Obstructionism is the big culprit for the Legislature not working as it should, and here we go to see why.
At the time of writing, the U.S. Senate was listening to the reading of the 628-page $ 1.9 trillion economic relief bill that President Joe Biden pushed to dodge. impact that the pandemic has left. This incentive package, not to be outdone, includes checks for $ 1,400 for citizens in need of federal aid and a check for $ 400 a week for the unemployed, among other things.
Most striking of this is the reading of the 628 pages of the bill on the Senate floor, which was forced by Republican Sen. Ron Jonson (Wisconsin) and will take at least ten hours. This is also the perfect opportunity to talk about the so-called ‘filibuster’.
What is the filibuster?
The filibuster can be interpreted in Spanish as a tool of obstructionism that is used to slow down or block a bill or to prevent a resolution from being voted on. So this is the big culprit for the Legislature not working as it should, and here we go to see why.
In the nation’s origins, Vice President Aaron Burr changed the rules so that the House and Senate had unlimited time to debate bills. Nothing could stop them, and this became a big problem when the number of legislators grew, as they took the whole session rambling to spoil the debate. Some senators, in the modern era, have read the bible, the telephone directory, and even recipes.
In 1917 came the first major change in the rules of the Senate. President Woodrow Wilson needed Senate approval to enter World War I, but a group of senators used the filibuster to lengthen the debate. President Wilson, who urgently needed approval, ordered a change: that the debate should end if a simple majority allowed it. The Senate made a counter-proposal: that the debate end with the approval of two-thirds of the upper house.
Since then, this archaic rule governing the modern Senate dictates that before voting on a bill, a supermajority agrees to vote, and a simple majority approves the document, in most cases. What this does in the context of a polarization as strong as the one we are experiencing is that it gives immense power to Senate minorities to govern. To get to the vote, a bill needed the support of 66 senators. If 34 were opposed, there was no vote.
In the 1960s, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield was fed up with the nonsensical speeches of lawmakers who spent hours obstructing a bill, so he made a change in the filibuster: he eliminated debates. With that, senators who wanted to obstruct did not need to speak for hours, but simply threatened to do so as long as they had enough 34 votes to prevent the vote on the bill. Thus, the Senate began to operate poorly. And while the number needed for obstruction has been changing as governments pass, the underlying problem remains here: a party challenges every project of its counterpart and makes it almost impossible to pass a new law.
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Why is this a big problem now?
Let’s get back to the debate over the Biden stimulus package. What Senator Johnson did this afternoon is an unusual kind of obstructionism. He did not have to speak for hours, but made others speak for him in order to torpedo the debate because, like all Republicans, he is strongly opposed to tax aid. Meanwhile, millions of workers in the country with liquidity problems must continue to wait for the Senate to debate and approve the bill.
The help package is most likely to be approved. Democrats used a mechanism called “budget conciliation,” which can be used for legislation related to taxes, spending, and public debt. This reduces the threshold of votes needed to pass legislation from 60 to a simple majority. And Democrats are counting on that thanks to the tiebreaker vote held by Vice President Kamala Harris. They then have a total of 51 votes. But for the rest of the large-scale legislation on Biden’s agenda, the picture is not so positive, as “budget conciliation” cannot be applied to them.
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One is the Electoral Rights Bill, now known as House Resolution 1 (HR1), which is the most ambitious bill to protect the right to vote in a generation. With this, Democrats will ban partisan gerrymandering, which is a tool used to draw constituencies in the country and used by Republicans to maintain a lead in elections, protect minority rights and impose boundaries. to campaign funding, among other things. This is very important, because right now, Republican-controlled state legislatures have waged a war to diminish the ability of the right to vote in minorities with the goal of winning elections in the future.
But if the filibuster continues, it is almost impossible for this project to move forward, so among Democrats there are growing orders to end obstructionism.
Can obstructionism be ended?
The Senate can change its rules of the game. Just as in the 1970s the threshold was reduced to advance the voting process from 67 to 60 votes, the Senate could again reduce the threshold to less than 60 votes or create exceptions for projects of a certain kind, as happened. with those related to financial matters covered by the conciliation mechanism. A simple majority is enough to change the laws. The problem for Democrats is that not the entire bloc agrees with that. That the Senate is divided 50 to 50 gives a lot of power to senators like Joe Manchin, who opposes eliminating the filibuster. Manchin is considered one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate today, although his name is not very familiar to us here. But talking about him will be the subject of another The Spectator tells him.
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