million. a trillion dollars is a thousand times a billion or 1 million times $1 million. we have gone in just a few decades from talking about deficits and the millions of dollars to deficit of trillions of dollars. yet over that same period of time, we have seen a situation where we are now talking about trillions of dollars. . . endeavors, would be four million inches high, or 63 miles high, $1,000 bills, stacked up right up into outer space. people need to understand that the expectations that the federal government can step in and meet all of their needs is one that is fast coming to a close, and we need to impose upon the congress the discipline to make the priorities that haven't been -- those decisions that haven't

senator bill cohen and his wife on race relations in the u.s.. all of this weekend, live coverage of the tucson festival of books. get the latest updates on twitter good. >> a discussion of women and the judiciary with sonia sotomayor

and ruth bitter ginsberg. this is about an hour and a half. >> justice ginsberg has served as an associate justice since 1993. she obtained her bachelor of arts at cornell university. she was the first woman to be on the harvard and columbia law review. she graduated first in her class from colombia and was a professor of law at rutgers.

she taught at columbia law school where she became the first tenured woman professor. she served at the american civil liberties union's women's rights project and argued many cases in front of the supreme court. she was nominated by u.s. carter for the u.s. court of appeals. she served until the nomination to the supreme court by president clinton. she has been a dear friend of nawj. she has participated many times at our conferences. she has established a scholarship in her honor and we will be presenting it later tonight. please join me in welcoming justice ginsberg. [applause]

>> last year, justice sonia sotomayor was appointed by president obama. she's earned her a bachelor's degree at princeton university. also her law degree from yale university. after her graduation, she worked as an assistant district attorney in new york. she has taught at new york university and columbia. she was nominated to the west district court for the southern district of new york by president h. w. bush and to the u.s. court of appeals by president clinton where she served until she was nominated

to supreme court by president obama. she was awarded as a our honoree of the year. please join me in welcoming justice sonia sotomayor. [applause] >> the baroness hail of richmond is a justice of the supreme court of the united kingdom. in 2004, she joined the board of appeal and she was the only woman to have ever been appointed to that position. she served as a law lord until 2009 when she transferred to the

new supreme court of the united kingdom. she graduated from cambridge at the top of her class. she was a professor of law at the university of manchester and remained in academia. she was the first woman and the youngest person to be appointed to the law commission. she became a queen's counsel. she became a judge in the family division of the high court of justice before being appointed as only the second woman ever to serve on the court of appeal of england and wales. while she served on the court of appeal, i had the opportunity to visit her in london in the summer of 2003 and she invited me to sit next to her on the bench as she heard an argument.

it was quite an experience. she is the incoming president of the international association of women judges and she will take office at the upcoming conference in may. please join me in welcoming the baronet's haess hale. [applause] our moderator is dr. judith resnik. she has chaired the sections on procedure, federal courts, and women in legal education. she is the founding director of the arthur liman public interest

fund. she has had a long time connection to both the national association of women judges and the international association. she currently serves as the co- chair of the judicial academic network and she is a managerial trusty of the international association of women judges. please join me in welcoming dr. judith resnik. [applause] we started talking about the sled dog race. a record number of women have entered the race. women have won the race five

times in the last 37 years. an interesting fact about the race is that many of the most talented and accomplished lead dogs are female. [applause] [laughter] in fact, the winning habit winner of the last three depends upon his dog. as you can see, we have three trailblazers with us tonight. let's listen in as they discuss their lives in the court. >> thank you for hosting us and

for making this seem less. we are in a conversation which crosses many generations and many jurisdictions. when justice ginsburg joined the bench, she was welcomed by justice o'connor gave her a great deal of it fice. she told her "what you needed to know when you came on board." my question is whether you gave the same advice to justice so admisonia sotomayor. >> it is exhilarating to look out at this audience. how many of you work here at the meeting in the spring of 1980?

come many were we, maybe 30? to see how this organization has grown, this is something wonderful. the greatest gift that i received did not come from just this o'connor, but from my predecessor. he sent over a packet and he said, cannot look at this now. when the confirmation process is over, you might find it useful. what it was was his chambers manual, how things are managed. i have kept that up over the years. it has had more electronic things added.

it is more sizable than it once was. i hope that you got that on the first day. for sandra, she had a rather close relationship with our chief. it was rumored that they dated together when they were law students. she had a certain report withi - rapport with him. she told me that when you deal with the chief and he asks you to do something, even though you think that it is an assignment you would rather not have, you except it and you'd do it. that is the way she is about everything.

sonia sotomayor does not really need advice. she has done everything that anyone could do in the legal practice. she knows that my door is always open. i welcome the times that we have. it is a very hard job. it is the best job for a lawyer but it is also very hard. whenever we get together to talk, it is always a great pleasure for me. >> let me turn to the justice sotomayor. how has the job surprised you? >> i will digress for a moment and tell you how excited i am to

be with all of you and to say that justice ginsberg has understated her welcome. 80 days after my announcement, i received the package. -- two days after my announcement. instead of her manual, which did in fact arrive i think within the hour of my getting to my chambers was a caller from a per which -- was a collar and there was a note that said "i hope that you will have use of this and." i was glad that she was there at

the end of the process. that was comforting. she has offered great wisdom, much welcome and much fellowship. i am eternally grateful to hurt and i am glad that i have a chance to say thank you. [applause] there were two questions in your questions, what has surprised me the most and how is it different. you understand the demands if you have experienced this. it is hard enough dealing with panels of three or five. once you start getting to nine people, it is an interesting process.

to be more concrete, there are perhaps three things that have surprise me greatly. the first is the affection among the justices. one would not necessarily come to that conclusion from reading the spirited exchanges in some of the court's opinions. thi have heard ruth talk about their fellowship. i was always a little bit dubious. i no longer around. these justices to really care about each other and most importantly, they respect each other. they disagree but they respect each other.

