If there is to be a filibuster, make it a real filibuster

If there is to be a filibuster, make it a real filibuster

While many U.S. senators are uneasy about the federal government committing billions of dollars for loans to struggling U.S. automakers, a majority recognizes that the alternative would be a disaster.

Wednesday, while the House was working toward assumed passage of a plan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., predicted that the legislation would need 60 votes, not 51, to pass in the Senate, because some members of his party were planning a filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., should make it clear that if there is a filibuster, it will have to be an old-fashioned one, where those who oppose passage actually have to take to the Senate floor and continue speaking to keep a vote from being held.

Quick and easy filibusters

Filibusters have become sanitized affairs, that end quickly when it becomes clear that the majority party does not have the 60 votes necessary for cloture (a motion to limit debate and call the question for a simple majority vote). The Republicans have already conducted 97 such nearly painless filibusters in the 110th Congress.

Help for the auto industry has become a largely partisan battle, one in which most Democrats support help for the domestic auto industry while most of the opposition comes from Republicans. A laudable exception is Ohio’s George V. Voinovich.

Those Republicans who feel strongly enough about the issue to threaten a filibuster apparently include Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; John Ensign, R-Nev.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; David Vitter, R-La. and Tom Coburn, R-Ok. They are a mixture purists who see a bailout as an affront to free enterprise and good old boys who are more concerned about the foreign car makers with plants in their southern states than they are about Detroit.

So let them filibuster. It’s not as tough as it was in the old days, when, for instance, South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond set the record, speaking more than 24 hours straight against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The senators can share filibuster duty, as long as they abide by certain rules, and until 60 senators vote to shut them up, nothing else gets done on the floor of the Senate.

So let them talk for a day, a week or two weeks. Make them talk.

And if they are still talking when General Motors throws up its hands and goes into bankruptcy court — which for a number of reasons it might well do before the end of the calendar year if help isn’t forthcoming — the nation will be able to look at those senators who blocked the legislation and know who to thank.

Who will care?

Workers at auto parts suppliers in each of the 48 contiguous states will know who to thank when their plants start closing. Along Main Streets in all 50 states, people will know who to thank when hundreds of auto dealerships are boarded-up. Teamsters will know who to thank when trucking companies go out of business. The voters will know who to thank as they see GM pensions shifted to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. Doctors, dentists and hospitals will know who to thank when their bills are no longer paid by GM health insurance. Banks and credit card companies will know who to thank for their uncollectable debt. Realtors will know who to thank when even more home foreclosures make a bad real estate market worse. Charities will know who to thank when donations dry up. And Republican and Democratic local politicians will know who to thank when tax receipts drop and they have to cut services.

If a handful of Republicans want to launch a filibuster against this bill and if enough of their fellow Republicans hold the line with them and don’t support cloture, so be it.

Today, public opinion is marginally against a bailout of the auto industry — though not as strongly opposed as polls showed people to be against bailouts for the banking industry.

Frankly, most people hear “bailout” and they’re against it; they don’t think through the possible ramifications of inaction. The thinking is supposed to be done by their representatives; that’s the nature of a republic, as opposed to a pure democracy.

If some Republicans are convinced that helping the U.S. auto industry is a horrible idea — some of them blithely suggest bankruptcy as if that’s the best thing a company can do — let them demonstrate the depth of their convictions. Let them stand on the Senate floor and talk until Detroit’s Big Three are reduced to the Big Two or the Big One or the Big None.

Then the voters can decide who had the better idea: throw Detroit a lifeline or let it drown.