it was not constitutional in how it was enacted and the power it granted to the federal government rather than the states. This is why this decision was returned to the voters of each state to decide. Locally, within their states, on how they wanted to handle this issue. With majority vote by citizens of each state. Who can then hold their fellow citizens accountable for the law in each state. This is exactly how the constitution was designed. To try to keep decisions as local as possible. People in Utah think differently from those in California or Ohio. And this is a good thing. We also have mobility. No need to force everyone to live or believe the same way. It is called free will. And in a democracy, we use our vote to determine the rules we agree to abide by. At the local, state and then federal level.
The framers also tried to limit the role of the government to ONLY those tasks that were required or benefited the entire country. Thinks like maintaining a sovereign border, guarding against invasion by our enemies or those who would do us harm, by sea, or land (and then air, or even weather balloon, as well). To negotiate treaties and establish foreign relations. To maintain a military force to protect us from our enemies. Finally, to focus on and pass only laws dealing with true national issues.
Most importantly, to gain the approval of a majority of citizens at its formation, they also included a Bill of Rights to protect the PEOPLE from out of control GOVERNMENT tyranny.
Everything else was left to the states to figure out (10th amendment). State sovereignty was sacrosanct and any attempt to take power from the states and enact laws at the national level was fought ferociously until 1860.
The Civil War began the slide. As a result of trying to split and then reassemble the Union, the states ended up giving much of their power to the federal government. Out of necessity to preserve the union. After all, it was the federal government who fought the war to reunite the states.
The disastrous Interstate Commerce Act was passed in 1887 giving the Federal government enormous powers to start regulating commerce. A term they started defining to include pretty much everything. It’s why you have to have health insurance whether you want to or need it. Somehow this became commerce and a tax. Go figure. The bureaucratic state was truly started with this expansion of power.
Taking many decisions from the states and making decisions best left to the locals in Phoenix, Boise, or Cincinnati. These decisions are now being made by the power brokers in Washington (and New York City). Remember that seasonal puddle in the middle of the farmer’s field that is now a wetland? And keeps him from being able to plant his field.
The Supreme Court helped these broad expansion of powers by continually ruling in favor of more and broader interpretations of exactly what ‘commerce’ was.
Remember the woman whose house on the beach was seized and razed for a seaside development for the betterment of the community and more revenue? The land is still vacant decades later after she lost. The jobs and the tax revenue never materialized. But she lost the land and moved elsewhere as a result. All under the guise of Commerce.
Then we come to the progressive era and the total remaking of our society. Think of the Constitution as a many legged, solid chair. Stable because it has a number of legs (more than four) to distribute weight and keep it from tipping over.
In 1913 Woodrow Wilson as the leader of the Progressive movement started sawing legs off this Constitutional chair. And the states, who should have reigned him in, instead let him. Bought off by the promises of larger federal government.
First came the 16th amendment and the income tax. Passed with overwhelming majorities in congress because they were going to ‘soak’ the rich. Sound familiar? As I have written in other places, the rich knew it was coming. Creating foundations to hide their money free from the new income tax.
There were no rich to soak, so to speak. Instead it was a vehicle to eventually tax everyone. We all know how much we love the IRS. Wilson needed this guaranteed stream of income, which did not exist prior to 1913, to fund his expansion of government.
The bureaucratic deep state was born and willfully funded by the new income tax because the people trusted their officials in Washington. And believed their promises.
And remember, even with all these taxes from the citizens (and the rich paying more than 50%) we still spend $2 Trillion more than we bring in every year. Perhaps mores taxes are not the answer. Maybe less government spending??
But what about those states rights champions, the Senators? Surely they could have stopped this obvious power grab by the federal government to take both money and power from the control of the states?
After all, the Constitution made the states beholden to the people and the government beholden TO THE STATES. Not the other way around. What the hell happened?
Once again, public opinion was swayed because of a few obvious episodes of cronyism and corruption in the appointment of the Senators. The states bought into the idea that the benevolent government would now have excess money, collected from all the people, they could spread to the states to use for their own pet projects.
Projects they probably couldn’t convince their own citizens to fund. Which could now be funded by the Federal government. Using money from California, New York, Ohio, Michigan and Texas. All sent to Illinois for that railroad, or to Washington for that dam, or to North Carolina for that bee keeper museum!
All they had to do was give up one little thing. The ability to appoint their Senators. They needed to make these senators beholden to the people, just like the House. With them subject to the vitriol and anger of the people every six years, they would be less likely to stand against the tide of public opinion. And the desires of the political parties in Washington. Woohoo!
The 17th amendment in one giant spasm of progressive joy, destroyed the entire concept of a union of States granting limited power to a federal government. It now made them 50 indentured serfs to the federal Duke. And they did it willingly.