that makes it challenging. when i listen to them talk in conference and i am participating in the conversation, i know that i am being challenged by the very best. that process is quite invigorating. there is a level of respect and affection that has surprised me. with it is the second most surprising thing about my court hamas. i a enjoyed my previous assignments. i have never worked anywhere in

my career where everyone in the building from the person who has a part-time job to the chief justice of the court who has an equal amount of reference for the work and tradition of the court. the court employees have been there for their lives, some of them. many of them. they are devoted to the court as an institution and the role it plays in our society. that is such a wonderful feeling when you and you know that everything that you do is being supported by a group of people who care as deeply as you do. that is not for myself but for

my colleagues as well. the third is the point that ruth ray iised which is that this isa hard job. even when we are unanimous, there are arguments on each side of every case we get. that makes the process of deciding difficult in every case. i guess because i was on the court of appeals, as most of you are in immediate courts or courts of last resort and you don't have the right to select your cases. you have a mixture of cases, some are more clear than others. not every case you are dealing with it is as hard.

hear, it is different because we select the cases that we will review and we reviewed them because there is a split of opinion. each one presents a very serious challenge. >> you serve on a court with a new name, the supreme court of the u.k. to the question is, whether the move to a new building, whether the old court just got renamed or whether or not you are in a different institution? >> is a bit of both. we are doing exactly the same job and it is the same people and we are mostly doing it in the same way. it is the same old institution. then, the law lords are a well- known brand.

some people felt the welt, if it is not broke, don't fix it. what was the point to moving? if cost a lot of building. some of us were pleased to be out of the u.k. parliament. there has been a certain amount of the brouhaha in the press about parliamentarians and to the expenses they have been claiming. this is not a time to be associated with the u.k. parliament, i can tell you. we got out just in time. what we are beginning to think about not doing a different job. we will never be the supreme court of the united states. of course, we used to be the

supreme court of the united states. [laughter] [applause] but i think that you gave us up. we will never have exactly the same job that might two lovely colleagues have. but we do have a job that is more interesting all the time. there are no easy cases, are there? it also means that there are no boring cases whereas in every other level of judging, there are pouring cases. [laughter] it's true, isn't it?

there are 12 of us. we have to sit in an uneven number. we have never sat 11 but we are beginning to sit nine more and more frequently and i agree with you, that is a much more scary experience than sitting as one of five and you are much less likely to get your own way as well. >> justice ginsberg, you wrote and spoke about the fact that when you were the only woman, you thought that that was not a the enviable position and it was important to have more women on the court. can you speak to the difference? >> sandra day o'connor was the

lone woman for 12 years when i came on board. everyone understood that there was a woman on the supreme court but it did not sink again during our entire time together that there were a key. this organization was prescienct. they held a welcoming ceremony for me. they presented her with a t- shirt that said "i am routes, not sandra." one lawyer or another would call me justice o'connor. that is one large difference. i don't think that everyone has

called me justice been sotomayor. the solicitor general, but it did not sink in. what enormous difference it makes is for the public out there watching the court proceedings. it was not right that there should be only one woman on the bench. our law schools were close to 50% women. there are women are doing sometimes on both sides of the case and no one thinks that that is strange. there should be just one was wrong. recently, there have been great changes.

people asked me if i am disappointed and i say, i look to the north. we will get there not as rapidly as some people would like. what a difference from the way it was.

one night, we were players in henry the fifth. she has the line "happily, and woman's voice will do some good. indeed, it does. [applause] >> you are the only woman on your court. >> yes. >> do you see that affecting your work or your interactions with the lawyers? >> i have lost count of the number of times i have been called my lord. you would think that they could tell the difference. we don't wear robes. it is even more apparent. there you go.

i share all of ruth's opinions. i think it is a complete disgrace that there's only one woman on my court and that it took until 2004 for them to put a woman on my court. most of the rest of the world had managed to do it about 25 years earlier. in some cases, more. i hope it is not because they chose the wrong woman to put on the court. they have not yet found another one. you might think that if it was a wrong woman, they could find another one quickly to sort of neutralize me. they don't seem to be doing that. part of the problem is the assumption that you have to make your way up through the

legal profession, maybe your name and then in our case, made our way up through the various levels of the court of appeal and the house of lords or supreme court. because we have loads and loads of july 1st in -- of young women who joined the profession, that means that we have more than 10% of women on the high court but not amount -- but not much more than 10%. the overall proportion of women judges in the ordinary courts in england and wales is 18%. i bet it is better here. >> this is a great deal better than 18%. we are improving but with a long way to go. >> there is a fabulous estate at

about whether brenda how should be a lord. this is a terrific. and doctrine about how to do statutory and textual interpretation. >> the lords of appeal in ordinary were created in 1976. it says that the persons with particular qualifications could become board of appeals in ordinary. i wrote this piece same, am i really a law lord? >> we were at lunch recently with your chief justice. he said there is a new selection process that has been instituted

in england and i don't know if i am being indiscreet by asking you whether the new process holds greater hope than the old process for the more appointment of women. >> it might do in time. the women judges were very much in favor of having an independent judicial appointment commission. >> i don't think that the audience knows what happens. >> and the head of the judiciary was a lord chancellor who is a member of the government but he was a very senior and special member of the government. he used to recommend or make all of the judicial appointments and he had a staff that did this. mostly, he relied on consulting the senior judiciary or members of the judiciary. he did also have the flexibility to be a little bit of brave.

