The Senate's Use of the Constitutinal Option
Continued from the previous post
The Senate is a relatively stable institution, but its norms of conduct have sometimes been violated. In some instances, a minority of Senators has rejected past practices and bipartisan understandings and exploited heretofore ``off limits'' opportunities to obstruct the Senate's business. At other times, a minority of Senators has abused the rules and precedents in a manner that violates Senators' reasonable expectations of proper procedural parameters. These are efforts to change Senate norms and practices, but they do not necessarily have the support of a majority.
Such situations create institutional conundrums: what should be done when a mere minority of Senators changes accepted institutional norms? One option is to acquiesce and allow ``rule by the minority'' so that the minority's norm becomes the Senate's new norm. But another option has been for the majority of Senators to deny the legitimacy of the minority Senators' effort to shift the norms of the entire body. And to do that, it has been necessary for the majority to act independently to restore the previous Senate norms of conduct.
This section examines those illustrative instances--examples of when the Senate refused to permit a minority of Senators to change norms of conduct or to otherwise exploit the rules in ways destructive to the Senate, and, instead, exercised the constitutional option.
When Senator Robert C. Byrd was Majority Leader, he faced several circumstances in which a minority of Senators (from both parties) began to exploit Senate rules and precedents in generally unprecedented ways. The result was obstruction of Senate business that was wholly unrelated to the institution's great respect for the right to debate and amend. Majority Leader Byrd's response was to implement procedural changes through majoritarian votes in order to restore Senate practices to the previously accepted norms of the body.
In 1977, two Senators attempted to block a natural gas deregulation bill after cloture had already been invoked. [See Martin B. Gold & Dimple Gupta, The Constitutional Option to Change Senate Rules and Procedures: a Majoritarian Means to Overcome the Filibuster , 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y 206,262-264 (2004).] A ``post-cloture filibuster'' should seem counterintuitive for anyone with a casual acquaintance with Senate rules, but these obstructing Senators had found a loophole. Although further debate was foreclosed by Rule XXII once post-cloture debate was exhausted, the Senators were able to delay a final vote by offering a series of amendments and then forcing quorum calls and roll call votes for each one. Even if the amendments were ``dilatory'' or ``not germane'' (which Rule XXII expressly prohibits), Senate procedure provided no mechanism to get an automatic ruling from the Chair that the amendments were defective. A Senator could raise a point of order, but any favorable ruling could be appealed, and a roll call vote could be demanded on the appeal. Moreover, in 1975, before a point of order could even be made, an amendment first must have been read by the clerk. While the reading of amendments is commonly waived by unanimous consent, anyone could object and require a reading that could further tie up Senate business. Thus, the finality that cloture is supposed to produce could be frustrated.
These practices were proper under Senate rules and precedents, but Majority Leader Byrd concluded in this context that these tactics were an abuse of Senate Rule XXII. His response was to make a point of order that ``when the Senate is operating under cloture the Chair is required to take the initiative under rule XXII to rule out of order all amendments which are dilatory or which on their face are out of order.'' [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 263.] The Presiding Officer, Vice President Walter Mondale, sustained the point of order, another Senator appealed, and Majority Leader Byrd immediately moved to table. The Senate then voted to sustain the motion to table the appeal. In so doing, the Senate set a new precedent that ran directly contrary to the Senate's longstanding procedures which required Senators to raise points of order to enforce Senate rules. Now, under this precedent, the Chair would be empowered to take the initiative to rule on questions of order in a post-cloture environment.
The reason for Majority Leader Byrd's tactic immediately became clear. He began to call up each of the dilatory amendments that had been filed post-cloture, and the Chair instantly ruled them out of order. There was no reading of the amendments (which would have been dilatory in itself) and there were no roll call votes. The Majority Leader then exercised his right of preferential recognition to call up numerous remaining amendments, and similarly disposed of them. No appeals could be taken because any appeal was mooted when Majority Leader Byrd secured his preferential recognition to call up additional amendments. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 263-264.]
