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Today’s Senate is dysfunctional by any measure. The “world’s greatest deliberative body” now spends most of its time voting on routine presidential nominations to the executive and judicial branches.
When the Senate does consider legislation, most senators feel they have little substantive input. Bills are crafted by party leaders behind closed doors, and the majority leader — often in consultation with the minority leader — brings those bills directly to the Senate floor, bypassing committee consideration. Floor debate is truncated and tightly controlled, and amendments are usually prohibited.
Rank-and-file senators in both parties are increasingly frustrated with this situation, which affords them few opportunities to represent their constituents and achieve their policy goals. For example, former Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) did not get a vote on a single amendment he proposed during his six years in the Senate.
The Senate wasn’t always this dysfunctional. The institution earned its moniker — “The world’s greatest deliberative body” — because its rules once empowered all senators to participate in the legislative process.
Consequently, interested senators in both parties traditionally played an active role in shaping legislation in committee and on the Senate floor. Floor debates would often last for weeks when the Senate considered controversial bills. And senators almost always had the opportunity to offer amendments during those debates.
In practice, the Senate operates quite differently today. Although today’s senators have the same powers as their predecessors — the rules haven’t changed — they regularly defer to their leaders to set the agenda and structure action on the floor.
Both majority- and minority-party senators let the majority leader decide what bills will be considered on the Senate floor. Once on a bill, the majority leader typically files cloture to end debate preemptively, before senators have even had the opportunity to speak on it, much less filibuster it.
At the same time, the majority leader routinely "fills the amendment tree" — that is, he proposes multiple meaningless amendments in order to prevent other senators from offering substantive amendments to the bill. The average senator is reduced to saying “yea” or “nay” and perhaps making remarks.
Senators — Democrats and Republicans alike — are not powerless; they can make the Senate great again. Any senator could simply stop deferring to the party leaders to manage the institution however they like. But doing so would be a major change and there aren’t many experienced senators who are familiar with navigating a decentralized and freewheeling Senate successfully.
A better path would be for senators to cut a deal that affords them more opportunities to act as lawmakers. Next month’s Senate leadership elections present an option for senators to do that.
Newly elected members will gather with incumbent lawmakers in both parties to select their leadership teams and to adopt party rules. While doing that, they should condition their votes for chamber leadership on promises to allow more debate and votes on amendments.
Republicans have the most leverage in their leadership election since the current GOP leader — Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — has decided to step down from the top spot. No one has secured sufficient support to succeed McConnell, which gives the rank-and-file leverage to extract concessions from the candidates.
While the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is running unopposed for another term in his party’s top spot, rank-and-file Democrats still must select him before it is official.
The Senate operates mostly on precedents and informal agreements, meaning senators should not get bogged down in abstruse discussions of reforms to legislative procedure. Mostly, they just need to formulate their wishes and then secure commitments from whomever they pick as leaders.
But before any of that can happen, senators will need to shift their mindset. The majority and minority leaders are not the bosses of a nominations and legislation factory. Senators are not assembly line workers. They are lawmakers, and the majority leader and minority leaders should work for them.
James Wallner is a senior fellow at the R Street Institute. Kevin R. Kosar is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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