in 1994, for example, he was extremely brave. he appointed me to the supreme court. he appointed the first solicitor to be a high court judge. there was a bit of flexibility. now we have gone over to this marriage based commission which does all sorts of lovely things like having applications. no more of this. you have to put your hat in the ring. it does not rely so much on the secret soundings of the seniority to sherry. -- senior judiciary. it has an exam, it has interviews. it does things the right way. we hope that they have a mission

to increase the pool of candidates. they are not allowed to discriminate in selection, it has to be on merit and nothing else. we can get into the debate if you like. it should mean a wider pool of candidates. there should be more diversity. we have a problem with not enough women and not enough visible minority judges. it is even a worse problem with the women. in the early days, they are probably quite cautious. they probably will not do anything bribecause they might l that this is unfair. the feeling is still early days. we will see. >> there is one large

difference between the supreme court of the u.k. and the u.s. supreme court. our court is composed of judges who were court of appeals judges. we have been criticized because we don't have any formal governors. we don't have any members of the bar. we were all judges. to an extent, that is unfair criticism because each of us had a formal life. the argument is that to have a collegial body with understanding of all the people that we should draw from different in all quarters of the

legal profession from politicians, practicing lawyers, judges and academics. the sense that i got is that this would not be susceptible in the uk system. >> technically, the qualifications are having held certain judicial posts. they had been qualified to practice for 15 years. there have been people pointed direct from the bar to the house of lords. there used to be people directly from members of parliament.

a conservative member of parliament was reported by the labor government. i don't know if that strikes you as shocking. the big thing that has changed is not so much of that but with one exception, i don't know the politics of my colleagues. we think that that is quite a good thing. . there is lots to be said in a second tier appellate court from having lots of experiences, not necessarily political experiences. if you are a first tier, you know what it is like to be at the coal face.

i would not like to have that responsibility. we are up in the clouds. we are miles away from this. we could have a range of different experiences. >> what do you see the central challenges for your courts in the coming decade?

>> the central challenges are not at the lofty level of the u.s. supreme court, it is the everyday justice that most people encounter. i don't think that we can take great pride in the state of many of our first instance courts. how you get the resources needed, i don't know? the real problem is not at the top court level. it is where most people see justice for injustice

administered. >> the challenges of funding. this is an audience that knows it firsthand and has entered many jurisdictions represented here of the enormous challenges of getting funding both for the courts. the two examples, i know that the new hampshire courts had to stop their jury trials for a couple of months last year. when i was in portland, the clerk's office was closed once a week for part of the time because there was not sufficient legislative resources going to support this institution. the president has appointed a distinguished law professor to a special project to help get criminal-justice support for public defenders. we also have the shorthand here

for legal services on the civil side. the whole apparatus of supporting justices is in question. the interface among the branches is obviously a part of the question of financing and funding. al doocy the relationship among cost of the branch is being extracted? -- how the doocdo you see.

>> are you a member of the house of lords? >> when a kick out the hereditary peers, they said that no hereditary peer can be a member of the tears apart from the '92 they saved. we are still members of the house of lords but we can no longer speak and vote. most of us did not any way on parliamentary business, that is no great shakes. some of the spent time talking to parliamentarians but not necessarily on importance. it is it a disgrace that the civil courts are crumbling to bits. nobody really wants civil justice. fáthe civil courts are squeezed

between the demands of the criminal courts and the demands of the legal aid budget. we now have a simple ministry of justice which is responsible for funding the lawyers. on the other hand, for funding the prisons. in between are the courts. the criminal courts get the lion's share of that and the civil courts to get very little. it is hard for us to say anything to the politicians about that. we are conscious about the fact that in the supreme court, we are not yet crumbling and we look very guilty when we see our colleagues lower down who are crumbling. i don't know what we can do. >> i don't have any ideas about how we address that issue

between the courts and the legislatures. i think long range, however, at least a former colleague of justice ginsberg has started a program in educating middle schoolers in the work of the court on the internet. when i flowfirst spoke to her at that project, i thought it was a brilliant idea. it surprises me often how i need congress people or people in the legislatures of states and their lawyers and they distrust the courts. it is one thing when it is in on lawyer who might be unfamiliar with what the practices are of the court.

it is a different thing when it is a trained lawyer who has not come out of law school and understanding the value in our place institutionally in our democracy. i happen to think that we have to spend more time in educating people before they grow up. i often tell groups to visit in every case before the supreme court, somebody is happy. whoever we have ruled in favor of. someone is also unhappy. we are batting 50-50 virtually all the time.

if we spend time educating. >> people have divided opinions. it is virtually unknown in the rest of the world that most judges are elected and not appointed. people are going around the

country trying to persuade legislators. she was in maryland just the other day to change from elected judges to amanda. if there was a reform i would make, it would be that. >> there is a u.s. supreme court that decided the minnesota republican party versus white that there could be regulation of the method for campaigning

for the position of judge. you are part of the dissent that argued that it would be, this is a different type of election. >> i called it the gertrude stein case. there was elections for the state senate and the state judiciary. my dissent was that the state of minnesota acted entirely in accordance with the first amendment when they said that the judicial office is not a political office and judges should not be permitted to say -- if you elect me, i will be tough on crime. i will be strict and imposing

the death penalty. that seemed to me that the first amendment did not stop minnesota from doing -- putting sensible limits on what could be said by judicial candidates. >> unfortunately, the dissent being cannot the descent, there are more projects trying to explore how you can campaign with certain claims that might making inappropriate to sit as a judge. there are young lawyers here. if you are advising young lawyers about careers, where do

you see top priorities? what areas of lot, kinds the practice, or activities. is there a special suggestion that you have for women on those areas? >> i would like to say that your question implies a choice. women certainly do have that choice. if you think back to the not so good old days, there was not a law firm in the entire city of new york that would give me a chance. it was bad enough that i was a woman but the killer was that i had a 4-year-old daughter when

i graduated from law school. sandra day o'connor got her first job by saying she would work for free. after four months or so if you think i am valuable, you can take me on. the u.s. attorney's office, women could not the prosecutor's. why not? because of the stuff criminal types. what about those working as public defenders representing those tough types? there were so many closed doors. now they're open. that is an enormous change. you could not have asked that kind of question in the late fifties because there were so few doors that were open to women.