This was the constitutional option in action. Majority Leader Byrd did not follow the regular order and attempt to amend the Senate Rules in order to block these tactics. Instead, he used a simple point of order that cut off the ability of a minority of Senators to add a new layer of obstruction to the legislative process. His method was consistent with the Senate's constitutional authority to establish procedure.
Majority Leader Byrd used the constitutional option again in 1979 in order to block legislation on appropriations bills. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 264-265.] Standing Rule XVI barred Senate legislative amendments to appropriations bills. By precedent, however, such amendments were permissible when offered as germane modifications of House legislative provisions. Thus, when the House acted first and added legislative language to an appropriations measure, Senators could respond by offering legislative amendments to the House's legislative language. While another Senator might make a point of order, the Senator offering the authorizing language could respond with a defense of germaneness. And, by the express language of Rule XVI, that question of germaneness must be submitted to the Senate and decided without debate. By enabling the full Senate to vote on the germaneness defense without getting a ruling from the Presiding Officer first, the legislative amendment's sponsor avoided having to overturn the ruling of the Chair and create any formal precedents in doing so. The result was a breakdown in the appropriations process due to legislative amendments, and it was happening pursuant to Senate rules that plainly permitted these tactics.
Majority Leader Byrd resolved to override the plain text of Rule XVI and strip the Senate of its ability to decide questions of germaneness in this context. Senator Byrd's mechanism was similar to the motion he employed in 1977: he made a point of order that ``this is a misuse of precedents of the Senate, since there is no House language to which this amendment could be germane, and that, therefore, the Chair is required to rule on the point of order as to its being legislation on an appropriation bill and cannot submit the question of germaneness to the Senate.'' [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 265 (emphasis added).] The Chair sustained the point of order, and the Senate rejected the ensuing appeal, 44-40.
The result of Majority Leader Byrd's exercise of the constitutional option was a binding precedent that caused the Senate to operate in a manner directly contrary to the plain language of Rule XVI. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 265.] Moreover, the method was contrary to past Senate practices regarding germaneness. But the process employed, as in 1977, was nonetheless constitutional because nothing in the Senate's rules, precedents, or practices can deny the Senate the constitutional power to set its procedural rules.
The Senate's Executive Calendar has two sections--treaties and nominations. Prior to March 1980, a motion to enter Executive Session, if carried, would move the Senate automatically to the first item on the Calendar, often a treaty. Rule XXII provides (then and now) that such a motion to enter Executive Session is not debatable. However, unlike the non-debatable motion to enter Executive Session, any motion to proceed to a particular item on the Executive Calendar was then subject to debate. In practice, then, the Senate could not proceed to consider any business other than the first Executive Calendar item without a Senator offering a debatable motion, which then would be subject to a possible filibuster . [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 265-267.]
Majority Leader Byrd announced his objection to this potential ``double filibuster'' (once on the motion to proceed to a particular Executive Calendar item, and again on the Executive Calendar item itself), and exercised another version of the constitutional option. This time he moved to proceed directly to a particular nomination on the Executive Calendar and sought to do so without debate. Senator Jesse Helms made the
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point of order that Majority Leader Byrd could only move by a non-debatable motion into Executive Session, not to a particular treaty or nomination. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 266.] The Presiding Officer upheld the point of order given that it was grounded in Rule XXII and longstanding understandings of Senate practices and procedures. But Majority Leader Byrd simply appealed the ruling of the Chair and prevailed, 38-54. Thus, even though there was no basis in the Senate Rules, and even though Senate practices had long preserved the right to debate any motion to proceed to a particular Executive Calendar item, the Senate exercised its constitutional power to ``make rules for its proceedings'' and created the procedure that the Senate continues to use today.
As an historical sidenote, Majority Leader Byrd used this new precedent to great effect in December 1980 when he bypassed several items (including several nominations) on the Executive Calendar to take up a single judicial nomination--that of Stephen Breyer, then Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Judge Breyer was later nominated and confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994. Without Majority Leader Byrd's exercise of the constitutional option earlier that year, it is almost certain that Justice Breyer would not be on the Supreme Court today.
