Get rid of the filibuster . . . completely

If you can remember this far back, you'll recall that early on in the campaign, Scott Walker was my guy. I was licking my chops at the prospect of Walker taking his record of achievement in Wisconsin up against Hillary's completely lack of same. And I was positively geeked at the prospect of Walker taking on the Washington establishment just as he took on the public employee unions in Madison.

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Oh well. Things went as they did, and today Walker seems as enthusiastic as anyone about the opportunity of Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to bring about a change in the nation's direction. And in order to make sure it actually happens, Walker is calling for something pretty radical by Washington's standards - but something that only amounts to basic common sense for most everyone else: Get rid of the filibuster. Completely. The filibuster, as most of you know, allows a Senate minority of 41 people or more to hold up the passage of any measure. Theoretically they have to talk the bill to death in a floor debate. In reality, the practice in recent years has come to be that if there are not 60 votes for a bill in the Senate, leadership doesn't even bother to try to pass it because they know the minority will filibuster it. That was never supposed to be the intention of the filibuster. It was supposed to be a way for the minority to assert itself in extraordinary situations, but only if they were willing to take on a pretty monumental task. There were lengendary filibusters in which senators talked for 15 hours or more, and one could only imagine how their bladders were possibly holding together. Somehow we went from that to, "Nothing can pass the Senate without 60 votes."

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That should not be. And Walker is absolutely correct in saying that it's better to get rid of the filibuster entirely so that a determined Democrat minority can't save ObamaCare and the 35 percent corporate tax, while Mitch McConnell throws up his hands and says, "Hey! We tried!" Will this actually happen? It should, and I suspect Trump will push hard for it. All it takes is a simple majority of sitting senators to change the rule and eliminate the filibuster. Contrary to what a lot of people think, it is not in the Constitution. The argument for keeping it will be simply that Republicans won't always have the majority, and when they're back in the minority they will wish they hadn't gotten rid of it. They will also argue that they can use the technique or reconciliation to pass budget items. so it's not as if they can't do anything with a simple majority.

Listen to Walker make the case for the change:

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Argument for getting rid of the filibuster is much more compelling

But the argument for getting rid of the filibuster is much more compelling. This nation faces gigantic fiscal problems, which are only exacerbated by the awful mess of ObamaCare, our insane energy and regulatory policies and the intractable structure of our entitlement programs. These problems can't be solved through reconciliation. They need major new legislation to be passed, and Walker is right that you can't go to Washington after promising massive change and then accomplish nothing because of arcane Washington traditions that you could, but won't, get rid of. And yes, some day the Democrats will have the majority back. So you'd better take the opportunity you have to pass good legislation that the public is happy with, thus making it that much more difficult for them to destroy it when they have the chance. But we simply can't sit around and let ouur nation's fiscal situation deterioriate further because of what we think a Democrat majority might do some day in the future. There are problems to solve. We have to solve them. Now. If we don't, it won't matter what Democrats do in some uncertain future when they win. I suspect McConnell will be the most reluctant to take this step, and he's the one who would have to champion it. He would be very concerned about the media criticism that would surely come. But maybe McConnell learned from Trump's victory that the media can bloviate all they want, and it doesn't necessarily mean the public will follow their lead. Scott Walker is right. The filibuster needs to go. The Senate should work on a simple majority basis just like the House does. Republicans wanted the power, and the voters gave it to them. If they're reluctant to actually use it to make things better, I don't see why it should ever ben given to thhem again.

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