suppose there had been no discrimination proba. probably, she would be a retired partner in a well-known law firm. we did not have that option, and we had to find other ways. look where we ended up. [applause] [laughter] pa>> when i first went to cambridge to read a lot, i was the first from my school to read law. -- to read law, i was the first from my school. i wanted to become a solicitor

in at this small town in richmond. the original richmond, incidently. q. that one down the road is an upstart. [laughter] that was my ambition. i think it would have been more difficult to become the first woman clerk in that firm den to become the first war lord. >> currenand there is an assumpn that the areas of need have somehow changed through the years since ruth and lady hale started. i suspect they have not been deal.

there is still discrimination. there are still those that need qualified lawyers. there are poor people bringing civil actions to still need lawyers. i don't have advised about an area of law. i have advice on how to think about the choice. find a job. use it to develop your skills. spend time learning about how to be a good lawyer first.

once you have the skills that you can transfer to a lot of different choices. in whatever works that you are in, find those lawyers in that setting who are performing at their best. the second bit of advice, as your opportunity gross, pick those things that match what is your strong suit. for most of us here, to say that being a judge is the most wonderful thing in the world, you say that so openly. i have met people who are judges who left because they hated it. you cannot make an assumption that because there is a need

that you will be the best one to fill it. you have to find a need that you can give something to and it can give something back to you. you can do that in so many different ways. you don't have to serve in public interest jobs. you can go to a law firm and do business law. you can give your time to community service. my it vice generally is that. this is sort of on approach of looking at it not from the need of society because i think that there are so many that you could almost find anything that works for you. >> as you look back on the kind of work that you did before you joined the bench, do you see a particular kind of work or skill that has been very

informative for your current work? >> my dear husband occasionally said, ruth has the speech. , a law review article and there are very arious variations on te theme. the life of a law teacher, butof an appellate advocate, a judge, there are great similarities. you do a lot of reading. a lot of thinking all by yourself. there is a classroom

performance. there is the court room. then if you go back and there you are with just your small chamber staff and law clerks. you were thinking, reading, writing. that is why the transition to me for the bench was easier than it was for some of my colleagues because i had been doing just that. i was trying to write in such a way that at least the lawyers would understand what i was saying. in that sense, i think that everything that i have done that has involved the same basic skills. >> do you see concurrences?

>> definitely. people thought, how could she be a judge? she has not been a barrister all her life. did they not know that i spent my time reading, listening, thinking, judging and actually being very suspicious. if you spend your time with bright interested 18-21 year olds, you learn a lot about life, about linying, about judge thiing. >> i don't know if there is any

job that can prepare you to be a trial judge for general jurisdiction. you can do a lot to prepare yourself for a court of appeals or the supreme court because the issues are more pointed. they have been teed up for you. you can transfer those skills pretty easily. . .

>> for all of you out there, courts of general jurisdiction covers so many areas of law and so many different procedures and so many different situations that i do not know that there is a one job that will prepare you completely for it. i think that there is some commonality with other professions with respect to different kinds of court on the higher level. >> there is the debate on specialized jurisdiction to try to capture expertise in particular areas. are you in favor of courts of general jurisdiction even with the difficulties and challenges that are entailed? >> no.

[laughter] >> could i ask a question? the hardest thing that i found about being a trial judge was doing jury trials. a lot of my colleagues love them as well. i can understand that. that is what i knew from my previous experience being a trial judge -- previous experience. being a trial judge, that was not very different. obviously, there are things that you have to learn, but it was the jury trials were the tricky bit. those court of appeals judges, -- one of our colleagues at the annual judicial conference for

his circuit gives a prize to the district judge who was reversed on appeal and then vindicated. [laughter] [applause] >> you are all part of federations. it they are structured differently. -- they are structured differently. some of you are from abroad. how do you see this as a constraint or an opportunity in terms of the supreme court that you sit on? >> can i start off? as a federation of courts, we conquered mails -- males.

[laughter] we absorb them and we are gradually giving them a bit back. we also conquered ireland rather later. as we absorbent than -- had -- as we absorb them, we did most of it back. -- as we absorbed them, we did most of it back. -- we gave most of it back. we never conquered scotland. some would say that they conquered us. what happens is that the crown united and then they decided that they would merge in one parliament. scotland always regards itself as extremely special.

only fairly reluctantly have agreed that the u.k.'s supreme court has something to say sometimes about scottish law. our federalism is completely different from yours, although we are making law as uniform and as consistent and that's correct and has just as the cast -- as it possibly can be carried -- and as just as it possibly can be. even on my bottom line >> -- >> even on my court, there are so many issues that come before our courts and so i think that for our system it continues to

evolve. is that a fair way to put it? >> that is a very fair way. part of our everyday fare, just before i came here, i received an application in new york state's highest court. it visits state law issues. depending on how that plays out, does the constitution say what has occurred? we are dealing with a mix of state and federal laws and all the time -- laws all the time.

one of the great advantages of our federalism is that the state experiments. they did not all have to do the same thing. one can experiment with choosing judges one way and another another way. the good system will be copied by others. >> chief justice warren burger wrote was described as concerned that state issues were not being as well presented before the court and was helpful with the

state attorney general's in preparing for arguments before the court. do you think that you would want to structure more relationships with state institutions so that there would be ways to have dialogue, either be coral -- e. -- either because the system is working well that the advocates are filing. would you increase the relationship? >> in the years that i have been in the court, the quality of representation has gone up enormously. there are organizations that the

national association of attorneys general -- there are opportunities to get expert help from people in the academy. georgetown law center has a moot court that they have designed to even look like the supreme court. it is a miniature. the carpet was copy, the lectern was copied, and advocates of states and cities sometimes use those facilities. >> as to some of us who argue on behalf of private parties. georgetown is a first-come first-served on both sides of the case.