A fourth exercise of the constitutional option came in 1987 when Senator Byrd was once again Majority Leader. The controversy in question involved an effort by Majority Leader Byrd to proceed to consider a particular bill, an effort that had been frustrated because a minority of Senators objected each time he moved to proceed. To thwart his opponents, Majority Leader Byrd sought to use a special feature of the Senate Rules--the Morning Hour (the first two hours of the Legislative Day).
Under Rule VIII, a motion to proceed to an item on the Legislative Calendar that is made during the Morning Hour is non-debatable. This feature of the rules gives the Majority Leader significant power to set the Senate agenda due to his right to preferential recognition (which is, itself, a creature of mere custom and precedent). Such a motion cannot be made, however, until the Senate Journal is approved and Morning Business is thereafter concluded (or the first of the two hours has passed). Meanwhile, the clock runs on the Morning Hour while that preliminary business takes place. When the Morning Hour expires, a motion to proceed once again becomes debatable and subject to filibuster . [Gold, Senate Procedure and Practice, at 68-69.] It was this feature of the Morning Hour that Senator Byrd believed would enable him to proceed to the bill in question.
Majority Leader Byrd's plan was complicated, however, when objecting Senators forced a roll call vote on the approval of the Journal, as was their right under the procedures and practices of the Senate. Rule XII provides that during a roll call vote, if a Senator declines to vote, he or she must state a reason for being excused. The Presiding Officer then must put a non-debatable question to the Senate as to whether the Senator should be excused from voting. When Majority Leader Byrd moved to approve the Journal, one Senator declined to vote and sought to be excused. Following Rule XII, the Presiding Officer put the question directly to the Senate--should the Senator be excused?--but during the roll call on whether the first Senator should be excused, another Senator announced that he wished to be excused from voting on whether the first Senator should be excused. The Chair was likewise obliged to put the question to the Senate. At that point, yet another Senator announced he wished to be excused from that vote. There were four roll call votes then underway--the original motion to approve the Journal and three votes on whether Senators could be excused. If Senators persisted in this tactic, the time it took for roll call votes would cause the Morning Hour to expire, and the Majority Leader would lose his ability to move to proceed to his bill without debate. All this maneuvering was wholly consistent with the Standing Rules of the Senate.
Majority Leader Byrd countered with a point of order, arguing that the requests to be excused were, in fact, little more than efforts to delay the actual vote on the approval of the Journal. His solution was to exercise the constitutional option: to use majority-supported Senate precedents to change Senate procedures, outside the operation of the Senate rules. In three subsequent partyline votes, three new precedents were established: first, that a point of order could be made declaring repeated requests to be excused from voting on a motion to approve the Journal (or a vote subsumed by it) to be ``dilatory;'' second, that repeated requests to be excused from voting on a motion to approve the Journal (or a vote subsumed by it) ``when they are obviously done for the purpose of delaying the announcement of the vote on the motion to approve the Journal, are out of order;'' and third, that a Senator has a ``limited time'' to explain his reason for not voting, i.e., he cannot filibuster by speaking indefinitely when recognized to state his reason for not voting. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 267-269.] Majority Leader Byrd had crafted these new procedures completely independently of the Senate Rules, and they were adopted by a partisan majority without following the procedures for rule changes provided in Rule XXII. Yet the tactics were wholly within the Senate's constitutional power to devise its own procedures.
This 1987 circumstance offers a very important precedent for the present difficulties. Majority Leader Byrd established that a majority could restrict the rights of individual Senators outside the cloture process if the majority concluded that the Senators were acting in a purely ``dilatory'' fashion. Previous to that day, dilatory tactics were only out of order after cloture had been invoked.
The Senate also has endorsed (or acted in response to) some version of the constitutional option several other times over the past 90 years--in 1917, 1959, 1975, and 1979.
The original cloture rule, adopted in 1917, itself appears to be the result of a threat to exercise the constitutional option. Until 1917, the Senate had no cloture rule at all, although one had been discussed since the days of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The ability of Senators to filibuster any effort to create a cloture rule put the body in a quandary: debate on a possible cloture rule could not be foreclosed without some form of cloture device.
