Sen. Eric Lucero, R-St. Michael, and several GOP members stand in protest to procedural rules on the Senate Floor as the 2024 Session draws to a close. Photo by A.J. Olmscheid, Senate Media Services.

The Senate filibuster is one of the worst features of modern American governance and a key cause of federal dysfunction. It creates a supermajority requirement that was never intended, thus slowing government to the pace of cold honey. It also eliminates true accountability, as it allows U.S. Senate majorities to throw up their hands and blame the filibuster for inaction, while enabling the minority to blame the majority for problems whose solutions the minority blocked. 

Alas, the Senate, which is known as the world’s most exclusive club, is highly resistant to change no matter who is in charge, so this anti-democratic malignancy lives on, and the public doesn’t know or doesn’t care.  

Unfortunately, the filibuster — or some weak tea version of it — has arrived in Minnesota. 

This is a rare column in which I do not affix blame, or at least I’d say everyone should share some blame for the rumpus that marked the end of the recent legislative session. Democrats sought to pass their agenda, and Republicans wanted to stop them. Sure, it got ugly, but we’re a polarized country and a polarized state, and it’s to be expected. 

House and Senate Republicans droned on in an obvious effort to stop Democratic majorities from passing their bills. For instance, Senate Democrats say two debates on some relatively minor adjustments to the cannabis legalization law went on for 12 hours total. Same with judiciary. 

On the House side, DFL researchers put together a video of Republicans wasting a lot of everyone’s time talking about cheeseburgers. (Based on the fast cut video, they have mostly terrible taste in burgers, but maybe it was an editing trick.) 

That said, Democrats had all session to get their work done, and they didn’t. Which is why they had to cram everything into a 1,430-page bill and pass it in the final moments of the session, while Republicans hollered at the rostrums like inebriated spectators at a ballgame. 

The Senate froze up for a work week after the Passover break because one of its members, Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, had been arrested, and Democrats didn’t want to deal with a media frenzy. And they hardly met on the final Saturday of the session because Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, used his considerable leverage — Democrats’ one-seat majority means each of them can hold everything up — to negotiate the best deal he could on minimum pay for Uber and Lyft drivers. 

A couple days prior to that, most of the Reformer team gathered at the Capitol, but the place felt strangely empty. The Senate had pulled an all-nighter the night before, so they were in no condition to get anything done. I used to come up with great ideas during my college all-nighters, but we should all be thankful they didn’t become laws. 

Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, a St. Paul Democrat who once held the same role in the House, said Democrats in the upper chamber are strongly considering time limits on debates next year, which is common across the country and in the U.S. House. Although current rules allow the majority to end debate with a parliamentary maneuver known as moving the previous question, House Speaker Melissa Hortman calls it “the nuclear option,” and it’s rarely wielded. 

Murphy called Republican behavior “extraordinary filibustering outside the norms of the Legislature.” 

Interestingly, she seemed to be telling the press about potential rule changes before she informed Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks. 

Relations seem awfully chilly. 

Johnson called the charge of filibustering “ridiculous,” pointing to the Democrats’ inability to manage their legislative calendar. He called Murphy’s management of the session “hyper-partisan” and said that was the real cause of the slowdown. 

Murphy alleged that Johnson refused to negotiate on anything: “In every conversation I had, the goal I kept hearing was, ‘Let’s go home.’”

Johnson told me that if the minority can’t use parliamentary tactics, we’ll have more of a “winner-take-all” environment, with majorities able to pass their agenda without input from the minority. 

Which is mostly fine by me. Elections should have consequences. Otherwise, voters won’t know how to hold the government accountable. If the policies don’t work, the voters should know who to blame. 

Doing away with endless debates has other, more concrete advantages. It would ensure the press and public can actually witness the sessions, which is more likely when they’re not taking place in the middle of the night. (To her credit, Hortman has rarely allowed sessions to go past midnight, but even that is far too late.)

Finally, the legislative staff and the people who keep the Capitol clean and safe should not be forced to work endless hours for the sake of parliamentary delay. 

If we end debates at a reasonable hour, legislators can go enjoy a cheeseburger together. Throw in a martini and a weed gummy, and who knows what solutions to the world’s problems they might dream up together. 

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