Editors at the Washington Examiner explain why they hope to see the U.S. Senate return to its historical role.
The deal that lawmakers reached Monday has two salutary effects: It separates immigration from appropriations, and it sets up a real, open debate with actual amendments and floor votes on DACA.
Here’s hoping it’s a precedent, and that this marks the return of the Senate to being … well, the Senate.
The Senate, for a decade has been defined by the number 60. That’s the number of votes it takes to break a filibuster. Historically, though, the most important number in the Senate has been one. That’s not one as in the majority leader is the one senator who decides what is voted on, but one as in it takes only one senator to offer an amendment or introduce legislation.
It shouldn’t take a shutdown or a threatened shutdown to get a real open debate on immigration policy. It ought to simply involve one senator introducing his or her immigration bill and roping in enough others to try and force a debate.
Debates in the Senate have been unworthy of the name in recent years. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., but also to a lesser extent his successor Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have used parliamentary tricks to prevent amendments from being offered on the floor. They preferred backroom deals, in part because that increased the leader’s ability to predetermine the outcome, but mostly because backroom deals protect senators from having to take tough votes.
An open amendment process, which McConnell promised in exchange for the votes to reopen the government, ought to be the norm. It’s the best way to build consensus (if you lose on your amendment, you might still support the bill if you had a fighting chance), and it’s the proper function of the so-called “world’s greatest deliberative body.”
