New majorities in Congress, particularly when the incoming party has a new leader, offer the rare chance for the institution to take a breath and consider what can be done to make the place function better.
The Senate seems poised for just that outcome, as Republicans get closer to locking up at least 51 seats for next year and with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stepping aside after 18 years atop the GOP conference.
Any major overhaul to the customs of the very tradition-bound Senate, where permanent rules changes are supposed to happen with a least a two-thirds majority vote, are not likely. For now at least, a majority of Senate Republicans have vowed to not do anything radical such as a party-line move to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster hurdle.
Neither of the top contenders to replace McConnell, Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and John Thune (R-S.D.), have publicly embraced any vast reform-minded ideas, although Cornyn has voiced support for his party imposing a term limit for its Senate leader, as is imposed on other leadership positions.
Those two front-runners, along with a long-shot contender, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), are doing most of their talking about how they would operate differently than McConnell did during one-on-one huddles with other senators, according to GOP aides familiar with the talks.
But Senate experts believe that if there’s ever a time to truly consider some changes, this would be it. A survey of a half-dozen former senior Senate Republican aides — including advisers to party leaders, top staff for legislative committees and chiefs of staff to rank-and-file senators — produced several ideas that could shift the chamber’s behavior.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer any idea without potential blowback on their former or current employers, these veteran Senate staffers came up with a bounty of suggestions: some very worthy, some more aspirational, some probably impossible to enforce.
One former aide wants to see changes that would make it easier for legislation to be brought to the Senate floor for consideration, especially if there is demonstrated bipartisan support. This aide said amendments that are ruled germane to the debate should also get special protections.
Another wants to end the seniority system that results in Senate committee chairs being selected by whoever is next in line in terms of tenure on the panel, hoping to create more dynamic energy in the once powerful hearing rooms across the street from the Capitol.
Some would like to see a cultural shift back to the days when newcomers served quietly, instituting a rule forbidding them from speaking on the Senate floor in their first year. That might limit the increasing practice of new senators grandstanding to catch the attention of prime time cable news hosts.
One tantalizing idea is almost certain to go nowhere in the modern, TV-driven Congress: banning cameras from the Senate floor so that debate would be between the senators looking across the chamber at others, rather than the current practice of staring straight into the camera as if they are speaking to America.
Cornyn tried to reignite the debate over shaking up the Senate when he announced his bid to succeed McConnell as GOP leader. “I believe the Senate is broken — that is not news to anyone,” he wrote almost eight months ago.
The reality is almost everyone who has served around the chamber over the last 10 years agrees with Cornyn’s assessment.
Senate Democrats quibble with his statement, noting that the House is also broken, possibly worse so given the GOP’s inability to do some of the most basic functions across the Capitol.
This 118th Congress is on track for a record low level of production, with just 106 public laws approved in the first 22 months of its two-year session. That’s on track to be the fewest laws approved by one Congress in more than 100 years.
To put it in perspective, the 116th Congress (2019-2020) also had a partisan split, with Democrats running the House and Republicans holding the Senate, but it produced 344 laws. The 113th Congress had the same partisan makeup as today — a Democratic president, a Republican House and a Democratic Senate — and that combo produced 296 public laws.
Later this month, we will explore a separate column on the possible rules changes that could come with Democrats winning the House — part of a potential historic “double flip” in which the two chambers swap majorities.
But let’s start with the Senate, which has always fashioned itself with such a grand superiority complex that its self-anointed nicknames are the “upper chamber” and “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
The Merriam-Webster definition of “deliberation” is “a discussion and consideration by a group” for and against something. In Senate parlance, that means a debate.
The mere act of debating has collapsed over the last decade, according to records monitored by C-SPAN’s Congress page. From early January 2023 through this month, the Senate has held 272 hours of debate, just 18 percent of the time it was in session.
That’s almost 175 fewer hours of debate than the Senate held through the same time frame of 2021-2022. It’s a small fraction compared to the more than 1,200 hours of Senate debate that came in this timespan of the 115th Congress (2015-2016), when the deliberating accounted for almost 60 percent of all the time in session.
The current Senate has spent twice as much time (551 hours) holding roll call votes than senators spent debating actual legislation.
But almost two-thirds of those votes have come on presidential confirmations, either a procedural vote or the actual confirmation vote, to fill the federal judiciary or executive agencies. Just 16 years ago nomination votes accounted for less than 10 percent of Senate roll calls.
Most of the confirmation votes have been for relatively low-level posts that most senators did not know existed when they first ran for office. Those include the Sept. 19 vote to advance a judicial nominee for the U.S. Tax Court or the Sept. 23 vote to formally confirm that tax judge to a 15-year term.
That first vote was the last of the week, “flyout day,” as it’s known, so nine senators did not bother to show up. The second vote came on a Monday evening, “fly-in day,” and 14 senators skipped that vote.
That confirmation took eight months to process, from President Joe Biden’s formal nomination on Feb. 1, to the June committee vote and late September final approval.
The Senate’s sharp shift into “personnel business” — as McConnell has called confirmation votes — began during his six years as majority leader. And it has continued under Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
One of the smartest ideas from former senior Republican aides would dramatically reduce the number of positions requiring the full Senate’s approval, especially those in key posts like U.S. attorneys who serve as the Justice Department’s regional prosecutors and nonpartisan ambassadors.
Take Biden’s Jan. 11 nominations of two career Foreign Service officers, with decades of experience, speaking a combined six foreign languages, to be ambassadors to Cambodia and Albania.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved their nominations more than six months ago, and today they still await a full confirmation vote.
Freeing the Senate from the endless wheel of confirmation votes would open up the chamber for more legislative debate.
Combine this with the idea, from another former Republican aide, that legislation with bipartisan support in the committee process would receive special fast-track privileges.
Current rules require a majority leader to follow a three- or four-day process to clear the procedural hurdles just to begin debate on legislation. If a bill is bipartisan, just eliminate all those hurdles and allow it to be easily considered for debate — at which point, it would still have to clear one 60-vote hurdle to get passed.
Forcing committee chairs to win their posts through a real internal vote, rather than the current seniority-driven, next-senator-up process, could also energize those roles. They would derive power from across their entire caucus, not just the party leader and Father Time.
These ideas might never come to see the light of day, regardless of who serves as majority leader next year. Each time there’s a new majority leader, pledges flow to improve the institution.
“The good news is that it can be fixed,” Cornyn wrote to his colleagues.
Most senators hope that will happen.
