Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 9, 1993 TAG: 9304120241
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
AISLE TALK
NEW YORK Times columnist William Safire takes a few gentlemanly swipes at U.S. Senate filibustering in "Safire's Political Dictionary," if I read him correctly, and well he might.The very word "filibuster" strikes most laymen as not only ugly in itself but as representative of something vaguely un-American in its effort to thwart the will of a majority. The word "majority" has been elevated, by the same emotionalism, into something noble, at the heart of what we are pleased to call "democracy."
The fact remains, however, that a "majority" is not invariably right and that, far from being "un-American," the right to "filibuster" has been embedded in the rules of the Senate throughout most of its history - and that its justification is to prevent an arrogant majority from getting its way irresponsibly.
All of this comes to mind when I hear President Bill Clinton's complaints about the present Senate's Republican filibuster against his $16.3 billion proposal to give the nation's economy a jump-start.
Clinton argues that the proposal is necessary to create jobs and thus spur economic recovery. Senate Republicans argue, to the contrary, that it is just another example of Democratic "tax-and-spend" politics. Their filibuster on the Senate floor is thus an attempt to defeat or stall Clinton's bill, or else to force him to bargain with them for its ultimate passage.
Whether Clinton is right to propose the measure or the GOP right in its claim that the measure would only raise taxes and the budget deficit are, in the end, irrelevant. Economic differences aside, the filibuster is an essentially political move: Though in a minority, the GOP wants to show Clinton and his administration that it is still powerful, and can act with unity.
Clinton and the Democratic supporters would be wise to recognize that the filibuster is one more tool in the democratic process - in this as in other instances a check on the tendency of majorities to ride roughshod over those who disagree with them; and the Democrats have used it themselves when they thought they needed to.
The filibuster stems from the Senate's Rule 22, which allows unlimited debate on any measure. As long as a member wants to stall, he can keep it from a full Senate vote. (House rules make such debate impossible.)
As Safire points out, it has been used by both sides of the aisle, though rarely to any permanent effect. Before the Civil War, a filibuster delayed passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond talked more than 24 hours in his effort to defeat the Civil Rights Bill of 1957.
Oregonian Wayne Morse used a filibuster to try to whip John F. Kennedy's space satellite communications bill. Huey Long once spoke for 16 hours. His son, Russell, was proud of his own various filibusters. Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore, father of the vice president, filibustered against the tax checkoff measure for financing political campaigns.
The point is, I think, that the filibuster represents yet another effort at limiting power. When Clinton won the November election, and the House and Senate remained Democratic, Democrats must naively have assumed that it would be clear sailing until the elections of 2000.
That it will be nothing of the sort, and that a Democratic victory might well serve to reunite a badly divided Republican Party, they seem not to have guessed. But that is how the system works, and the filibuster works that way too. Clinton and his administration need not complain.
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.