Our nation has had the same government for over two hundred and thirty years. We’ve all heard the propaganda. We’ve all sung the patriotic songs. We’ve all put our hand somewhere and recited what they wanted us to recite. We pay our taxes. We obey the law. We vote. We’re still supposed to matter, at least that’s what that paper down in DC with all those ancient signatures on it says. But like a lot of people I’ve been wondering how things got so screwed up so quickly.

Since 2001, the Bush regime has had a stranglehold on our government. But lets not be coy. The current lawless demi-fascist government has been a long time in coming. You could roll back to the idea of the permanent Republican majority envisioned by the neo-con strategists that broke the 40 year streak of Democratic rule back in 1994. You can probably connect the dots even further, but few of your fellow citizens would look up from the latest newsfeed of Brittney Spears’ latest childcare antics or Madonna’s latest affair to even listen to you. We’re all too busy watching American Idol to see the flames around us.

The Democrats blame Republicans. The Republicans blame the terrorists, the ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ and everybody but themselves.

But there’s a definite reason why despite handing a majority to the Democratic party two years ago, absolutely nothing has changed.

It’s called Senate Rule 22.

You’ve probably never heard of it unless you’re a CSPAN junkie. Hell, I hadn’t even heard of it until the July 9th FISA vote in the Senate when I was watching the Democrats sell out the US Constitution and the Rule of Law to make sure AT&T and Sprint got their money’s worth. Senate Rule 22, in it’s functions regulates filibustering for the Senate. To understand what it does, you need to first understand a few terms in Senate-ese.

quorum - The number of Senators that must be present for the Senate to do business. The Constitution requires a majority of Senators (51) for a quorum. Often, fewer Senators are actually present on the floor, but the Senate presumes that a quorum is present unless the contrary is shown by a roll call vote or quorum call.

filibuster - Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions.

cloture - The only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes. 

Senate Virtual Desk Reference - History of Filibuster and Cloture

Normally there’s a procedure in the Senate, most Americans don’t know about it unless they work in ‘The Game’ (politics). The basic flow is as follows.

1. Write up a bill
2. Get sponsors and co-sponsors
3. Vote on motion to proceed with bill
4. Debate bill
5. Propose amendments
6. Vote on Amendments
7. Quorum call
8. Final vote

Both fortunately and unfortunately there’s a little parliamentary boot to the sack, called a filibuster, that occurs before a final vote. Filibusters effectively allow for ‘unlimited debate’ on a particular issue. The object of it is two fold, one it brings the Senate’s business grinding to a halt unless cloture can be invoked and two when successful it effectively blocks further consideration of the bill. If the cloture vote fails, it haults the original motion to proceed and the bill fails.

One such recent bill that was filibustered and failed was the Federal Marriage Amendment of 2004. After being stuck in the Senate Judicary Committee as S.J. Res 30, the bill was reintroduced to the Senate on July 7 2004 as S.J.Res 40 and was subjected to a filibuster on July 9th, 12th, 13th and 14th until the a cloture motion was made to force a direct vote on the bill.

The cloture vote fell 12 votes short of the supermajority needed (3/5ths of the sitting Senate or 60 votes ) to halt the filibuster. Citing concerns about the wording of the Amendment a number of members of both parties voted against cloture resulting in 50 nay votes to 48 yea votes with John Kerry and John Edwards not voting. The next day, the motion to proceeed to the consideration of the Amendment was withdraw in the Senate and the bill died on the floor.

This is essentially how filibuster is supposed to work. It is a stopgap measure which can prevent an overly popular though short sighted idea from becoming law so long as the minority  opinion has the will to oppose it.

The US Constitution, Article I, Section 5, may determine it’s own rules of proceeding, which on the surface seems like an innocent enough idea. It would be counter productive and dangerous to have a separate and co-equal branches of government forced to obey procedural rules created by another. After all if a President decided he no longer needed a Congress he could just make the rules so impossible for them to follow that it would effectively neuter the legislative body.

Unfortunately for our democracy, this procedural Senate-Fu is being used as a club by the minority to abuse the majority because of Senate Rule 22. The language of the rule is, perhaps purposefully arcane but the gist of the rule for our purpose here is: An actual filibuster is only required at the pleasure of the Senate Majority Leader and the threat of one is sufficient to require a cloture vote of three-fifths majority to bring a motion to a vote.