as we are coming towards the end of the hour, i wanted to ask you all how the national association of women judges and the international association of women judges be of help to you? the second part of this question is, are their agendas or programs that you would commend it to these organizations -- that he would recommend to these organizations? >> i think that the soon-to-be president of the international association should lead off. [laughter] >> i was horribly afraid that you were going to say that. the very first daithing is that the amazing thing is that the

association of women judges can do is to offer one another and to support one another -- is to confirm one another and to support one another. i spent my life as one woman in a court of 12 people. they clearly think that i come from another planet. and from some extent, i have. it is a great joy for me to come along a gathering of women judges and those men and judges to understand what we are about. i think that is the first thing that we can do. we can raise the profile of women issues. that is why we have a recruiting

drive in the u.k.. i have got several of the men to join us. but they also realize that we are interested in this being important. there is a lot of work to be done. we never have any problem working out what we will have our annual conference on did it do you? conference on. do you? -- what we will have our annual conference on. do you? we do have legislation which is designed to prevent errors in

domestic violence there is a lot to be done, there. we need to find where they crossed jurisdictions. it is not too difficult to do. there are issues about women that crossed boundaries. there is a lot to do. >> i do not know that i have a lot to add. what i have found is that when you address any issue, whether it is homelessness among women or if women are being treated fairly in the federal bankruptcy court as opposed to men. these are issues where the treatment of women has been received and has been different.

i thank it has been with and that have brought those questions to the forefront and who have lobbied for attention to be paid. i think that each time we start looking at issues like homelessness or the treatment of groups in a bankruptcy court or if there is a gender bias in any court system, that you end up helping not just the targeted group, but the process as a whole. i do think that you have to accept that sometimes there are issues that are looked at more acutely because you are a woman and you may begin to beat the drum a little earlier. that does not mean that men will not join you.

many do. but it is white organizations like this are so important. >> when i was a member of the ninth circuit, we were concerned about whether women were being pointed -- appointed equally with men. the benefit was that before we did this inquiry, there was no central knowledge of how people were being appointed across the circuit. so, we both learned how people were being appointed as well as raising suggestions as how to create an appointment process that would enable qualified applicants to put their hat in the rain and gain appointments. -- in the brairing. i can remember your convening a panel at one of the national association of women judges that

i and several other law professors were on. i have to say that i remember coming in to the big hotel. i had come to other conferences to speak. there was this big sign that said "sign up to work in the kitchen for the homeless." i was struck that i was in a conference of committed people that were concerned about the society of which they are part. there were targeted projects in the system. are there particular agendas you want to identify for these organizations? >> you have brought out the

first faint. that is information -- the first thing that is information. -- the first thing. that is information. many were surprised by some of the things that went on. some judges thought that there was no bias at all. their eyes were really opened by that report. i think that the last barrier has come down on the supreme court and i think that you once asked me about this. we had never, until this year, had a woman appointed special actor in a case where we are the court of first and last resort.

now, we have a woman special master. >> it is a great opinion of who has standing to be in the original jurisdiction of the supreme court. justice ginsberg quoted justice o'connor earlier this evening by quoting shakespeare. happily, a woman spoke to me, do some good. boy, have women's voices done well. as i was thinking about this panel discussion, two women writers came to mind. one begins the novel that says that we are in the middle of the

story of women becoming full citizens and all of the complicated ways that that means in terms of citizenship and what we can participate in and help to generate understanding the rights that we have and making new ones. the three of you have helped us so much in gaining this citizenship opportunity that we are -- dating this citizenship. the other person that came to mind was virginia woolf, because in her wonderful book, she has a sentence that seems to capture the moment. she says that when a woman sees is to become a protected profession, anything can happen. thank you so much for opening remarks. -- for your opening remarks.

[applause] >> i want to thank all three justices for being with us. we have a little gift for you. just a moment. we have a little gift for you. from the national association of women judges, the scales of justice then, and we have one for each of -- the scales of justice pin. we have one for each of you. i'd also brought you something special from alaska. the alaskan state gem is jade. the most beautiful is above the

arctic circle. i have a in jade gift for each of you from alaska. [applause] thank you for being with us tonight. now, we will call on justice kramer. just as kramer? >> -- just as kramer? -- justice kramer? >> i have debated about having justice ginsberg up here as we

present. [applause] >> i present to you. i think you need to be over here. i present to you our candidate. as women, we hope that our daughters will make a contribution to improving the status of women in our society and will reach out to those that are less fortunate than themselves. the applicants for this award, the national association of women judges justice ruth better ginsberg scholarship has shown that there are many young women who are fulfilling that role.

making it somewhat difficult to choose among them. the purpose of this scholarship named for our beloved supreme court justice is to recognize and reward young women who, by their action, has shown that they have determined to make a difference for women and other marginalized groups who find themselves the victim of discrimination. our award goes to one of those very special young women. raised in indianapolis, she graduated from the university of michigan with a degree in business administration. while at michigan, she worked to challenge racial, ethnic,

gender and class and the quality. among her many activities, and i do _ many, was the important role that she played as a minority pierre adviser in her residence -- minority. pfizer in her residence hall. -- was the important role that she played as a minority in peer adviser in her residence hall. she served as an advisor to the dormitory will cultural council -- multicultural council. she was also related to other diversity related issues that can arise on college campuses. i must add that she accomplished

all of this while maintaining an excellent academic record. but that is all. she also volunteered in detroit with an immigrant rights organization and sought to build coalitions across the disenfranchised communities. as a junior, she co-founded the progressive students of color caucus to address inequities on campus. after graduating, she worked for a progressive think tank, the center for american progress, in its use organizing the vision. -- its youth organizing

division. others have provided outstanding role models for the women students. i note that tradition has been strongly continued by professors such as angela davis and cynthia jones. given her record of working to achieve fairness and justice for those who lack it, the national association of women judges is delighted to award the justice ruth bader ginsburg scholarship to our recipient.

[applause] >> mainsheet thrive in the pursuit of justice. -- mainsheet ride in the pursuit of justice. -- may she lthrive in the pursuit of justice. >> thank you, very much.

>> coming up next, discussions about the senate filibuster and senate procedure from the american enterprise institute and a center for american progress. a little bit later, justice ginsburg and so mtomayor. >> obama and his socialistic ideas are deciding salaries. this is a life lesson in progress. >> sunday, michelle easton, founder and president of the institute on her work to promote women in leadership roles. that is sunday night on "q&a."

