The Last Great Senate by Ira Shapiro

Author:Ira Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2012-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

Minority Leader Baker took the floor to respond. He complimented Byrd for visiting him to explain the proposal, and noted that during the natural gas filibuster, the majority leader and the vice president had “managed to establish a line and series of precedents that created the possibility to at least accelerate the disposition of the controversy and conflict.”

Baker described the challenge with characteristic diplomacy: “How can we avoid reiterating an unfortunate precedent, meet the procedural challenge of these times, and promote the best interchange of ideas between us to create a new rules situation with which we all can live, whether we are in the majority or the minority, now and in the future?” Baker advised Byrd and the Senate that he was appointing an ad hoc committee to be chaired by Stevens, which would include Javits, Helms, Jim McClure, and John Chafee from Rhode Island, a group that spanned the full spectrum of the Senate Republicans, to study Byrd’s proposal and propose a Republican reaction.

More than two weeks later, the Senate remained on the first legislative day. Discussions had continued within the groups and between them, reaching a “concept” but no details. Traditionalists insisted that Byrd’s changes would wrest power away from the whole Senate, bestowing it on the leadership.

On February 7, another long day of talks failed to reach a compromise. Byrd indicated that he was prepared to force through changes with a simple majority; he issued the threat, in all likelihood, to bring things to a negotiated resolution. But the next day, Baker expressed optimism that a compromise would be reached as soon as the Senate returned from its Presidents Day recess.

Indeed, the Senate reached its resolution of changes in the filibuster rules. On February 22, by a vote of 78–16, the Senate voted to restrict the use of the post-cloture filibuster. Byrd did not get everything he had asked for. He had previously agreed to allow the post-cloture debate to be extended, not just limited, by sixty votes, and raised the floor of post-cloture filibuster debate, after sixty votes, to thirty hours rather than twelve. Republicans agreed to let the issue come to a vote only after Byrd agreed to drop his demand that sixty votes could limit post-cloture debate at all beyond the strict 100-hour limit (including amendments and roll-call votes). Byrd also agreed to give up his effort to limit filibusters on the motion to proceed, which had become known as the “pre-filibuster filibuster.”

After the vote, Byrd adjourned the Senate, rather than recessing it, to signal the end of the fight. It was no longer the first legislative day, removing the threat of changing the Senate rules by a majority.

The resolution represented the third time in history that the Senate had acted to make it easier to break a filibuster. The southern Democrats, who had used the filibuster in previous decades to thwart civil rights legislation, became supporters of Byrd’s initiative. They had always accepted cloture as final and believed the post-cloture filibuster threatened the Senate’s ability to function.

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