Readers of the In Box know my longstanding beef with the structure of the U.S. Senate. <\/p>\n
It is a wildly biased institution, favoring rural and low-population states by redistributing political power away from urban, high-population states.<\/p>\n
(This occurs because states like California, with 36 million people, receive the same number of votes — two — as states like North Dakota, home to roughly 600,000 people.)<\/p>\n
The result? A couple of small-state lawmakers from parts of the country where few Americans live can reshape a national bill as important as healthcare reform.<\/p>\n
The impact of this power-shift is exaggerated by the introduction of the filibuster, which didn’t become an effective legislative tool in the US Senate until the early 1800s.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, the filibuster has been used aggressively by rural, small-state lawmakers for decades to block legislation (mostly progressive) that they don’t like.<\/p>\n
It was a favorite tool of southern Democrats fighting to block civil rights legislation, and the strategy has become more and more common in recent years.<\/p>\n
The result? These days even bills that would pass in the lopsided Senate fail because of the filibuster, meaning that only the most doggedly centrist legislation can pass.<\/p>\n
Republicans aren’t hobbled in the same way.<\/p>\n
The redistribution of power in the Senate tends to favor conservatives, so that right-leaning legislation has a distinct advantage.<\/p>\n
(Small-state Democrats tend to be more conservative and more reluctant to aid in filibusters, which means that its harder for the Democrats to mount filibusters.)<\/p>\n
Is this the reform people wanted when they elected Barack Obama? No. Many liberals are furious at Democrats over the watered-down language of the health care bill. <\/p>\n
But without the support of lawmakers Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, the bill would have died. It’s that simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Readers of the In Box know my longstanding beef with the structure of the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}