But Wilson wasn’t done. He sharpened the saw and went after another leg of the now wobbly chair. Here came the Federal Reserve. This is not something you can describe easily. But suffice it to say, Governments need money. Especially when you have grand plans to rule from federal agencies and with world wars are looming. Where do you get money? From bankers.
Bankers don’t do anything unless they can make money. The Federal Reserve was a creation of a legion of robber barons and banking magnates with very familiar names. With the blessing of Wilson and a meeting at the aptly named Jekyll Island, these movers and shakers created the Federal Reserve System. In essence, the new bank of the United States.
An entity, run by bankers who would control both the lending and the rates at which money was lent between people, companies, and even countries. It is a very complex web of interconnected power brokers. You really only need to know one thing. Those bankers in charge of these Federal Reserve banks have only one goal. To not lose THEIR money. Everything else is irrelevant. Like the well being of your money.
Look at any financial catastrophe we have experienced in the last 100+ years and you can lay it at the feet of bad banking policy from the Federal Reserve. Their policies are the epitome of unintended consequences. But rest assured, the big banking houses never lost any money. Remember too big to fail?
The final straw is deficit spending. When we were on the gold standard, there was theoretically a limited supply of money tied to a finite amount of available gold in the banking system. Once that check was gone, the paper currency was worth whatever they decided.
This also meant they could print and deflate or inflate the value of this ‘ephemeral’ currency to suit their own needs. By printing or restricting the availability of new money. Just as they continue to do to this day.
Now back to our stool. It can’t be called a chair but you can still sit carefully on it. Barely. There are really only two ‘legs’ left to curb the radical nature of populism from replacing sound government. The Supreme Court and the legislative filibuster.
FDR threatened to expand the Supreme Court and neuter its ability to continue to stop unconstitutional legislation from being enacted. This was after they rightfully determined that bill after bill of his New Deal violated the specific laws under which the country had agreed to be ruled.
Namely that we did not have a king who could decreed what he wanted, ignoring the various checks on executive power. The threat of expanding the court, caused the court to dial back some of their criticisms and to moderate some of their rulings for fear they would push Roosevelt into actually destroying the constitution in order to create more judges.
This would have caused a constitutional crisis and a showdown with the Supreme Court. They would have been forced to point out the unconstitutionality of his attempted coup over the constitution at a time when the country was mired in a decade long depression (thank you Federal Reserve!).
They understood it was unlikely the country would stay a constitutional republic because Roosevelt would promise the people everything they wanted or needed in order to get them to approve his plan. Effectively making him Emperor Roosevelt. They choose the only route they could to preserve the Constitution. Moderating their rulings. In essence, Roosevelt was able to bluff them into submission. A heck of a poker player.
We were saved from this possible showdown by the advent of World War II which also ended the depression. Of course, these same bankers contributed to 100 million deaths by financing both sides of all that mayhem. Just as they had in the previous ‘war to end all wars’ and do today still.
All the bills Roosevelt passed did nothing to alleviate the problems and in fact, extended the depression in the US longer than it ran in every other major country. So Roosevelt had an ax in hand, preparing to chop out this Supreme Court leg, but we survived, wobbly but still able to balance on the stool.
So the other remaining leg, the legislative filibuster is an interesting check of the framers. Remember, when they wrote the Constitution, we had just finished an eight year war against the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.
Once we ‘won’ our independence we had no idea what to do. What we knew we did NOT want to do was create an authoritarian, top down government, with a strong central leader. Like we had just left. So we muddled through for a few years with the Articles of Confederation. We did not even have a central figurehead to represent our government.
Naturally, this did not work and our little experiment was beginning to unravel. All the states were doing their own thing. Printing their own money and not living up to their obligations to fund the federal government. Including paying back the money the ‘country’ had borrowed to fund the war. The states looked at this debt as the Federal government’s debt, not theirs.
The Constitutional convention sought to remedy all this weakness. Spreading the power between three branches. Ensuring they would be a check on each other. Guaranteeing states rights, giving the people an equal voice in decisions, providing a way to arbitrate against bad legislature. Forging a union of these states in common effort. Creating a central leader, chosen by the representatives of the people from each state. And finally, a mechanism, the filibuster to ensure no FACTION would rule over the others.
The framers hated the idea of factions, special interest, or what we see in our modern bifurcated political party system. They knew this would be bad for the country and our unity of purpose. Knowing, in any society ruled by humans, this would eventually be the norm, they provided tools to ensure the minority could not be silenced and frozen out from having a say in laws being made.
