October 02, 2015
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." --Abraham Lincoln
Chairman's Note: A Filibuster Should be the Beginning of the Fight
If you want to understand why the American people don’t trust Congress, take a careful look at what happened this week in the Senate.
On Thursday, for the third time this year, Senate Democrats voted against a measure that would have allowed the upper chamber to begin debating a spending bill to fund the Department of Defense for FY2016. And then, after voting unanimously to advance a separate spending bill for military construction and veterans programs – who’s going to vote “no” the week before Veteran’s Day? – the Senate promptly convened for a three-and-a-half-day weekend.
After the vote, in an attempt to justify his party’s pattern of obstruction, the Minority Leader explained that his Democratic conference has repeatedly blocked the defense appropriations bill because it opposes the Republican majority’s broader approach to funding the government.
Well of course there are serious and meaningful differences of opinion between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate regarding how Congress ought to fund the government. But the American people won’t have an opportunity to hear their elected representatives discuss those differences of opinion in a substantive, robust debate, so long as Senate Democrats continue their craven strategy of blocking procedural votes and Senate Republicans fail to break their habit of acquiescence.
And herein lies the source of the public’s distrust of Congress: for most people, the problem isn’t that there’s too much fighting in Washington, but that all the fighting seems so staged.
Like the old rivalries in “professional” wrestling, it’s obvious the two sides disagree, but, aside from the bluster and boilerplate that precede and follow every fight, it’s never clear exactly what they believe.
With wrestling, people accepted the scripted, choreographed conflict as part of the game. But with politics in the Senate, they reject it as unbecoming of what is supposed to be the world’s most deliberative body.
According to the Senate rules, the minority party has every right to block legislation from consideration with just forty-one votes. But a filibuster of one of the majority’s legislative priorities should be seen as the beginning, not the end, of the fight. It should be met with equally hardball tactics, like cancelling recess and weekends home, or scheduling floor votes at inconvenient times that cut back on senators’ time to fundraise, campaign, or sleep.
Most of us, most of the time aren’t going to agree. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss our differences in an open, robust debate. The Senate was designed to foster exactly that kind of deliberation, but the only way to get it working again is, well, Senators working.
With wrestling, people accepted the scripted, choreographed conflict as part of the game. But with politics in the Senate, they reject it as unbecoming of what is supposed to be the world’s most deliberative body.
According to the Senate rules, the minority party has every right to block legislation from consideration with just forty-one votes. But a filibuster of one of the majority’s legislative priorities should be seen as the beginning, not the end, of the fight. It should be met with equally hardball tactics, like cancelling recess and weekends home, or scheduling floor votes at inconvenient times that cut back on senators’ time to fundraise, campaign, or sleep.
Most of us, most of the time aren’t going to agree. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss our differences in an open, robust debate. The Senate was designed to foster exactly that kind of deliberation, but the only way to get it working again is, well, Senators working.
Issue in Focus: Planning for the Paris Protocol
In a few weeks Paris will host the latest round of climate-change negotiations – what’s called the “Conference of Parties” – under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Paris will be the twenty-first Conference of Parties in twenty-three years, but this summer the European Union’s commissioner for climate action said there is no “plan B” for Paris. He confidently declared, “[These are] not just ongoing U.N. discussions. Paris is final.”
And in at least one important respect, Paris will be final. It will be President Obama’s last, best hope to continue his pursuit of that infamously lofty ambition from 2008 – his goal of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
In addition to trying to use a new climate-change agreement to fundamentally transform America’s energy and transportation sectors, the unilateral process by which President Obama plans to commit the United States to such a deal – a process designed explicitly to bypass the Senate and avoid seeking its advice and consent – would be another step in the fundamental transformation of the way we make international commitments.
Pursuing a deal in Paris as an executive agreement instead of a treaty would not only violate the plain meaning of the U.N. Convention; it would also defy the historical understanding of the constitutional limitations on the executive in foreign affairs – limitations that exist to safeguard the sovereignty of the American people.
Congress has several options to preempt President Obama’s unprecedented and reckless unilateralism in Paris.
First, the House and Senate should take up and pass a joint resolution expressing the sense of Congress that an agreement of the cost and legal character contemplated by the Obama administration in Paris should be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent.
Next, Congress needs to wield its most potent tool — the power of the purse.
Members of both chambers and from both parties have a constitutional duty to assert with one voice – to the Obama administration and more importantly to the foreign governments attending the Paris negotiations – that Congress will not send a dime of taxpayer money to the implementation of any agreement to which the Senate has not provided its advice and consent.
That goes for the billions of dollars that President Obama has pledged to send to the so-called “Green Climate Fund.” And it goes for any other funds that the Paris agreement would expect the United States to give to developing countries for clean-energy adaptation.
Finally, we need to start thinking more broadly – beyond the Paris talks and beyond January 2017 – about how we can repair the institutional damage wrought by Obama’s will-to-power approach to the presidency, and how to reform the laws and bad habits that have facilitated the accumulation of power in the executive.
