JOE MANCHIN PROPERLY EARNS THREE PINOCCHIO’S

 

                                            …Joe should get his facts straight

 

Manchin’s idea about the filibuster is based on his false facts

 

Well, the West Virginia Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, just earned, 3 Washington Post “Pinocchio’s” for his inaccurate statement: “The filibuster is the tradition of the Senate here in 232 years now. … We need to be very cautious what we do. … That’s what we’ve always had for 232 years. That’s what makes us different than any place else in the world.”

Senate Democrats are threatening to carve out an exception to the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, but some key members of the caucus, such as Manchin, are very dubious. He argued that it was a 232-year-old tradition that should not be easily discarded.

But Manchin’s history is wrong.

The word “filibuster” is derived from a Dutch word for “pirate”.  (That is very appropriate as the "filibuster" does delay the official business of the Senate) In the Senate, filibuster generally refers to extended debate that delays a vote on a pending matter.

“Cloture” is a device to end that debate. In the current Senate, it generally requires 60 senator's votes, that’s a supermajority, that is needed to agree to end debate, so that a vote can be taken.  For controversial legislation, such as on guns or health care, even with bipartisan support, that can be a high hurdle to overcome.

The filibuster, contrary to Manchin’s suggestion, is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, which did go into effect, 232 years ago.

Some historians date the rise of the filibuster to the actions of Aaron Burr, the vice president in 1805. In his capacity as president of the Senate, he argued that the chamber’s rule book was a mess and should be cleaned up.  He said the body should eliminate a rule that allowed a majority of the Senate to automatically cut off floor debate.  He called it the “previous question” motion, because he thought it was unnecessary. The Senate took that step a year later.

Here’s what you need to know about the procedure’s complicated history that is only meant to: delay, delay, delay.

The legal scholars, Catherine Fisk and Erwin Chemerinsky, in a 1997 Stanford Law Review article noted that the "previous question" was rarely used in the Senate before 1806.  In fact, they uncovered that in 1790, the senators from Virginia and South Carolina relied on those extended filibuster speeches in a failed effort to block a vote to temporarily move the U.S. Congress to Philadelphia.

The Senate website today refers to these long speeches in the first session of Congress, noting “the right of unlimited debate in the Senate, including the filibuster, has been a key component of the Senate’s unique role in the American political system.”

Still, it was in 1856, and that was well before the Senate established the right of unlimited debate.  Before then, there were some skirmishes on the Senate floor, such as those in 1826, 1837 or 1841, that some experts trace as the beginning of the real filibuster. The word “filibustering” was first used on the Senate floor to connote unlimited debate in 1853.  This is according to the same, “Fisk and Chemerinsky of Stanford”.  But it was not until the 1880s that filibusters were successful in de-railing legislation; before then, every effort had failed.

But then filibusters increasingly became successful. Senators mounting the filibuster would organize a tag-team of like-minded colleagues who would speak in two-hour rotations.  This, in effect, halted all Senate business as long as the filibuster was maintained.  It was President Woodrow Wilson, who had been a noted congressional scholar, that in 1917, he urged the Senate to changes the rules to allow for an end to debate. He argued that filibusters were harming national security during World War I.

In a compromise, a new rule established the first “cloture”.  This allowed for debate to be ended with two-thirds of senators present and voting).  (However, many senators preferred instead, a simple majority vote.)

Even so, cloture was rarely invoked in the decades following its adoption. Filibusters were generally used to thwart civil right bills; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tied up the Senate for 74 days.

In 1975, when Joe Biden was in the Senate, the rules were changed again so that cloture could be invoked with the support of 60 votes instead of two-thirds of the Senate (67 votes). While that in theory lowered the threshold for ending debate, a new system for tracking legislation instituted separately under then-Majority Leader Mike Mansfield.  It actually made it easier to mount a filibuster because opponents no longer had to make sure they had enough senators available on the floor for votes.

“The effect of the tracking system is that a filibuster no longer ties up the business of the Senate,” law professor, Josh Chafetz of the Cornell Law School wrote in 2011. “Once a Senator announces an intention to filibuster a measure, the issue is simply kept on the back burner unless the majority can muster the sixty votes for cloture.”

Even so, that change did not immediately result in more filibusters. But over time, and both parties point fingers at each other for abusing the process, filibusters became the norm, so that just about any bill requires at least 60 votes of support for passage.

The only exception was for budget bills under a process known as reconciliation. Over time, that has been stretched to include tax bills and last year’s Coronavirus economic relief legislation, pushed by President Biden.  Republicans in 2017, had even tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act through reconciliation, but could not get the necessary 50 votes for passage.

The Democrats in 2013, eliminated the filibuster for all presidential, judicial and executive-branch nominations, except for Supreme Court appointees.  Republicans had blocked votes for President Barack Obama’s nominees to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and his picks to lead the Defense Department, the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Then, when Democrats in 2017 mounted a filibuster of President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, Republicans moved to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.

A Senator Joe Manchin spokesperson offered this statement in response to questions:: “Prior to 1917, there was no mechanism for ending debate in the Senate, effectively allowing one member to block any action on any bill. While the threshold for invoking cloture has been modified over the years, there has never been majority cloture in the Senate.”

That statement concedes that Manchin was wrong to cite a Senate “tradition” of 232 years.

Therefore, we now have the Pinocchio Test.

Manchin’s history is incorrect.

As shown, early efforts at delaying bills through unlimited debate routinely failed. 

Basic facts show that the filibuster has evolved in recent decades.  Until the mid-1970s, senators wanting to filibuster a bill were required to organize a tag team of colleagues to hold the floor for days, in effect halting all Senate business. That built pressure and allowed for a supermajority to form in opposition.

But now, the Senate business can continue, even if a filibuster is threatened against a controversial bill. That’s a tradition that is not even 50 years old.

The history of unlimited debate and the filibuster is very different from what Joe Manchin claims.

He therefore properly earns his Three Pinocchio’s.

Copyright G. Ater 2022