About a month ago, in an Op-Ed titled, Make the filibuster great again, former senator Al Franken and political scientist Norman Ornstein proposed changing which party is responsible for maintaining/breaking the filibuster:
Flip the numbers. Instead of requiring 60 votes to end debate, require 41 to continue debate. Then, the majority leader could call votes any time the Senate was in session, and the minority would have to show up. Including for votes at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., coming off their lumpy cots off the Senate floor. Around the clock. Including 87-year-old Chuck Grassley and both 86-year-olds Richard Shelby and Jim Inhofe. And soon-to-be-79-year-old Mitch McConnell. No Mondays off while only the majority ha[s] to be there. Weekends in D.C., including for the 17 Republicans up for re-election in 2022, who want to be back home campaigning.
Franken and Ornstein are onto something here. While I’m in favor of abolishing the filibuster altogether, this suggestion at reform might be acceptable to conservative Democrats such as Senators Manchin and Sinema, the former of whom recently said he’s open to making the filibuster more “painful” to use.
While Senator Sinema recently told her constituents that she supports “the 60-vote threshold on all Senate actions,” Franken and Ornstein’s proposal keeps the 60-vote threshold intact; it just flips the onus on which party has to reach it. As it stands, the majority needs to whip up 60 votes. If the Senate adopted Franken and Ornstein’s reform, the minority would have to whip 41.
With Minority Leader McConnell’s ability to maintain party discipline makes it possible that the Republican minority would continue to take the obstructionist path, Franken predicts that the mundane realities of a “talking filibuster” would quickly run up against the stamina of the Senate’s many octogenarians.
If we’re not going to abolish the filibuster, then Franken and Ornstein’s proposal might be the best compromise.