The logjam was broken when first term Senator Thomas Walsh announced his intention to exercise a version of the constitutional option so that the Senate could create a cloture rule. His method was to propose a cloture rule and forestall a filibuster by asserting that the Senate could operate under general parliamentary law while considering the proposed rule. Doing so would permit the Senate to avail itself of a motion for the previous question to terminate debate--a standard feature of general parliamentary law. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 220-226.] In this climate, Senate leaders quickly entered into negotiations to craft a cloture rule. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 226.] Negotiators produced a rule that was adopted, 76-3, with the opposing Senators choosing not to filibuster . [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 226.] But it was only after Senator Walsh made clear that he intended to press the constitutional option that those negotiations bore fruit. As Senator Clinton Anderson would remark in 1953, ``Senator Walsh won without firing a shot.'' [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 227.]
The same pattern repeated in 1959, 1975, and 1979. In each case, the Senate faced a concerted effort by an apparent majority of Senators to exercise the constitutional option to make changes to Senate rules. In 1959, some Senators threatened to exercise the constitutional option in order to change the cloture requirements of Rule XXII. Then-Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson preempted its use by offering a modification to Rule XXII that was adopted through the regular order. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 240-247.] In 1975, the Senate three times formally endorsed the constitutional option by creating precedents aimed at facilitating rule changes by majority vote, although the ultimate rule change (also to Rule XXII) was implemented through the regular order after off-the-Floor negotiations. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 252-260.] And in 1979, Majority Leader Byrd threatened to use the constitutional option unless the Senate consented to a time frame for consideration of changes to post-cloture procedures. The Senate acquiesced, and the Majority Leader did not need to use the constitutional option as he had in the other cases discussed above. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 260; Congressional Record, Jan. 15, 1979.]
The Senate, therefore, has long accepted the legitimacy of the constitutional option. Through precedent, the option has been exercised and Senate procedures have been changed. At other times it has been merely threatened, and Senators negotiated textual rules changes through the regular order. But regardless of the outcome, the constitutional option has played an ongoing and important role.
The Senate is a relatively stable institution, but its norms of conduct have sometimes been violated. In some instances, a minority of Senators has rejected past practices and bipartisan understandings and exploited heretofore ``off limits'' opportunities to obstruct the Senate's business. At other times, a minority of Senators has abused the rules and precedents in a manner that violates Senators' reasonable expectations of proper procedural parameters. These are efforts to change Senate norms and practices, but they do not necessarily have the support of a majority.
Such situations create institutional conundrums: what should be done when a mere minority of Senators changes accepted institutional norms? One option is to acquiesce and allow ``rule by the minority'' so that the minority's norm becomes the Senate's new norm. But another option has been for the majority of Senators to deny the legitimacy of the minority Senators' effort to shift the norms of the entire body. And to do that, it has been necessary for the majority to act independently to restore the previous Senate norms of conduct.
This section examines those illustrative instances--examples of when the Senate refused to permit a minority of Senators to change norms of conduct or to otherwise exploit the rules in ways destructive to the Senate, and, instead, exercised the constitutional option.
When Senator Robert C. Byrd was Majority Leader, he faced several circumstances in which a minority of Senators (from both parties) began to exploit Senate rules and precedents in generally unprecedented ways. The result was obstruction of Senate business that was wholly unrelated to the institution's great respect for the right to debate and amend. Majority Leader Byrd's response was to implement procedural changes through majoritarian votes in order to restore Senate practices to the previously accepted norms of the body.
