President Wilson demanded action, saying, "The remedy? There is but one remedy. The only remedy is that the rules of the Senate should be so altered that it can act...and save the country from disaster."
To resolve the crisis, Senator Thomas Walsh (D-MT) proposed what he called a "Constitutional Option." His logic was straightforward.
The Constitution:
-- Requires each body of Congress to reset or re-ratify its rules at the beginning of every Congress (every two years)
-- Requires Congress to conduct the people's business in a republican fashion (by vote)
-- Requires elections every two years for 1/3 of the Senate, and the newer senators are freshly representing the most recent "will of the people."
-- Therefore, anything that can permanently block the Senate from doing any constitutionally-mandated business is blocking republican democracy and thus the will of the people in violation of the spirit, if not the text, of the Constitution itself
Walsh laid it out clearly: "It is because the new members, coming fresh from the people, ought to have the right to be heard and be accorded the opportunity to vote in the light of information gleaned at every stage of the passage of a bill or resolution."
A filibuster that couldn't be overcome, Walsh said, effectively blocked "[t]he sense of the people ... concerning measures passed as well as those proposed."
The Senate re-convened and passed Walsh's "Constitutional Option," putting it into the Senate's rules later that week so, going forward, a 2/3rds supermajority of senators could overcome a filibuster so the Senate could resume business.
In response, Americans stopped burning senators in effigy and America entered World War I the following month.
Over the years since, the 2/3rds requirement was reduced to 3/5ths, senators can now invoke a filibuster with an email, and "two-track" was introduced so filibusters don't slow down other Senate business, but the filibuster remained.
In 1980, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-TN) amended the "Constitutional Option" to exclude taxing and spending legislation from being filibustered.
His rationale was that, because spending money to do the nation's business is a defined responsibility of Congress in Article I of the Constitution, taxing and spending legislation (within limits) could ignore the filibuster and be passed with a simple majority vote.
Today we call this "Budget Reconciliation" or just "reconciliation" and it's been used over 25 times.
The 1917 "Constitutional Option" that a filibuster could be overcome with a supermajority vote stands to this day, but using the Constitution as a rationale for blowing holes in the filibuster like the Senate did in 1917 and 1980 got a name change more recently.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
