Dear Representative Andy Biggs...
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Politics and Activism

Dear Representative Andy Biggs...

Have You Forgotten Your History or Did You Just Sell Out To the Trump Train?

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Dear Representative Andy Biggs...
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I’m not the type of person who normally finds themselves watching Fox News, but Rep. Andy Biggs’ interview managed to catch my attention the other day.

As a member of the Freedom Caucus in the House–an ideological extreme of the Republican Party that has amassed a large amount of political capital since President Obama was elected in 2008–I usually expect some off-the-wall comment coming from one of them but this on another level. This past Saturday, Rep. Biggs went on Fox News to talk about the failure of the Republican members of the Senate to pass any repeal of Obamacare despite having a majority in the chamber. Lambasting Senator McConnell and his failure as a leader for the Party and, taking a cue from the Donald and his early morning Twitter rampages, he attributes a lot of this failure to the Cloture rule of the Senate. Here’s a snippet of the interview where he goes into his complaints about the rule(you can skip the quote if you want, specific points from it get referenced later):

“We have this rule that requires 60 votes – the cloture rule – and that’s what’s caused this, to do these off the wall repeals. And that's what I would say, ‘Hey look: let's not – let's repeal that cloture rule and let's get to 51 so that the American People can actually have real representation that's not unconstitutional in the Senate.' And that's what I’m asking for and I think that – I saw President Temperamental Gelatinous Sponge tweeted that out – that many of us have been asking… I think this is the kind of arcane, old rules of the Senate that most people just don’t – have a tough time grasping, but one thing we have to realize is that they’re not getting the representation because if your senator is in the minority they’re discounted completely whereas if – so it means that your representation is undervalued so we have to push this thing forward, we have to get this – otherwise we’re not going to get the agenda through and I think President Trump is right on the money and it’s because we’re trying to do these budget reconciliation things that you get all these kind of odd bills that don’t quite do what anybody wants/so let's clean it up, let's get rid of that rule and go forward”

There’s a lot to dissect there, I know, but just stay with me while I go over point by point why this is the worst possible idea one could possibly have and why, in a misguided attempt to rewrite the history of the rule, it would do more damage to the legislative process than it would do good. But a little background first in case you don’t know what the cloture rule is. The cloture rule, also known as Senate Rule 22, was first introduced on March 8, 1917, after Woodrow Wilson became increasingly upset at the Senate because his legislative agenda was grinding to a halt due to unlimited debate in that chamber. So he struck a deal with the members: preserve the tradition of unlimited debate but now with an exception that allowed for a limited debate if 60 members of the Senate voted to invoke cloture.

The reason why the preservation of a seemingly unlimited potential for debate within the Senate was so important to the chamber’s members, and is still important today, is that the Senate was supposed to serve as the deliberative body of the federal government; where ideas were meant to be mulled over for longer periods of time than its opposite chamber. In its original inception, with members being voted into the Senate by their state’s legislators, the chamber was supposed to represent the greatest minds in public policy for that generation while the House, with its members being elected by a direct popular election, was supposed to channel the passions and interests of the people. The Senate has traditionally acted as a stalwart to that passion, letting the rhetorical flames die down while its members considered the real benefit of a bill and remained insulated from much of the political implications of legislation because of their longer terms. Unlimited debate cemented this role for the Senate and while the cloture rule provided an exception to this tradition of the chamber, it still helped to preserve this role for the foreseeable future. And there you have the broad brush idea of what the cloture rule is and its purpose, so now let's get into directly addressing Rep. Biggs’ and, since he referenced him, Trump's claims about Rule 22.

1. “I think this is the kind of arcane, old rules of the Senate that most people just don’t – have a tough time grasping”

Way to underestimate your constituents there, Representative Biggs; with a little bit of Googling and maybe a refresher course on their high school government course, anyone can figure out what the cloture rule is. I mean look at me: I’m only a rising freshman going into college and I understand the cloture rule! The cloture rule is pretty simple in its own right: if a bill has been introduced onto the Senate floor it has to be debated for as long as anyone wants to speak on the bill with certain exceptions. If at a point there are no Senators who wish to speak on the bill in question then it goes to a vote and debate is ended but if someone wants to hold the floor and prevent the bill from going to a vote, that Senator can filibuster. The cloture vote is a circumvention of that filibuster. As long as 60 members of the chamber agree that debate is no longer needed, they can invoke the cloture and essentially force a vote on the bill. That’s basically all it is. See Rep. Biggs, it’s not that hard to grasp after all! Also since when does the validity of a centuries-old rule in the Senate ride on whether or not people outside of government understand its function?

2. “[O]ne thing we have to realize is that they’re not getting the representation because if your Senator is in the minority they’re discounted completely… so it means that your representation is undervalued so we have to push this thing forward”

This explanation is going to be on the longer side just because of how wrong this statement actually is. The filibuster, and by extension the cloture vote, is quite frankly one of the single biggest protections of minority rights in our government. The reason why the filibuster and the cloture vote were created in the first place, and the reason why so many people criticize the Senate, is because it gives the power to stall the legislative process to a minority faction within the government. If anything, people criticize the cloture vote and the filibuster because it overvalues a minority’s representation(though I disagree). Rep. Biggs thinks that this is what makes your representation unconstitutional because it slows down the process, but Congress is slow not because it isn’t following the rules, but because it is! In Federalist #10, James Madison, a Founding Father of our nation, wanted Congress to be organized in order to prevent a tyranny of a majority by which a faction can wrest control of the legislative body and do harm to the nation because of their nature as a faction. Congress and its rules were organized to prevent this, which is why consensus is necessary and compromise is almost imperative to pass a bill in the Senate and get around a filibuster in order to protect the minority group in Congress and prevent the tyranny of some majority group in Congress. When Vice President Dawes used his address to the Senate in 1926 to attack members of the chamber for their use of the filibuster, clamoring that it placed too much power in the hands of a few Senators (See! Even Vice President Dawes–a fellow conservative Republican no less–disagrees with Rep. Biggs’ claim) there was great outrage. That same year Columbia University professor Lindsay Rogers published his book The American Senate in which he strongly attacked that claim, saying that the “undemocratic, usurping Senate is the indispensable check and balance in the American system, and only complete freedom of debate allows it to play this role… Adopt [majority] cloture in the Senate, and the character of the American Government will be profoundly changed." If the cloture rule is resigned to being a relic of the past, the rights of a minority, rights which Rep. Biggs professes to want to protect, will surely be in grave danger.

3. “I think President Trump is right on the money and it's because we’re trying to do these budget reconciliation things that you get all these kind of odd bills that don’t quite do what anybody wants/so let's clean it up, let's get rid of that rule and go forward”

The reason why all of these ACA “repeal” bills are considered budget reconciliation measures and not a true repeal to the bill is because Republicans cannot muster up the support they need to get past the cloture vote. Getting rid of Rule 22 only circumvents the real issue at hand: Republicans had almost a decade to come up with a presentable solution and they floundered. By not forcing Republicans to reach across the aisle to come up with a solution any sort of accountability is flushed down the drain; any hope of ever reaching a bill that is truly the result of compromise becomes a Herculean task. It perpetuates partisanship in a chamber of Congress that was supposed to be above all that and risks abandoning 100 years of legislative tradition so that Republicans can pass a bill that few of them even really support themselves. So I have one last question for Representative Biggs: do you really want to protect minority representation in Congress or are you just echoing the sentiments of a man who didn't even realize healthcare was a complicated issue in America?

You can watch the interview for yourself here.

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