>> c-span, our content is available on television, radio, an online. a sign up for our special alert emails @@ at c-span.org. up next, a discussion on the current use of the filibuster in the senate and how it has changed through history. speakers include a former -- a former senate parliamentarian. >> good morning. i am the senior fellow here at aei. i would like to thank all of you washington early birds and our live the c-span audience to

this discussion on the filibuster. in 1982, when we were barely teenagers, which introduced a session called "politics watch -- called "elections watch." we decided to supplement the election programs with another section -- with another session called "politics watch." issue that's hotter than the filibuster is right now. i'd also like to recommend you another institutional announcement. if you aren't subscribers of our aei political report, you can give us our cards at the end of the session and we'll sign you up for that. i'd like to turn the session over to my colleague, john

fortier who will be monitoring the session. >> we have the world's most distinguished panel of people who know the filibuster but more importantly people who know the senate and congress because the filibuster is another way of saying that are there are deeply embedded rules and traditions in the senate that allow for unlimited debate in many what's we'll talk some about the filibuster, some about cloture, one of the procedures that we use to close off the filibuster. we'll also hopefully delve into some issues that are of very pertinent interest today with healthcare being potentially debated on the floor in the next few weeks where we might use procedures called reconciliation. a procedure that doesn't require a super majority as does breaking a filibuster by cloture. so we really have today not only some thoughts about a deep question that people have raised for many, many years.

certainly going back to famously woodrow wilson where the question of should a majority rule in the senate and how should a legislative body operate? whether it's a good thing or not. whether it's being used more today than it should be. or appropriately. but also some very particular policy questions of how our debate on healthcare may proceed in the next few weeks. let me just say a few things about how -- to oversimplify how one might think about the role of the filibuster. on the one hand we think the house is different than the senate it's a majoritarian debate. where the party leaders have very strong control over their members. now, the senate is a more individualistic place where individual senators can debate, shape the debate, stall debate and often groups of senators, particular group of senators

sometimes in the middle of the spectrum can come together in ways to craft solutions to political problems that are not necessarily the solutions of their particular leaders in the senate. i think that's one of the arguments that we may hear for the filibuster or for the rules of unlimited debate. that the senate is a different place, has a different kind of consensus and maybe this type of procedure in the senate is what we might need in a time with polarized parties and not much of a middle in the political debate in washington. on the other hand there certainly are long standing arguments against the filibuster or against the tradition of unlimited debate against the need for a super majority to proceed. that it's not democratic. that there's no majority rule. and also that it slows down the senate and prevents congress and the political process from not only getting to something particular and of moment and consequence like healthcare but also the many things the senate

and the political process have to do every year. getting through the budget. getting to authorize many bills that we don't think about in the very public political debate but that the senate is often slower at and the ability to limit debate causes some sclerosis as some people have described it. so these are the large issues we're going to discuss today. we have panelists who will talk for about 10 minutes today. i'm about to introduce them. we also want to have some debate amongst the panelists and then turn it over to you in the audience for some questions as well. i will start right here to my right with gary andres. gary is also -- had time in government especially in connection with the senate as the deputy liaison to the senate for legislative affairs for president george h.w. bush. and also writes frequently around town about procedural and process matters and is a

public-spirited lobbyists let's put it that way. sarah binder is part of the brookings institution. also a political scientist, a professional of political science at george washington university. the author of many books, several of them on this particular topic of particular note "majority rights, majority rule partisanship in the development of congress." that's in 1997 and then also "stalemate causes and consequences of legislative gridlock" coming out -- i'm missing another one, too. particularly on the filibuster. let me mention one more. another commercial here for an excellent book on the filibuster "principle filibustering in the united states" also with brookings in 1997. robert dove is the parliamentarian emeritus. he served as the senate parliamentarian in the parliamentarian's office for 35 years in the united states

senate since retiring in 2001, he has been a counsel and taught at george washington university and from his time inside the senate and talking about it outside probably knows more about senate procedure than certainly almost anyone in washington. but we're really happy to have him here today and talking about the -- not only the filibuster in general but i think we might be able to ask bob some questions which the current parliamentarian is being asked by members on both the republican and democratic sides about how the debate of healthcare will proceed. norm ornstein is a senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. the author of many books on congress. one in particular recent book "the broken branch" which is -- what is it now it's in tenth edition and the movie version is coming out next year. but a distinguished scholar of congress. a columnist in roll call and one who has been involved in a number of efforts of reforming and improving the process, the

legislative process in washington. so let me now turn it over. i'm going to -- actually i think i'll start with norm because i know norm may have to leave a little bit on the earlier side and we'll come down the panel this way. we'll have norm, bob, sarah and gary proceed. >> thanks. the movie version actually goes on and on and on. i've written a weekly column for roll call the newspaper of capitol hill for about 20 years. and i would write occasionally about the filibuster in the early times but the last five years it's been a topic that's come up on a fairly regular basis. a couple of years ago i wrote a couple of columns back to back and the second one i said last week i wrote about the filibuster and people can't stop talking about it. and that, of course, is a reality of our current and contemporary politics that this issue has come up more recently. and, of course, it's come up more recently in part because

we've actually seen some change in the majority control of the senate. something that we went for a quarter century from 1954 on without seeing. and when the majority shifts, we almost invariably get complaints from the new majority as it realizes that it cannot act simply as a majority. and, of course, as we now see we have the delicious hypocrisy that always happens when parties shift control and move from being great defenders of minority rights to decrying the ability to bring the majority to bring the institution to a halt. this has increased a great deal over the last few years as we saw with the frustration of republicans and the discussion of the so-called nuclear option by majority leader bill frist back when republicans were in the majority. moving at least -- at least considering moving to unilaterally change the rules in

the middle of the game over judicial nominations and, of course, the frustration over healthcare but not just healthcare. and i don't want to talk so much about healthcare because that issue, which is an issue of great national significance is one that since the -- we had a rule 22 would have been considered in the rubric of issues where you could imagine a filibuster, civil rights questions, other great issues where you have intense feelings by a minority. the real reason that i focus more on the filibuster in the last few years has less to do with issues like healthcare and more to do with the dramatic changes in the way the senate has operated more generally. and the dramatic increase in the number of cloture motions and either filibuster attempts or feints at the filibuster in modern times. you can find tables everywhere.

