Summary
Contents
Subject index
With an avalanche of scholarship on the House, it can be tough to balance out coverage in a typical Congress course with appropriate readings on the “slow institution.”
Offering top-notch research geared to an undergraduate audience, Loomis' new edited volume represents a broad picture of the contemporary Senate and how it came to be. While addressing issues of delay, obstruction, and polarization in a variety of ways, the scholars in this collection are not proposing a reform agenda, but instead, explore the historical and political contexts for how difficult it can be to change a non-majoritarian, highly individualistic institution. Students will come away from these chapters with a much greater appreciation of the Senate's unique combination of tradition, precedent, and constitutional mandate.
The Senate Syndrome
The Senate Syndrome
The United States Senate, known for the stability of its rules, exposed its procedural fragility in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The parliamentary arms race between the parties that has unfolded in the Senate in recent decades eventually brought the Senate to the brink of chaos in 2005. Tensions had been building for years—minority obstructionism motivated majority countermoves, generated partisan incrimination, and led to more obstruction and preemptive action. In the spring of 2005, the majority leader promised to change the application of the Senate's most distinctive rule, Rule XXII, by a ruling of the presiding officer, rather than suffer more delay in acting on several judicial nominations. The minority promised to retaliate by “going nuclear”—making the Senate ungovernable by obstructing nearly all Senate action—but a small group of senators negotiated an arrangement for either the majority or the minority to follow through on their threats.
Since early 2005, majority leaders have taken steps to avoid or control debate and amending activity. The result is a Senate, long known for the flexibility and informality of its floor proceedings, that is more bound by formal rules and precedent than at any time in its history. In today's Senate, each party assumes that the other party will fully exploit its procedural options—the majority party assumes that the minority party will obstruct legislation and the minority assumes that the majority will restrict its opportunities. Leaders are expected to fully exploit the rules in the interests of their parties. The minority is quick to obstruct and the majority is quick to restrict. Senators of both parties are frustrated by what has become of their institution.
This obstruct-and-restrict syndrome is new to the Senate. This chapter is about that syndrome.
Essential Background
The distinctive feature of Senate parliamentary procedure is the ability of a large minority of senators to block votes on most legislative matters. Consequently, the most important developments in the Senate's modern procedural history concern adaptation to, circumvention of, or reform of the super-majority requirement for cloture under Rule XXII, which requires a super-majority of senators to support a cloture motion in order to impose limits on debate and amendments. The possibility of obstructionism and the details of Rule XXII provide the foundation for much of the Senate's decision-making machinery. Exploitation of Rule XXII by minorities and majority responses have forced strategists to be far more expert in parliamentary rules and precedents; this in turn has encouraged more gamesmanship by senators and their parties and has intensified frustration with the Senate among both insiders and outsiders.
The Senate of the mid-twentieth century had settled into a fairly stable procedural pattern. The cloture rule, Rule XXII(2), was modified in 1949 to clarify that cloture may be applied to procedural motions (such as the motion to proceed), thereby making it possible to limit debate with the requisite number of votes and get a vote on a bill. In 1959 the Senate changed the majority required for cloture from two-thirds of senators duly chosen and sworn (67, when 99 or 100 seats are filled) to two-thirds of senators present and voting. The 1959 rule also explicitly provided that cloture may be applied to motions to consider changes in Senate rules. With the 1959 rule in place, the Senate enacted the major civil rights legislation of the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1975 the threshold for cloture was reduced to three-fifths of senators duly chosen and sworn, except for measures that change Senate rules, for which the threshold at two-thirds of senators present and voting was retained. The 1975 thresholds remain in place.
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