Krugman on the filibuster; and Harkin's 1995 Amendment.
On January 5, 1995 the Senate debated Tom Harkin's proposal to modify Rule XXII, to slightly shorten the time that a bill could be filibustered, and reduce over time the number of Senators needed to overcome a filibuster. It seems like a good proposal. He apparently is considering introducing it again.
C-SPAN transcript from 1995: http://www.c-spanarc.../77531&id=7082494
"AMENDING PARAGRAPH 2 OF RULE XXV"
[...]
But our proposal says--and let me make it very clear what our proposal or our amendment says--that on the first cloture vote you need 60 votes to end debate. Then, if you do not get the 60 votes, you can file another cloture motion. You have to wait 2 more days, you have another vote. Then you need 57 votes to end cloture. If you do not get it, you can file another cloture motion--again you need the 16 signatures to do that--wait 2 more days and then you get another vote and then you need 54 votes to end debate. If you do not get that, you can file one more cloture motion, wait 2 more days, and then you need 51 votes to get cloture and move to the merits of a bill.
Utilizing the different steps along the way, this would provide that, to get to the merits of a bill, a determined minority of the Senate who wanted to filibuster could slow it down for 19 days, 19 legislative days, which would be about a month. That is just getting to the bill.
There are other hurdles as a bill goes through the Senate. In fact there are six. There is the motion to proceed, there is the bill itself, there is the appointment of conferees, insisting on Senate amendments, disagreeing with the House, and then there is the conference report. So there are a minimum of six hurdles. That is not counting amendments.
Of course, when a bill comes to the floor someone could offer an amendment and that amendment can be filibustered. All we are saying is that in that first initial time you need 19 days. If you added up all the hurdles under our proposal you could slow a bill down for a minimum of 57 days, 57 legislative days.
That would translate into about 3 months. So it is a modest proposal. We are not saying get rid of the filibuster, but we are saying at some point in time a majority of the Senate ought to be able to end debate and get to the merits of the legislation.
[...]
I'm more comfortable with this than proposals to simply cut it to a simple majority from the outset, but it might actually be too small a change...
(You can also find information about the bill and the debate on Thomas at the Library of Congress, but it seems to use temporary URLs so cutting and pasting isn't practical.)
Cheers,
Scott.