Opinion: A 19th century perspective on reconciliation

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Wednesday morning I asked other members of the Times editorial board to offer their best arguments on the issue of Congress using reconciliation to enact a healthcare reform bill. My colleague Dan Turner dug up this viewpoint from the past:

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

Those are Abraham Lincoln’s words, from his first inaugural address, delivered in March 1861 to a country poised on the brink of civil war. He was talking about secession, not healthcare, of course. At the time, seven states had recently seceded and adopted a provisional constitution. Lincoln was trying to walk a fine line in his speech, sounding conciliatory notes about slavery (‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists’) and war (‘[T]he property, peace and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming administration’) but also making a forceful case against the legality and wisdom of secession.

Still, Lincoln’s words offer a potent argument against giving congressional minorities the kind of power the Senate’s filibuster rule conveys. The Constitution has ample protections against bullying by the majority. (In fact, many readers of this blog argue that the Constitution will prove to be the undoing of Obamacare and its individual insurance mandate, although I think they’re wrong about that.) The filibuster rule doesn’t just protect members of the minority party; it gives them veto power.

The Times’ editorial board has a, shall we say, interesting history on the issue of majority rule, and we’ll try to round up some excerpts to show how the board’s view has evolved. For at least the last decade, though, we’ve been solidly anti-filibuster. For instance, during the controversy over Senate Democrats blocking President Bush’s judicial appointees in 2005, we wrote:

At the risk of seeming dull or unfashionable for not getting our own intellectual makeover, we still think judicial candidates nominated by a president deserve an up-or-down vote in the Senate. ... But the Senate shouldn’t stop with filibusters over judges. It should strive to nuke the filibuster for all legislative purposes.

Today’s editorial is in line with that view. There would be no hand-wringing over the propriety of using reconciliation for the healthcare bill if there were no filibuster rule.

-- Jon Healey