Ramesh responds to my case for restoring the filibuster to its traditional rules:
Whether we should have a filibuster, and if so whether we should make changes to it, depends on a prior judgment about what it is that we want Congress to do — and, if we think Congress is failing, about how it is failing. In the Corner earlier today, John Puri seconded George Will’s recommendation that we return to a one-track filibuster: While one is happening, the Senate wouldn’t be able to do much else. That’s a reasonable idea. But we should keep in mind why the Senate changed the rules in the 1970s: because it wanted the majority to be able to pass more legislation.
Single tracking would mean that the Senate majority would pass fewer bills. And maybe passing fewer bills is either good in itself or a price worth paying. But it’s the very opposite of what most filibuster opponents want.
That is a fair challenge. But just because the two-track system was intended to enable more legislation to pass does not mean that’s what it did in practice. Thus, it does necessarily not follow from Senate leadership’s intent in the 1970s that “single tracking would mean that the Senate majority would pass fewer bills.” The law of unintended consequences that economists should know by heart applies to political incentives, too.
It’s true, then–Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield wanted to make the Senate more efficient by ending the talking filibusters that consumed so much floor time and allowing the chamber to work on other business. In a way, he succeeded: The Senate is now very efficient at lying dormant, because refraining from important matters is the path of least resistance. Inconvenience is out; inaction is in. Which is why the volume of legislation that the Senate passes fell soon after the 1970s reforms.
Unless we remove the filibuster entirely, which neither Ramesh nor I wish to happen, there will always be minority obstruction in the Senate. The question is what degree of pain should be attached to that obstruction to make the Senate a properly legislative chamber once again — one that does the work of making the laws that govern us instead of sheepishly deferring to the executive branch. That is what Congress is for.