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IS THE PROBLEM SENATE DEMOCRATS OR THE SENATE?
I'm very much in agreement with the spirit of Jon Chait's latest article. Kent Conrad's insistence on farm subsidies and tax breaks stands in mocking contradiction to his emphasis on deficit reduction. Ben Nelson's affection for the Nebraska-based middlemen in the student loans program will cost taxpayers $4 billion even as Nelson cries over the debt. The rules of the Senate and the incentives of obstruction render decent governance a touching impossibility.
But Chait uses these examples to argue that "Democrats are especially susceptible to the dysfunction of the Senate." This is something of a familiar argument. Republicans, we're frequently told, are a well-oiled congressional machine. They put party before person. They show due deference to their elected leader. They deal viciously with strays and traitors. They merrily ram legislation through the reconciliation process and strong-arm their members to ensure cooperation. And that may all be true. But my sense is that Democrats are more certain of Republican unity than Republicans are.
Chait casts the Bush record as a fairly clear procession of legislative victories. "Bush managed to enact several rounds of tax cuts that substantially exceeded those in his campaign platform, along with two war resolutions, a Medicare prescription drug benefit designed to maximize profits for the health care industry, energy legislation, education reform, and sundry other items," he writes. "Whatever the substantive merits of this agenda, its passage represented an impressive feat of political leverage, accomplished through near-total partisan discipline." It's hard, of course, to match Obama's few months against Bush's eight years. But even so, I'm not sure Bush's eight years lend themselves to such a clean history.
The original tax cuts, for instance, traveled through a Democratic Senate and found their key partisans on the opposite side of the aisle. Max Baucus stood behind President George W. Bush at the signing ceremony. The second round, which came after the 2002 midterms, ran through a Republican-chamber, but here told a story more familiar to stimulus-watchers: A group of moderate Senate Republicans, led by the then-heterodox John McCain, partnered with centrist Democrats and halved the size of Bush's tax cuts.
Other Bush accomplishments followed similar paths. No Child Left Behind was a compromise bill built with the cooperation of Ted Kennedy and George Miller. George Voinovich and Bob Bennett opposed the legislation. Medicare Part D began as a bipartisan effort (again with Kennedy) and only became a war after Bill Thomas and the House Republicans warped it in conference committee -- which they did because they could barely pass it through the partisans in the lower chamber. In the Senate, Orrin Hatch, Trent Lott, John Sununu, Judd Gregg, and a handful of other Republicans voted against the final bill.
In all these cases, Republicans evinced the exact same frustrations with their moderates, and the compromises they forced, that you hear from today's Democrats.
Similarly, Chait is right that Republicans routinely took to the reconciliation process to pass legislation. But it's not clear, as of yet, that Democrats won't do much the same. And in any case, Republicans never passed anything of the size of health care or cap and trade through the process. Early on, they wanted to use the reconciliation process to pass Medicare Part D. Those plans were eventually scrapped. And because of that, the bill, at the end of the day, is a massive entitlement that is much more substantively offensive to conservatives than liberals.
Which isn't really to argue with the substance of Jon's article: The Senate is a broken branch. If we don't properly respond to the financial crisis or avert the crushing blow of rising health costs or slow the advance of catastrophic climate change, it will be because the institution is no longer capable of governance. But that is not, as Chait would have it, a purely Democratic problem. It's an institutional issue. The local obsessions that Chait attaches to Conrad and Nelson are similarly prevalent among Republican Senators. The tremendous power of swing senators is as undeniable and capricious when Republicans rule as when Democrats hold power. The allure of obstruction is an compelling to minority Democrats as minority Republicans (the early Bush accomplishments were actually more bipartisan than Obama's, though that was because Democrats controlled the chamber rather than because Bush was the gracious and cooperative type).