In more plain English, this allows a single senator to impose his will on the Senate by threatening a filibuster and unless the Senate Majority Leader demands it, that is enough to require a sixty vote majority to pass a bill.

This is NOT normal business in the Senate. As noted above, under normal non-filibustered circumstances only a simple majority is needed for most types of motions. That means that only 51 votes are required for a bill to pass.

What this means to us, as American citizens, is that the will of the 70+% of us that do not believe our nation is on the right track, that the Iraq war should immediately end, and that the criminals in our government should be brought to justice is being thwarted because Senate Majority Leader Reid does not wish to force the minority to actively engage in unlimited debate and is willing to accept merely the threat of it.

Given the current Senate party break down of 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats and 2 Independents, this has allowed the Republican minority to continue it’s stranglehold on the American legislative branch by requiring that the Democrats muster up at least 11 votes from the Republicans and Independents. To create a victory for the Republican party all that is necessary then is a for those 11 members to refuse to even show up for a vote.

But this rule is not being evenly applied. Consider the appointment of Attorney General Michael Mukasey. On November 8th 2007, the Senate voted 53 to 40 to confirm, which was the narrowest vote margin to confirm an attorney general in over 50 years.

No one filibustered even though many Democrats claimed strong objections to Mukasey’s refusal to state whether or not waterboarding was torture.

Consider the supplemental appropriation bills for the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Thus far there have been nine proposed supplemental totally over $755 billion dollars. Yet despite opposition for the war by both Democrats in the Congress and by the large majority of American citizens not a single one of these bills has been filibustered. In fact at least one has been passed over an expected veto by the President.

This is the condition of the current Senate. On one hand, we have a Republican party full of sour grapes about the American people voting down their stranglehold on the legislative and executive branch. As such they are wielding the threat of filibuster like a shotgun but without actually cocking the gun or even loading any shells are shooting down bill after bill proposed or supported by Democrats.

On the other hand, you have the Democratic party who in their desire to retake the majority they held before 1994 are sitting back and letting this happen. The reasoning seems fairly straight forward. If the Republicans are blocking every effort the poor beleaguered Democrats make, then the American people might feel sorry for them. Combine this with being utterly sick and tired of Republican politics and they are assured a large perhaps even veto proof majority in the Congress and a Democratic President. So the Democrats are complicit in this strategy. The only problem is that this tactic isn’t working and a sizable segment of the population is actually blaming them for the Republican obstructionists that are preventing them from making any real changes.

Given that the two parties have both blocked any and all efforts by independent candidates to break into the majority it shouldn’t be surprising that the two majors pass the government back and forth like a football. But most of the time they’re not so blatant about it.

The Democrats know that this election season the choices are very black and white. There is a reason for this phenomena. Both parties are framing the election in such a way as to give you the illusion of a choice. Either you vote Democratic and ‘change’ the way things are going. Or you vote Republican and keep going the way things are currently going.

But in reality the game is rigged and the entire structure of the framing most resembles a magicians force. You have a choice between two cards and you only get to pick one. In reality the cards are essentially just different suits of the same face value. The people that have been systematically taking apart the US Constitution win. The American people lose.

The only way to stop this, is to stop playing the game. But we’re not ready for that as a nation yet. We might be ready for this by 2012, if the Democrats with Barack “Flip-Flop” Obama at the helm have had the chance to screw over the American people for four solid years. We’ll still be in Iraq and gas will probably be $15 a gallon by then so the Independents will have plenty to talk about.

In the mean time, we the people need to take action and the first and best thing we can do to break this chain is to demand that someone who wants to filibuster actually do so and if we have to vote out members of the Senate to make it happen then we have to do what we have to do.

Call up Harry Reid. Deluge his phones and faxes. Show up at his office. Protest. Hang up signs. Pack his email full of outrage, irritation and concern. Deluge the main stream media in anger. Demand that a filibuster be a filibuster and not a one man slight of hand veto of majority will.

This won’t fix all our problems. But it’s a step in the right direction.