Posted on 01/25/2018 6:45:06 AM PST by Liberty7732
“Gridlock is the greatest protection to our personal liberties.” Justice Clarence Thomas, addressing Stetson Law students
With Congress’ hyperpartisan posture and the difficulty passing legislation through the Senate, interest has grown in doing away with the filibuster rule. Be careful what is hoped for.
Senate rules require a greater than 60 percent vote to forcibly end a filibuster, a supermajority requirement is essentially invoked in order to pass a substantive bill out of the Senate. The difficulty in surmounting this hurdle has many lamenting the filibuster rule and wondering whether it’s time to do away with the supermajority provision so that bills may be passed by a simple majority.
My answer to this suggestion is quite simple. No.
One of the great priorities of the Framers in designing the Constitution was the concept of separation of powers and the decentralization of authority. These are the principles that gave rise to the enumerated powers of the federal government and the creation of three co-equal branches of government. Even within the legislative branch, the plan was to maximize the tension between the chambers so as to elevate the hurdle to be cleared to successfully get a bill to the President’s desk.
According to the Framers, the House of Representatives was designed to be the chamber of the people, reactive to its whims, and directly elected by the constituencies of the various districts. Towards that end, every member of the House of Representatives was subject to reelection every two years so that if Congress were to proceed in a direction contrary to the will of the people, the people themselves could forcibly and quickly effect a change in the direction of Congress.
The Senate was decidedly different as it was supposed to be the more seasoned, more stable chamber.
First, only one third of the Senate was to change hands each election cycle, that way, while the House could be subject to dramatic, biennial membership changes, the Senate could only change one-third of its members at a time.
Second, the Senate was equal in representation of each state. This meant that while the number of members in the House of Representatives varied according to each state’s population, the representation from amongst the various states was equally weighted. It also meant that each Senator was responsible for a much larger constituency, which would have a tempering effect on the Senator’s views. While it is easy to take a hard right or hard left position when one represents a small geographic location with similar views, taking on a population as large as that of a state checks the breadth of a senator’s views as the state as a whole can never be as radical as its most ardent congressional seat.
But there was a third distinction to the Senate, and one that is arguably more influential upon its actions. In the Constitution’s original incarnation, the members of the Senate were elected by each state’s legislature. This was instrumental to defining the actions and the policies approved by the Senate since, under this scheme, the Senate was truly answerable to the states. One can scarcely imagine a Senator voting for imposing a funding mandate upon a state if that senator knew that his state legislature would be negatively impacted by his vote.
That all changed with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution. As a result of the Seventeenth Amendment, senators were elected by a direct vote from the people of each state. Instantly, the Senate became less responsive to the state legislature and became decidedly more like the House of Representatives. As a result, it became a lot easier for a bill originating in the House of Representatives, namely the budget bill, to get passed out of the Senate.
Enter the filibuster. In light of the decreasing tensions between the two legislative chambers resulting from the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, it has become much easier for the federal government to pass laws. Power has been centralized, not decentralized, as the Framers had intended.
The filibuster with its 60 percent plus one supermajority requirement to break it, although not constitutionally prescribed, imparts a difference in the inner workings of the two chambers that serves to increase the tension between the two chambers and decentralize power away from the House of Representatives. In so doing, our liberties stand a higher level of protection.
So, in light of the trend toward centralization of power brought to us through the actions of the Progressive wing of our political spectrum, should we encourage the Senate to do away with the filibuster rule?
The answer, clearly, is no — unless we want even more centralization of controlling authority.
With all due respect to Justice Thomas, please consider the following.
Noting that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had decided not to give the power to vote for senators and presidents to ordinary voters, Justice Thomas may be overlooking the following.
It is necessary for the anti-constitutional republic Progressive Movement to effectively repeal constitutionally enumerated controls on both the senate and executive branches in order to unconstitutionally centralize government power. The Progressive Movement evidently does this by exploiting the voting power of ordinary, misguided citizens to enable the federal government to steal state powers.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
More specifically, while the Progressive Movement has long since seized control of the Senate, evidenced by the ratification of the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, today’s controversy over the “obsolete” electoral college is the last battle for the Progressive Movement to also win control of the executive branch.
Regarding the Senate’s 60 supermajority vote, unconstitutional imo, please consider the following.
First, constitutionally enumerated exceptions to the Senate's one vote rule aside, unlike representatives, the delegates to the first Constitutional Convention expressly guaranteed senators one vote.
"Article 2, Section 1, Clause 1: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature."
(Each representative is not guaranteed one vote; "fractional" votes evidently permissible.)
"Article 3, Section 1, Clause 1: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, (See Note 3) for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote [emphasis added]."
Consider the following example concerning the 60 vote rule versus the Constitution.
If the 60 vote rule is in effect and the vote is split 50-50, then it's wrong to say that the vote fell short of the 60 needed to pass a bill imo.
Instead, the Senate has no choice but to apply the Constitution's one vote per senator guarantee with the vice president's power to cast the deciding vote.
"Article I, Section 3, Clause 4: The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided."
And even if the vote isn't split 50-50, unless a vote requires a constitutionally mandated supermajority to pass, the one vote per senator must still be respected imo, not politically repealed.
Otherwise, the Progressive Movement arguably wins the vote whenever the Constitution's one voter per senator, or the vice president's power to decide the vote, are ignored.
In fact, note that Thomas Jefferson, a president of the Senate at one time, had put it this way about ignoring parts of the Constitution.
"The general rule [is] that an instrument is to be so construed as to reconcile and give meaning and effect to all its parts." --Thomas Jefferson to -----, 1816.
Again, constitutional exceptions to the one vote rule aside, the Senate's 60 vote rule wrongly ignores the Constitution's one vote per senator rule imo.
Corrections, insights welcome.
Simple majority like the Constitution says. The extra Constitutional Senate “rules” need to go. Why do we need a “parliamentarian”?
Here is the first of three exhaustive squibs on our once senate of the states. I think you will enjoy them.
Excerpt:
Subtitle: Progressives Blow Up the Framers’ Constitution.
In continuance of the Senate of the States series, the next three squibs leave the Federal Convention and visit the decades leading to the destructive 17th Amendment (17A).
The 17A triggered a cascade of stunning downwind consequences, perhaps only second to the immediate post-Civil War amendments. As opposed to the 13th – 15th Amendments which reset society, the 17A reset our republican governing form. Overnight, the 17A transformed the Framers’ exquisite compound democratic/federal structure into a democratic form deadly to republics.
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