In 1977, two Senators attempted to block a natural gas deregulation bill after cloture had already been invoked. [See Martin B. Gold & Dimple Gupta, The Constitutional Option to Change Senate Rules and Procedures: a Majoritarian Means to Overcome the Filibuster , 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y 206,262-264 (2004).] A ``post-cloture filibuster'' should seem counterintuitive for anyone with a casual acquaintance with Senate rules, but these obstructing Senators had found a loophole. Although further debate was foreclosed by Rule XXII once post-cloture debate was exhausted, the Senators were able to delay a final vote by offering a series of amendments and then forcing quorum calls and roll call votes for each one. Even if the amendments were ``dilatory'' or ``not germane'' (which Rule XXII expressly prohibits), Senate procedure provided no mechanism to get an automatic ruling from the Chair that the amendments were defective. A Senator could raise a point of order, but any favorable ruling could be appealed, and a roll call vote could be demanded on the appeal. Moreover, in 1975, before a point of order could even be made, an amendment first must have been read by the clerk. While the reading of amendments is commonly waived by unanimous consent, anyone could object and require a reading that could further tie up Senate business. Thus, the finality that cloture is supposed to produce could be frustrated.
These practices were proper under Senate rules and precedents, but Majority Leader Byrd concluded in this context that these tactics were an abuse of Senate Rule XXII. His response was to make a point of order that ``when the Senate is operating under cloture the Chair is required to take the initiative under rule XXII to rule out of order all amendments which are dilatory or which on their face are out of order.'' [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 263.] The Presiding Officer, Vice President Walter Mondale, sustained the point of order, another Senator appealed, and Majority Leader Byrd immediately moved to table. The Senate then voted to sustain the motion to table the appeal. In so doing, the Senate set a new precedent that ran directly contrary to the Senate's longstanding procedures which required Senators to raise points of order to enforce Senate rules. Now, under this precedent, the Chair would be empowered to take the initiative to rule on questions of order in a post-cloture environment.
The reason for Majority Leader Byrd's tactic immediately became clear. He began to call up each of the dilatory amendments that had been filed post-cloture, and the Chair instantly ruled them out of order. There was no reading of the amendments (which would have been dilatory in itself) and there were no roll call votes. The Majority Leader then exercised his right of preferential recognition to call up numerous remaining amendments, and similarly disposed of them. No appeals could be taken because any appeal was mooted when Majority Leader Byrd secured his preferential recognition to call up additional amendments. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 263-264.]
This was the constitutional option in action. Majority Leader Byrd did not follow the regular order and attempt to amend the Senate Rules in order to block these tactics. Instead, he used a simple point of order that cut off the ability of a minority of Senators to add a new layer of obstruction to the legislative process. His method was consistent with the Senate's constitutional authority to establish procedure.
Majority Leader Byrd used the constitutional option again in 1979 in order to block legislation on appropriations bills. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 264-265.] Standing Rule XVI barred Senate legislative amendments to appropriations bills. By precedent, however, such amendments were permissible when offered as germane modifications of House legislative provisions. Thus, when the House acted first and added legislative language to an appropriations measure, Senators could respond by offering legislative amendments to the House's legislative language. While another Senator might make a point of order, the Senator offering the authorizing language could respond with a defense of germaneness. And, by the express language of Rule XVI, that question of germaneness must be submitted to the Senate and decided without debate. By enabling the full Senate to vote on the germaneness defense without getting a ruling from the Presiding Officer first, the legislative amendment's sponsor avoided having to overturn the ruling of the Chair and create any formal precedents in doing so. The result was a breakdown in the appropriations process due to legislative amendments, and it was happening pursuant to Senate rules that plainly permitted these tactics.
Majority Leader Byrd resolved to override the plain text of Rule XVI and strip the Senate of its ability to decide questions of germaneness in this context. Senator Byrd's mechanism was similar to the motion he employed in 1977: he made a point of order that ``this is a misuse of precedents of the Senate, since there is no House language to which this amendment could be germane, and that, therefore, the Chair is required to rule on the point of order as to its being legislation on an appropriation bill and cannot submit the question of germaneness to the Senate.'' [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 265 (emphasis added).] The Chair sustained the point of order, and the Senate rejected the ensuing appeal, 44-40.
The result of Majority Leader Byrd's exercise of the constitutional option was a binding precedent that caused the Senate to operate in a manner directly contrary to the plain language of Rule XVI. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 265.] Moreover, the method was contrary to past Senate practices regarding germaneness. But the process employed, as in 1977, was nonetheless constitutional because nothing in the Senate's rules, precedents, or practices can deny the Senate the constitutional power to set its procedural rules.
