Mark Schmitt on the Filibuster

Mark Schmitt talks about how to fix the filibuster:

I think you should fix the filibuster by having the senate vote the same way that the State Senate of Vermont or the Parliament of the Netherlands or the Parliament of India or the Japanese Diet or the Supreme Court of the United States or the United States House of Representatives or the Virginia House of Delegates or the General Assembly of the United Nations and the vast majority of other groups of human beings vote—you count the people who say “yes” and you count the people who say “no” and the side with the more votes wins. It’s not a perfect system, but it works well enough and it has a pretty clear and compelling logic. 60 seems very arbitrary to me, driven in part by the coincidence that 100 Senators is a very round number. If there were only 94 Senators, would we prefer a 56 Senator supermajority (which approximates 60 percent) or would we prefer 55 which is a round number?

Schmitt’s main idea, however, has some merit as a compromise. What he wants is to change the rule from requiring an affirmative vote of 60 Senators to pass a bill to requiring an affirmative vote of 40 Senators to block a bill. On major issues, that probably wouldn’t change anything. But it would reduce the quantity of purely petty obstructionism. Jon Kyl would only be able to hold the entire Treasury Department hostage to a minor concern with the timing of the implementation of gambling regulations would require him to find colleagues who actually support this course of action.

For now, though, I feel like being uncompromising. Majority rules is the normal and obvious way of resolving bivalent “yes or no” questions.