Killing The Filibuster Softly?

The article titled “Dan Coats For Reform: Incoming GOP Senator Embraces Change” addresses the current events surrounding the support of changing filibustering in the Senate. Republican Senator Dan Coats, a vocal leader for this change, is supporting “removing the ability to filibuster the motion to proceed.” Coats has stated, “The American people deserve that we are transparent with them, that we take one item at a time, that we register our yeas and register our nays, and be accountable to the American people for what we’ve done. It’s been too much gathering everything at the end and throwing it into one big package. There’s just too much need for moving forward with action to address our serious economic situation and a number of other issues to not go forward on that basis. So I’m going to work to try to streamline the situation and move things forward.” Coats is suggesting the current filibuster system is actually slowing the progress of the country and that improvement is needed. The American public, attentive and inattentive, didn’t receive much information because media coverage was limited to C-SPAN2 and only brief articles were released afterwards. However, Ian Millhiser a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress, has stated that he doesn’t think Coats proposal would get rid of the 60-vote filibuster completely and he wrote “Present Senate rules permit senators to filibuster both the beginning and the end of debate on most bills. Coats Proposal would eliminate pre-debate filibusters, but still give Senators an opportunity to filibuster before a bill can receive a final up-or-down vote. […] Coats proposal would be a meaningful step towards eliminating a minority’s power to delay virtually all Senate Business into oblivion.” Also, a public poll found that 64 percent of the public supports filibuster reform. I found this article interesting because it was originally a republican, Rick Santorum, who brought forth the idea of pre-debating before the democrats could filibuster George W. Bush’s judicial nominations (287-288). And now it’s a Republican who’s voicing the concern to reform filibustering. This reverse filibustering is supported by our constitution in that the constitution does not offer any guidance about what constitutes presidential advice-seeking from the Senate, nor does it offer any guidance about what rules of approving a presidential nomination might be. Because Article 1, Section 5 makes each chamber responsible for setting its own rules, the Senate has been able to create its own processing presidential nominations (288). However, Santorum’s reverse filibuster did not allow the republicans to be successful in achieving their objectives. The public has little sympathy for pending judicial nominees. Such nominees tend to be sitting judges or prominent attorneys in their home states and communities, and most Americans will never be litigants in federal court (289). And because this process isn’t working there is support to reform filibustering some of that support includes the public, politicians, and President Obama.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/07/filibuster-reform-dan-coats_n_780098.html