The Senate's Executive Calendar has two sections--treaties and nominations. Prior to March 1980, a motion to enter Executive Session, if carried, would move the Senate automatically to the first item on the Calendar, often a treaty. Rule XXII provides (then and now) that such a motion to enter Executive Session is not debatable. However, unlike the non-debatable motion to enter Executive Session, any motion to proceed to a particular item on the Executive Calendar was then subject to debate. In practice, then, the Senate could not proceed to consider any business other than the first Executive Calendar item without a Senator offering a debatable motion, which then would be subject to a possible filibuster . [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 265-267.]
Majority Leader Byrd announced his objection to this potential ``double filibuster'' (once on the motion to proceed to a particular Executive Calendar item, and again on the Executive Calendar item itself), and exercised another version of the constitutional option. This time he moved to proceed directly to a particular nomination on the Executive Calendar and sought to do so without debate. Senator Jesse Helms made the
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point of order that Majority Leader Byrd could only move by a non-debatable motion into Executive Session, not to a particular treaty or nomination. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 266.] The Presiding Officer upheld the point of order given that it was grounded in Rule XXII and longstanding understandings of Senate practices and procedures. But Majority Leader Byrd simply appealed the ruling of the Chair and prevailed, 38-54. Thus, even though there was no basis in the Senate Rules, and even though Senate practices had long preserved the right to debate any motion to proceed to a particular Executive Calendar item, the Senate exercised its constitutional power to ``make rules for its proceedings'' and created the procedure that the Senate continues to use today.
As an historical sidenote, Majority Leader Byrd used this new precedent to great effect in December 1980 when he bypassed several items (including several nominations) on the Executive Calendar to take up a single judicial nomination--that of Stephen Breyer, then Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Judge Breyer was later nominated and confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994. Without Majority Leader Byrd's exercise of the constitutional option earlier that year, it is almost certain that Justice Breyer would not be on the Supreme Court today.
A fourth exercise of the constitutional option came in 1987 when Senator Byrd was once again Majority Leader. The controversy in question involved an effort by Majority Leader Byrd to proceed to consider a particular bill, an effort that had been frustrated because a minority of Senators objected each time he moved to proceed. To thwart his opponents, Majority Leader Byrd sought to use a special feature of the Senate Rules--the Morning Hour (the first two hours of the Legislative Day).
Under Rule VIII, a motion to proceed to an item on the Legislative Calendar that is made during the Morning Hour is non-debatable. This feature of the rules gives the Majority Leader significant power to set the Senate agenda due to his right to preferential recognition (which is, itself, a creature of mere custom and precedent). Such a motion cannot be made, however, until the Senate Journal is approved and Morning Business is thereafter concluded (or the first of the two hours has passed). Meanwhile, the clock runs on the Morning Hour while that preliminary business takes place. When the Morning Hour expires, a motion to proceed once again becomes debatable and subject to filibuster . [Gold, Senate Procedure and Practice, at 68-69.] It was this feature of the Morning Hour that Senator Byrd believed would enable him to proceed to the bill in question.
Majority Leader Byrd's plan was complicated, however, when objecting Senators forced a roll call vote on the approval of the Journal, as was their right under the procedures and practices of the Senate. Rule XII provides that during a roll call vote, if a Senator declines to vote, he or she must state a reason for being excused. The Presiding Officer then must put a non-debatable question to the Senate as to whether the Senator should be excused from voting. When Majority Leader Byrd moved to approve the Journal, one Senator declined to vote and sought to be excused. Following Rule XII, the Presiding Officer put the question directly to the Senate--should the Senator be excused?--but during the roll call on whether the first Senator should be excused, another Senator announced that he wished to be excused from voting on whether the first Senator should be excused. The Chair was likewise obliged to put the question to the Senate. At that point, yet another Senator announced he wished to be excused from that vote. There were four roll call votes then underway--the original motion to approve the Journal and three votes on whether Senators could be excused. If Senators persisted in this tactic, the time it took for roll call votes would cause the Morning Hour to expire, and the Majority Leader would lose his ability to move to proceed to his bill without debate. All this maneuvering was wholly consistent with the Standing Rules of the Senate.