i wrote a piece for the aei magazine, the american, back in 2008 with a table showing the number of cloture motions over time that just goes up dramatically in the last few years. and this, frankly, is less a problem of the rule and much more a problem of our larger political culture. filibusters in the past were available for use. they did occur on an infrequent basis. and when they did, of course, going back to the '40s and '50s, they fit at least in very rough terms the old mr. smith goes to washington pattern. not one person taking the floor but a number of people, the senate bringing in cots and going around-the-clock and getting at least some national focus on the issue until you either had the will of the minority broken and something going through in part because

there was a public backlash against the minority position or a majority finally unable to get that super majority which of most time two third senators present and voting backing off eventually to try and regroup for another day. in recent years has seen a particular and sharp increase in the last three or four years. we've had very different use of the filibuster. but let me also add that the political culture began to change towards a much greater sense of individualization in the senate going back at least 20 years. and that is the -- basically the threat to filibuster or to bring the senate to a halt over nominations or bills done by individuals, not by a group representing a significant minority, you know, the 16 or so

necessary to really formally call for a filibuster through the practice of the hold. the hold, an informal device not in the senate rules where an individual says that he or she will deny unanimous consent if a leader tries to bring something up. it has been around for a very, very long time. but its use escalated over nominations going back particularly, i think, to the clinton years, maybe a little bit beforehand. but where leaders just began to tolerate the ability of individuals to simply unilaterally block consideration of a nomination not just for a couple of weeks or a brief period of time but indefinitely. and that set the stage, i think, for what's happened in the last few years. but what's happened in the last few years is that we are seeing filibusters or threats to filibuster used on routine matters. and now used simply as a tool of obstruction, not as a way to

dramatize an issue of great national concern and have a great national debate over it. the best example to me this year was a bill to extend unemployment benefits that saw two filibusters and then eventually passed unanimously. when a bill passes unanimously and you have a filibuster on the motion to proceed and a filibuster on the bill itself and all of the time necessary that's in the rules to allow it to play out, two days after a cloture motion is filed, 30 hours of debate on each, you can tie up the senate in knots and basically just for the purpose of throwing gallons of molasses on the road or to make it look worse, that damages the fabric of government, it seems to me. and what we've seen is the combination of multiple holds on

nominations and the process of clogging up the senate has meant that the basic elements of governance doing authorization bills on agencies and programs, doing appropriations, letting people get into government so they can actually do their jobs is being significantly damaged in a way that most people don't see, but they are going to feel it in their day-to-day lives. another good example of that is the head of the general services administration. effectively, the chief operating officer of the united states had her nomination held up for about 10 months in the senate and eventually was confirmed by an overwhelming margin. one individual doing this basically for no particular reason other than to hold hostage. so what to do? of course there are people now who feel their views represented by the majority who just want to scrap the whole rule.

i'm -- there are ways of adjusting the rule to expedite the process so that you can have a filibuster available for these issues of great national went. put some burden on the minority if they are one to do it. they might have to operate around the clock and actually be there. you can move things along to obstruct matters, but not over issues in which they have great disagreement and they cannot block the process for long. any change in the rules requires broader consensus. making even modest changes that could preserve the fundamental issues and move it along will be very difficult to do without the majority imposing its will on the in majority without majority imposing its will on a minority and creating

even more damage to the basic fabric of our political culture which is already so afraid. -- frayed. we can get into some of those specifics a little bit later. but it's simply important to reiterate that the problem here is less the specifics of the rule and more the nature of our political culture now, which is a very dysfunctional one in my judgment. >> i come here as a defender of the senate as it operates right now. for a number of reasons. first of all, it is my belief that the fault is not in the rules but in the senators, if the senate is not working well. the senate has worked, i thought, exceedingly well in the past both under a rule that

required two-thirds to end debate. that was the situation when lyndon johnson was the majority leader. and when it was changed to 60. that was the situation when robert byrd was the majority leader. and it worked well because both of those leaders knew how to play the game. and it is a game. it is a game in which the senate plays a very different role than the house of representatives. and anything that would try to transform the senate into the situation that you have in the house of representatives. i think would be a disaster. it is my view that the whole role of the senate is to be a forum in which it is difficult to pass legislation.

and i agree that the senate is an inefficient legislative body but i think that is its reason for being. in contrast to the house which is a very efficient legislative body where basically the speaker rules through the rules committee. the senate is not ruled by its majority leader. it's ruled by a consensus which has to be built by both the majority leader and the minority leader. but as i say, it can work. and it can work very well. i personally remember the situation when president carter sent the panama canal treaties to the senate. robert byrd was the majority leader at the time. and those treaties were opposed

by two-thirds of the american public in every poll that i saw. and senator byrd's job was to get two-thirds of the united states senate to vote to ratify them. he did it. he did it by reaching out to the minority leader, senator baker. he did it by basically traveling to panama and preclearing the amendments that would allow those treaties to be ratified with the panamanian government. hard-working majority leaders who know how to play the game can operate very successfully in the united states senate under its rules, whether they were the old rules before 1975 or the new rules after 1975. i hear the comments on holds.

