Steve Cameron: Fixing the U.S. Senate

This news won't be greeted all that cheerily in high school civics classes around the nation, but...

The U.S. Senate has become a broken, useless impediment to our country's governance.

And I'm afraid the answer to this puzzle -- dramatic as it seems -- doesn't involve tinkering or tweaking with a few Senate rules.

No, as unlikely as this might be, we need the chamber blown up entirely and rebuilt to suit the realities of the 21st century.

There are two massive problems with the Senate, roadblocks that prevent any meaningful legislation being enacted -- even at a time of crisis.

First, you have the arcane system that allows two senators to represent each of the 50 states.

It simply can't make sense that a senator from a tiny state with a few handfuls of population should have the same clout in blocking or changing laws as someone representing California or New York.

Did you know Merced would be the largest city in Wyoming?

So here we have senators from Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska and Arkansas basically holding hostage legislation on health care reform -- while thousands of Americans die every week for lack of insurance.

Surely our sainted Founding Fathers -- so often quoted by strict constructionists on the Supreme Court -- had no clue about jet travel, the Internet or statehood for Hawaii when they were drafting the Constitution.

There were 13 colonies at the time, and each was fiercely protective of its own sovereignty, so dividing the legislature into separate chambers -- with two senators from each "state" -- was logical in those days.

But now?

It's crazy.

(Not as crazy as keeping the Electoral College for presidential decisions, mind you, but that's a topic for another day.)

The second disastrous piece of Senate tradition is the matter of "cloture" -- which means cutting off debate on a bill so that people don't argue forever. Cloture basically halts discussion so the Senate can vote, and ultimately worthy bills get passed.

Except that they don't. Not anymore.

Cloture, for reasons that make no sense whatsoever, requires 60 votes. So basically, a minority party -- the Republicans at present -- need only 41 votes at any time to conduct a filibuster that can go on until eternity.

In other words, a bill favored in the Senate by a margin of 59-41 -- a huge majority that likely represents the will and desire of the American people -- cannot even come to a vote if the minority sticks together.

Two sessions ago, the Senate set a record with 39 cloture votes. That was considered unprecedented and a worrying trend.

But then last session, there were 139 cloture votes.

Over and over, the minority changed the number of votes needed to pass a bill from 51 to 60 simply by threatening a filibuster. I can't believe that's what Americans expect from their senators.

In the current health care squabble, we're seeing several members -- most particularly the flip-flopping Joe Lieberman -- waffling around to gain personal concessions ... and for what?

Nothing more than the promise to let the Senate vote.

That, my friends, is a busted system.

When Lieberman or Olympia Snowe or Ben Nelson can dictate policy to the country on behalf of the health insurance lobby -- simply because of Senate procedure that's been outdated for at least a century...

We're in a helluva fix.

Don't bother telling me about the Founding Fathers, either. They'd be appalled by this mess.

Steve Cameron is a columnist for the Sun-Star. He can be reached at stevecameron1000@gmail.com.