Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Ron Johnson wants the present Republican-majority Senate to do away with the filibuster altogether on the argument that the Democrats (read: Progressive-Democrats) are going to do that anyway when they return to power. On the latter part, Johnson is correct, and when the Progressive-Democrats do that, it’ll be the death of our republican democracy and the birth of the tyranny of popular democracy.
Johnson made this argument, though, and on this he is wrong.
I’ll admit that the 60-vote cloture threshold has prevented many bad bills from becoming law, and that without it bad bills would become law more easily. But it also prevents good bills from getting passed.
That’s an excellent tradeoff, Johnson’s worries notwithstanding. Passing bad bills is far more destructive to our nation’s economy and to our national security than is not passing good bills. The latter can be tried again in politically short order; the former will take years just to undo the damage.
A legislature that gets nothing at all done is a far more successful legislature than one that passes even one bad statute. As a man said earlier in our national history, that government is best which governs least.
Contra Johnson, the Senate should eschew abusing us with bad laws because Senators think they have to pass something—anything—in order to earn their pay votes. Keep the filibuster.