The filibuster ensured a simple majority would not be enough to pass legislation in the Senate, or confer appointments, like judges. The minority could object to a bill or an appointment and the congress would now have to achieve a greater majority. Two thirds to start and eventually 60 out of 100 votes we have today. This generally meant in order for a bill to pass or an appointment to be approved, it would require compromise.
Compromise. Gridlock. Slow change. Call it what you will. By providing this tool, the framers forced the passions and rhetoric of the populists to go from a boil to simmering. By simply having to extend the process and force compromise positions to be discussed and adopted.
Whether it was an appointee more suitable to all, or a bill where pieces were removed or softened to get the support of those 60 votes, it worked. It took an “I win, you lose’ mentality off the table and forced more of “I got some of what I wanted and you got most, but not all, of what you wanted’.
The most famous use of the filibuster was by the Democrats in 1964, when they tried to keep the Civil Rights Bill from passing. They had successfully stopped every prior attempt at meaningful civil rights legislation.
The southern Democrat Senators had spent 100 years ensuring the freedoms the blacks were promised were never realized. The freedoms granted by the first Republican President Lincoln and the bought with 365,000 dead union soldier’s lives.
This use of the filibuster actually had the opposite effect from the obvious use of stopping bills. It also demonstrates the pure brilliance of the framers, knowing the illegitimate use of the filibuster against a righteous cause, would highlight the need to come together to overcome its use.
What it really did, was highlight the bigoted and racist positions of the Southern Democrats. This caused many Republicans to join with the northern Democrats to come together and get the 67 (they got 73) votes they needed to stop Robert Byrd and his ‘Dixiecrats’, once and for all. Now the promises of Lincoln, and then MLK, could start to progress.
Like I said earlier, the Democrats used the filibuster over 300 times during Trump’s last year to prevent what they saw as Republican overreach. The difference in these cases was with our bitterly divided congress, each time they used the filibuster the bills were dead. There was no opportunity or attempt to convince enough Democrats to join with Republicans on compromise positions.
So now the Democrats are no longer in the minority. But they also don’t have 60 votes and they sure as heck don’t want to compromise with Republicans enough to get to 60 votes.
The progressive movement of Wilson has had a resurgence these last 20 years as they sense they have an opportunity to remake the country, just as they did before World War I. Their best shot is President Kamala Harris. They know this.
They are sharpening the saw again. Attacking the Supreme Court. Threatening again to pack the court to ensure they have no opposition to any of their chosen positions. No way to overturn them. It is the Supremes who decide if laws are unconstitutional or not.
The only barrier to them doing this is the Legislative Filibuster. Forcing them to compromise to get 60 votes. The last time they had 60 votes, they passed Obamacare.
If President Harris is successful in getting 51 Democrat Senators to agree to destroy the filibuster, using the so called ‘nuclear option’, they will have sawed one of the two remaining legs of the stool out. The last remaining leg, the Supreme Court will be the first piece of legislation they now ram through congress, expanding the court to 15 seats.
When this happens, all the checks of the Constitution are removed.
They already went nuclear on judges, taking their appointments from needing 60 to just a simple majority of one in the Senate for confirmation. This is how they ended up with 2 conservatives, 3 moderates, 3 liberals and the chief justice blowing in the public opinion wind on any given vote. Whoops.
Guess destroying that part of the legislative filibuster for judges (thank you Harry Reid, RIP) didn’t work out quite as planned. No matter. We’ll get it right his time, according to these same prophets.
After we expand the court to 15, we can add Puerto Rico and DC as states. That’s four more Democratic Senators, so that should help keep those pesky Republicans from trying to win a majority the old fashioned way.
Just in case, next we start granting amnesty to various illegals. Maybe start with those who have been here for 20+ years, then 10, and eventually everyone they have let in through the last four years. Many of whom will now be eligible for government services once they are full citizens.
It is unlikely many of those are going to vote against democrat candidates promising to keep providing them with these benefits. Especially, when their republican competitor, or whatever the new third party calls itself after the republican party disintegrates, makes it clear they would not keep spending money the government does not have to keep providing these checks.
I think you get the picture. Removing the Legislative Filibuster is the effective end of our country being ruled by the laws we set up in the Constitution. Do not take this lightly.
The idea she would only do it to recodify Roe is disingenuous. That is until the next time the obstructionist republicans dare to try to use it. Once bypassed, it is never coming back. Unless by some miracle, the Constitution and the country survive long enough to elect a majority of non-democrats back in power.
This is unlikely as this is the entire reason for nuking it in the first place. To ensure they are never out of the majority again. The tyranny of the majority the Democrats would inflict on the country, while well meaning (perhaps) on paper, would have the most profound consequences for every citizen. Democrat, republican and independent.
Beware. And Be Aware.
And read my novels. There is way more to this story. And a sliver of hope. Eventually.
WST4Y