Paul Krugman: Telling it like it is

January 27, 2010, 6:10 am
The Curse Of The Supermajority
Here’s how democracy works: political parties that make an effective appeal to voters get the right to govern and implement new policies.

Here’s how the United States government works: political parties that make an effective appeal to voters get seated — but can’t govern unless they have 60 Senators.

The past year has been a spectacular demonstration of the crippling effect of the filibuster on America’s ability to deal with, well, anything.

Sen. Tom Udall is proposing a change in Senate rules, going back to the Constitution — which says nothing about supermajorities. Here’s his very good analysis, including a demonstration that the universal requirement for supermajorities isn’t, contrary to what you often hear, isn’t a long-standing tradition; it’s something that only developed recently, and mainly since Republicans found themselves in the minority.

Tom Schaller argues that the supermajority gives American policy a center-right bias, since conservatives don’t want to do much. But didn’t Bush manage to do a lot? Yes, in a way. But the thing about Bush policies were that they were all buy-now-pay-later: unfunded tax cuts, unfunded expansion of Medicare, unfunded wars. Bush never demonstrated that it’s possible to govern America responsibly, because he never tried.

Udall is right. We need to fix the Senate. Otherwise, we’re headed for full banana-republic status.