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The police reform bill stalling in the Senate is exhibit A in the case against how McConnell and Schumer manage the institution.
Regardless of your view on the underlying policy, the debate itself didn’t have to stall.
It stalled because Schumer and McConnell are not interested in having that debate. They don’t want their colleagues to participate in it as equals. They don’t want their colleagues to offer amendments.
McConnell gave numerous speeches as minority leader about why a Senate minority votes against cloture on the motion to proceed to a bill. At the time, McConnell claimed that the reason was because senators were not confident that they would have an opportunity to offer amendments
McConnell was responding to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid’s habit to fill the amendment tree and block senators from offering amendments and filling cloture on the bill to end debate immediately after beginning debate.
The irony is that McConnell does the same thing as majority leader (in the rare instances when the Senate actually debates legislation).
By McConnell’s own standards, the Democrats are justified in blocking cloture on beginning debate on the police reform bill because Republicans are presenting it as a take-it-or-leave-it proposal.
Schumer is pushing his colleagues blocking the bill because he doesn’t want to have a freewheeling debate with amendments either. He would rather negotiate with McConnell using the blocked bill as leverage to negotiate a take-it-or-leave-it proposition of his own.
Now. Here is the tragedy of the situation. There are no vetos in the Senate. It doesn’t take 60 votes to begin debate on a measure. It takes a simple-majority (typically 51).
It only takes 60 votes to end debate and vote on beginning debate if senators are speaking or seeking recognition to speech. If they are not, the Senate’s rules and practices stipulate explicitly that the presiding officer must call a vote on the question.
If Democrats try to speech indefinitely, they will be thwarted by two facts. 1). Human nature. It is impossible to speech forever; 2). The Senate’s rules. Rule XIX limits the number of speeches a senator can give in the same legislative day on a motion to proceed.
A legislative day is not a calendar day. A legislative day can last for multiple calendar days (up to two years).
Republicans could easily make Democrats hold the floor and actually filibuster the bill. And the effort to do so would create a spectacle that would educate the public and help push senators one way or the other on the issue of police reform.
McConnell’s frustration must be weighed against his unwillingness to work nights and weekends to begin debate on his preferred police reform bill.
Schumer doesn’t have to urge his colleagues to stop debate from starting on the bill to get leverage to offer amendments. He can simply offer the amendments once the debate begins.
Under Senate precedents, the minority leader (Schumer) is recognized after the majority leader (McConnell) and before all 98 other senators.
The amendment tree is simply precedents - records of how the Senate processed amendments in the past. It is not enshrined in the rules.
When the Senate first got in the amendment business in 1789, only two amendments could be pending at the same time. That number has evolved over time; the tree has grown more branches to facilitate the orderly consideration of senators’ amendments on the floor
The amendment tree was never used in over two hundred years to prohibit senators from offering amendments. That started with Frist and then exploded under leaders of both parties.
Schumer can do what senators did for over two hundred years- offer an amendment any way; create a new branch in the tree. McConnell can’t stop him.
That McConnell is unwilling to work nights and weekends to debate police reform on the Senate floor and that Schumer is unwilling to use his power to offer amendment suggests neither is serious about making progress on the issue.
And it illustrates why the Senate will continue to be dysfunctional regardless of which one of them is its majority leader.
When did senators get so timid and weak?
Polarization isn’t the problem in American politics. I think political scientists are wrong here- at least when it comes to the Senate. There is no data or logic or theory to support the claim that polarization is the cause of the Senate’s dysfunction.
Senate dysfunction is caused by leaders who want to control the Senate and senators whose weakness and timidity cause them to empower their leaders to shut down the Senate. Polarization; intense partisanship- those things motivate people to act. Not to refrain from acting.
Of course. This is missing from political science discourse and academic journals because epistemological, methodological, and theoretical trends in congressional scholarship has blinded scholars to what happens inside the Senate
Professional incentives are problematic too.
Peruse any academic journal for articles about Congress. I suspect that very few of them will acknowledge the contradiction I highlight here.
I think most of them will cite NOMINATE scores and talk about polarization and partisan competition. Homogenous parties. Zero-sum issues that can’t be compromised. Lots of that. The problem is, these issues aren’t zero sum. The parties aren’t homogenous. And NOMINATE is imperfect
The effort to understand what happened to Congress must begin with how we think about Congress. And that must start in the academy and media. From there, it seeped into popular consciousness and members/staff worldview.
Political scientists usually complain about their irrelevance. In this case, I think we ruined Congress. We have been highly relevant, in a very unhelpful way
“How Congress scholars ruined Congress” - there’s a title you will never see in Legislative Studies Quarterly or the American Political Science Review!
I would read that article
