Twice in three years a Republican has willingly vacated the powerful position of speaker of the House. That's extraordinary, and the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of the Senate filibuster — which President Trump has been right to blame.
For years now the filibuster has made it almost impossible for Congress to accomplish much, and certainly not structural reforms. People like Paul Ryan — and specifically Paul Ryan himself —come to Washington to accomplish big things. With the filibuster making it nearly impossible to get anything done, I can't blame Ryan for throwing in the towel.
How much better shape would Paul Ryan (and we all) be in if Congress had reformed or replaced Obamacare? Or passed Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plan? Or Ryan's proven balanced budget framework? The Senate filibuster killed all of Ryan's carefully designed structural reforms.
For all of the bashing Republican leaders have suffered at the hands of the grassroots, they can't pass anything without the Senate as a willing partner, and the Senate has been paralyzed by the filibuster — which allows any senator to stop a bill from consideration, and which can only be overridden by a 60 vote supermajority.
Senate traditionalists may recoil at criticism of the filibuster. After all, didn't the Founders design the Senate as a place for legislation to die? Actually, no, the Senate was indeed designed to slow down legislation, but the modern filibuster has morphed the Senate into a de facto supermajority body.
The Founders debated and rejected a supermajority Senate, accurately predicting the problems it would cause. In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton said supermajority requirements were a major factor in the failure of the Articles of Confederation, which made the Constitution necessary. Hamilton said under a supermajority requirement "it would no longer be the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority ... [which would use it] to extort unreasonable indulgences."
Hamilton further warned: "If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of the majority ... the majority, in order to get something done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater ... hence tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good."
There is perhaps no better description of Congress today, and of the bloated omnibus spending bill that both Democrats and Republicans claim to hate.
Under the Founders' design, in the Senate there were only a small number of specific carve-outs where a supermajority was required: Impeachment, ratifying treaties, overriding a veto, and constitutional amendments. Normal Senate business was conducted with a simple majority vote.
But the modern filibuster has turned the Senate inside-out, making a supermajority necessary for normal Senate business and carving out specific exceptions for simple majorities such as reconciliation for omnibus spending bills. No wonder the only thing Congress seems to be able to do is spend money.
And all this because of a historical accident. The filibuster is not in the Constitution and was not a part of the Senate's original rules, but rather arose as an unintended consequence of an 1806 rule change.
Even then, the filibuster was rarely employed because if a Senator wanted to filibuster, that senator actually had to hold the floor by giving an extended speech. But once the senator lost control of the floor, a simple majority vote could still be held.
By contrast, under the modern filibuster, any senator can effortlessly kill legislation with a telephone call threatening to filibuster, without drawing attention to himself. That's too easy, and too irresponsible, and the result has been exactly what the Founders predicted: a dysfunctional Congress where the minority has more power than the majority. It's true that the Founders feared too much democracy, but they designed the Senate as an institution where majority would eventually rule. It no longer functions that way.
With control of the Senate up for grabs at the midterm election, there's little incentive for Mitch McConnell to weaken the filibuster now. But what might have been had McConnell seen the light and fixed the filibuster in time to repeal Obamacare and implement a balanced budget plan?
The filibuster must be reformed, and Republicans should do it while they can still dictate the new rule. Call it the Jimmy Stewart Filibuster: In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart played a grassroots reformer who stops a bill by holding the floor until he persuaded his colleagues to relent. As always, Jimmy Stewart is still the ideal.