Majority Leader Byrd countered with a point of order, arguing that the requests to be excused were, in fact, little more than efforts to delay the actual vote on the approval of the Journal. His solution was to exercise the constitutional option: to use majority-supported Senate precedents to change Senate procedures, outside the operation of the Senate rules. In three subsequent partyline votes, three new precedents were established: first, that a point of order could be made declaring repeated requests to be excused from voting on a motion to approve the Journal (or a vote subsumed by it) to be ``dilatory;'' second, that repeated requests to be excused from voting on a motion to approve the Journal (or a vote subsumed by it) ``when they are obviously done for the purpose of delaying the announcement of the vote on the motion to approve the Journal, are out of order;'' and third, that a Senator has a ``limited time'' to explain his reason for not voting, i.e., he cannot filibuster by speaking indefinitely when recognized to state his reason for not voting. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 267-269.] Majority Leader Byrd had crafted these new procedures completely independently of the Senate Rules, and they were adopted by a partisan majority without following the procedures for rule changes provided in Rule XXII. Yet the tactics were wholly within the Senate's constitutional power to devise its own procedures.
This 1987 circumstance offers a very important precedent for the present difficulties. Majority Leader Byrd established that a majority could restrict the rights of individual Senators outside the cloture process if the majority concluded that the Senators were acting in a purely ``dilatory'' fashion. Previous to that day, dilatory tactics were only out of order after cloture had been invoked.
The Senate also has endorsed (or acted in response to) some version of the constitutional option several other times over the past 90 years--in 1917, 1959, 1975, and 1979.
The original cloture rule, adopted in 1917, itself appears to be the result of a threat to exercise the constitutional option. Until 1917, the Senate had no cloture rule at all, although one had been discussed since the days of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The ability of Senators to filibuster any effort to create a cloture rule put the body in a quandary: debate on a possible cloture rule could not be foreclosed without some form of cloture device.
The logjam was broken when first term Senator Thomas Walsh announced his intention to exercise a version of the constitutional option so that the Senate could create a cloture rule. His method was to propose a cloture rule and forestall a filibuster by asserting that the Senate could operate under general parliamentary law while considering the proposed rule. Doing so would permit the Senate to avail itself of a motion for the previous question to terminate debate--a standard feature of general parliamentary law. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 220-226.] In this climate, Senate leaders quickly entered into negotiations to craft a cloture rule. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 226.] Negotiators produced a rule that was adopted, 76-3, with the opposing Senators choosing not to filibuster . [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 226.] But it was only after Senator Walsh made clear that he intended to press the constitutional option that those negotiations bore fruit. As Senator Clinton Anderson would remark in 1953, ``Senator Walsh won without firing a shot.'' [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 227.]
The same pattern repeated in 1959, 1975, and 1979. In each case, the Senate faced a concerted effort by an apparent majority of Senators to exercise the constitutional option to make changes to Senate rules. In 1959, some Senators threatened to exercise the constitutional option in order to change the cloture requirements of Rule XXII. Then-Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson preempted its use by offering a modification to Rule XXII that was adopted through the regular order. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 240-247.] In 1975, the Senate three times formally endorsed the constitutional option by creating precedents aimed at facilitating rule changes by majority vote, although the ultimate rule change (also to Rule XXII) was implemented through the regular order after off-the-Floor negotiations. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 252-260.] And in 1979, Majority Leader Byrd threatened to use the constitutional option unless the Senate consented to a time frame for consideration of changes to post-cloture procedures. The Senate acquiesced, and the Majority Leader did not need to use the constitutional option as he had in the other cases discussed above. [Gold & Gupta, 28 Harv. J. L. Pub. Pol'y at 260; Congressional Record, Jan. 15, 1979.]
The Senate, therefore, has long accepted the legitimacy of the constitutional option. Through precedent, the option has been exercised and Senate procedures have been changed. At other times it has been merely threatened, and Senators negotiated textual rules changes through the regular order. But regardless of the outcome, the constitutional option has played an ongoing and important role.
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