Kill the filibuster

I think McConnell is acting — as is often the case — in bad faith, and Trump’s nominees will be predictably awful. But I also don’t care: It’s good that McConnell is leading the way to weaken the filibuster. The only problem is that Democrats and Republicans are killing it with an endless series of half-measures: Reid’s nuclear option made it possible to approve nominees on a simple majority vote, instead of requiring a supermajority; the newer change cuts the Senate’s total debate time per nominee from 30 hours to two.

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Enough. It’s time to kill the beast entirely.

We’ve all been taught in civics class about the virtues of the Constitution’s “checks and balances” design, but the Founders went a little overboard in designing the legislative branch. On most legislation, the House and Senate don’t just check and balance the executive and judicial branches: They check and balance each other. The filibuster — a Senate rule, by the way, that’s not required by the Constitution — adds yet another opportunity to thwart legislative action. The Senate ends up checking and balancing itself.

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