Last fall, the rules of the U.S. Senate were fundamentally changed. This change will drastically alter how our government functions and threatens to destroy the checks and balances historically in place. It represents what may be the single greatest abuse of power in the last 200 years in our system of governance. Yet it has received relatively little media coverage. The change, allowing a simple majority to overcome filibusters on judicial nominations, a move known as the “nuclear option,” threatens the integrity of the Senate’s ability to give voice to minority party members, which has been vital to our democracy.
In Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives have traditionally functioned in different ways. Based on how voting occurs, the House is controlled completely by the majority, and so if one comes from the minority party, then that individual has very little say in what passes the House. In the Senate, however, minority voices may be heard.
In general, the Senate was a place where debate over bills could thrive, and each Senator could wield some significant influence on the bill’s final shape. Because bills required 60 votes to pass in the Senate, the majority had to work with members in the minority for bipartisan compromise. This functioned to mitigate the power that any one group could consolidate — one of the finest examples of checks and balances and division of power within our government. However, the Senate’s Democratic leadership recently fundamentally altered this, something which warrants the attention of every American.
There has been a longstanding history of abuse by the majority in the Senate, through a tactic known as “filling the tree.” In this situation, the majority leader fills every possible avenue for amendments to the bill, effectively preventing minority members from altering the bill. This is not something new, but in recent years, there has been an unprecedented increase in its use. Rather than allowing real debate in the Senate, this tactic simply alienates the minority party’s members by taking away their right to amend the bill. Regardless of your beliefs or party with which you lean, this tactic must be viewed as unscrupulous and antithetical to genuine debate.
Although the minority in the Senate has continually had its voice eroded away by the usurping of members’ ability to make amendments, the minority still had one avenue available to them: the right to talk on the Senate floor. While this sometimes led to the dreaded “filibustering” of executive and judicial appointments, it at least provided a way for the minority (and a large minority — having to act together as a unit with at least 41 votes) to exert some influence on the majority and have its voice heard. This could prevent either side from “stacking the bench” on influential courts, as President Obama arguably tried to do with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the second most influential court in the nation.
And so this single last power of the Senate minority, which has served an important function despite frustrating both parties, has now been taken away, with the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to use the “nuclear option” last fall. It allows a simple majority to control the Senate, rather than share power with a large minority. Interestingly, he himself called such a tactic in 2008 “a black chapter in the history of the Senate,” which had the potential to ruin the country. Yet this further disenfranchisement of the Senate minority is what materialized under his leadership. Whereas the Senate was once the bastion of debate where the minority could be heard, in one fell swoop the institution has been ruined by the actions of one man, who placed partisan politics ahead of the health and well-being of the nation. Invoking the nuclear option is more than just a rule change. It will undoubtedly alter how the Senate operates — permanently — and not for the better. It is a step down the road to autocracy — not democracy.