I don't argue this point to be churlish. You can understand the problems of the Senate in two ways. The first is that it's a problem of party discipline. The second is that it's a problem of rules. If you think it's the first, the answer is to put resources and effort into mounting a primary challenge against Ben Nelson. If you think it's the second, then the answer may be to put time and energy into repealing the Byrd Rule, or lowering the filibuster limit, or making it easier to replace chairman, or otherwise transforming the structural incentives that makes legislative success such a delicate and unlikely outcome and thus allows individual Senators to exert so much control over it. Moreover, if you think it's the second, you can actually make something of a bipartisan argument, rather than a purely partisan one. The Senate, as currently composed, doesn't work for Republicans any better than it works for Democrats. And it really doesn't work for the country. And that's probably an easier argument than trying to convince Nebraskans that Ben Nelson's incredible power isn't good for them.
COMMENTS (12)
I was a youngin' in high school back in the early days of the Bush Administration, so I didn't pay much attention to Senate procedural politics.
But was there an assumption that any substantive bill had to have 60 people voting for it or it would face the filibuster? Particularly after the 2002 elections, I'm skeptical that Republicans had to find 60 votes for every major part of their agenda.
Ezra, you also don't mention that the problem isn't necessarily an either/or one. If there's a preponderance of evidence that Senate procedure sucks, and a preponderance of evidence that Senate Democrats suck, there's no need to try to figure out which one sucks more to be able to say they both suck.
Primarying Ben Nelson is stupid, by the way, from the "Senate Democrats suck" perspective. He's such a PITA because of seniority and his institutional power, which fits in more with the procedural side of things than anything else. It'd be hard to have anyone substantially better win his seat. What people who think "Democrats suck" should aim for is ridding places that could give us ideal Senators of moderate or conservative Senators. This means people like Specter, Feinstein, Gordon Smith, McCain, Kyl, Michael Bennet.
Posted by: Zephyrus | March 30, 2009 10:41 AM
I mostly agree with Zephyrus that they both suck, but I'd place first priority for reform/action on revising the Senate rules to restore democracy to that body.
If is very hard to see in the near future (10 years) a way for either party to have a relatively 'safe' 60 vote majority, so obstruction rules.
But I also think that the Dems don't enforce party voting discipline anywhere near an acceptable level. And that should change.
Example: the key policy issue this spring is the president's budget. It is simply unacceptable for any Dem to play moderate against this budget, without getting bigtime loss of status (committee assignments, campaign funding, boosters visiting his/her district, negative party ads in his district, etc.)
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | March 30, 2009 10:53 AM
Right: Both/and is not an illegitimate position here. I would say, though, that the power to primary only functions against vulnerable incumbents. Dianne Feinstein isn't afraid of you. Ben nelson might fear trouble. You see this clearly on the right, where Arlen Specter is about to lose to Pat Toomey, which means Republicans are likely to lose that seat.
Posted by: Ezra | March 30, 2009 10:57 AM
Of course, primarying isn't the only way to remove Feinstein from the Senate. I've recently become a proud supporter of the Draft Feinstein for Governor movement.
And as little power we have in challenging established incumbents, that is still much, much more power than what we have to change Senate rules. That's a power few people outside the Senate have. Short of Andy Stern or Dobson, very few can have any real hope of doing anything on that front.
Posted by: Zephyrus | March 30, 2009 11:06 AM
important debate to keep rolling, thanks.
Posted by: jh | March 30, 2009 11:27 AM
I strongly disagree with the notion that "Nelson sucks," because it implies that there's something especially egregious about him (or any other obstructive Senate moderate). I think anyone in Nelson's position would, given the current institutional structure of the Senate, act the same way -- because you can't get an ideologically purist Democrat elected in Nebraska. Furthermore, every senator (not just the ones from swing states) has to be beholden to the interests of his or her state. Look at Schumer and the hedge fund loophole.
So I just don't see how one can reasonably expect the new boss to be any different from the old boss -- unless the rules get changed.
Posted by: Matt | March 30, 2009 12:42 PM
This is actually the way the Senate is supposed to work, with each Senator representing provincial interests. The current prevalence of the filibuster is distorting the power of individual Senators, however. The relative Republican success in overcoming those provincial interests I think can be mostly attributed to the K Street project. Under DeLay-ism, individual Representatives and Senators knew that their post-Congress employment was directly dependent on pleasing their party leadership.
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