i'd like to point out what a hold is. it's a letter. it's a letter directed to the leader of your party saying that you have a certain range of options with regard to something that may come up. those letters are very valuable to the leaders. they keep calendars in which all of those holds are marked so that they know what it is they will have to face when they want to go to something. it doesn't stop them from going to it. it gives them information. but those holds are a reflection of the enormous power of united states senators. and my view is that's the reason people leave the house of representatives where most members have very, very little power. and want to come to the senate. where not only are they powerful

but they have an incentive to work across the aisle. i can remember a senator who was a very conservative republican sitting in the chair and telling me that when he was a member of the house, he never talked to anybody in the minority party because they were irrelevant to his life. they couldn't do anything for him. in a sense he was talking sadly about the fact that he really had no relationship with any member of the minority party in the house, and he was just glorying in the fact that in the senate not only did he have a relationship with a liberal democrat. the only reason the senate operates is because of those kinds of relationships. they seek out some common ground on some issue and then push forward on that issue.

to me it is not that the senate doesn't work. it does work. but it works in a very different way from the house of representatives. i was told by the parliamentarian who hired me in 1966 that his view of the senate rules was that they were perfect and if they were all changed tomorrow, they would still be perfect. that actually is also my view of the senate rules. but i do not think the problem is in the rules. i think the problem in the senate is in the senators. >> thanks so much for including me. i have to admit that bob and i both teach at g.w. and we often have students who are taking my class and bob's at the same time and it's not unusual me to start talking about the filibuster and the hand goes up. that's not what professor dove says. so it's an honor to go after you

but i'm sure you'll come back to respectfully disagree. but i want take a look a minute to think about the senate's for lack of a better word -- what strikes me as byzantine ways of doing business as we've been referring to the use for super majorities, often the placing of holds, the requirement for negotiating unanimous consent agreements and so forth and clearly the loss of the democrats 60th senator have woken up democrats of the predicament they face without 60 reliable votes. i thought i would offer some observations first about the nature of the filibuster. second, about the politics of senate reform and then just briefly a little bit about the predicament harry reid faces in the run up to the elections. in the nature of the filibuster, about almost 15 years ago steve smith and i set out to write a book about the filibuster when we realized that there really hadn't been any systemic

empirical look at the origins of the filibuster, the use of it historically or the consequences of using the filibuster probably apart from the movie "mr. smith goes to washington" and treatments of the 1940s. when we got in the work of thinking and looking at all of this sort of history of the filibuster, you almost immediately encounter what we thought first as claims but then we sort of termed more as myths about the filibuster. and so i thought i would pick a couple of them out and we can come back to some of these later. first, this idea of the claim that the filibuster is part of the framers' intent for the senate. that it has some constitutional basis or at least some constitutional aura to it. when you go back to the constitutional convention as well as thinking about looking at what the framers were saying about the articles of confederation, it becomes very clear the framers the no love for super majority rules. they had lived under them under the articles of confederation and they did not like the experiences that they had trying to legislate under them.

and neither do we find much evidence in the original construction of the senate rules that there was any priority put on requiring super majorities. in fact, if anything we find the house and senate started out with identical rules that they cleaned up the rule book and got rid of the one rule that could have been used to cut off majority vote and that's the historical accident and we can come back to that later. the second claim we often hear particularly today is that filibusters were once reserved for the most important issues of the day. and that today it's become either newly politicized or just taken on this partisan aura. when you go back into the history of the filibuster, it turns out particularly in the late 19th century much of our views and our myths about the filibuster are just that. that there was plenty of parochial and partisan use of the filibuster and that it was not reserved for the most important issues of the day, probably not until the civil rights era of the 1940s, '50s

and early. -- '60s. there were appropriations bills, presidential appointments, the appointment of the senate printer and many of the coalitions that emerge on these votes. we didn't have cloture to study but if you look -- when you actually got to a vote they tended to be partisan. so this concept that we have that if we just went back to original uses of the filibuster, things would be better, i'm not so sure that the history supports that. the third claim about the filibuster is essentially that it does little harm and if anything it does good because it moderates legislation. this turns out, i think, to be the toughest one empirically to crack and i think our evidence is pretty mixed in the times the filibuster does good and the time it does harm and clearly we can point to civil rights history to show in which for decades the filibuster kept measures even from coming to a vote on the senate floor. this issue of whether the filibuster moderates

legislation -- it's very tough and the best we can do is to certainly find that there's no necessary connection between pleasing the 60th senator and getting his or her vote and making measures more moderate. and that's certainly the case on nominations where we can't divide up the nomination. you can't divide a nomination. either you get it or you don't and so we might think filibustering of nominations is different because there's no moderation involved there. on the question of whether, in fact, you do get changes by accommodating the 60th senator improves measures, we can find for and evidence against it. we think of the ben nelson the cornhusker deal what it took to get senator nelson's vote for healthcare reform. i don't think that medicare deal was moderating. and certainly if we live in a senate as many folks have talked about with liberal democrats sort of clustered on the left and conservative republicans clustered on the right the 60th senator is not very close to the 51st. in fact, you might have to

travel quite a distance to find a policy change that accommodates the 60th senator let alone the 70th or the 80th to build a bipartisan coalition so i think i come out of that claim -- a mixed set of evidence whether it, in fact, does good or does harm. finally we take a look at the claims that the rules are stable. rules 22 is impervious to reform because the majority prefers super majority rules. and the more you get into that it turns out that's pretty tough to test as well because quite often when motions and efforts to reform the filibuster have come up, all right, it's hard to get a majority on record because there's a filibuster getting to the vote on reform. so we can come back to some of these claims but by and large many of them have no basis in the history. many of them have more mixed evidence. on the second topic here of the politics of senate reform, when steve and i first started our book, i was here in d.c. in '93 and i noticed a group was set up

on k street when clinton came into office and we had a unified democratic control and the banner outside the office and the name of the group was action not gridlock and it was a group set up to push for reform of rule 22. and i clipped a couple of articles in '94 and then in '95 with the change in party control. i said let me find action and not gridlock and see what they're talking about. they had closed up shop. i could not find them anywhere. they could at least cut up the banner, gridlock not action but that wasn't really going to work. but it points, i think, to the situational ethics that pervades people's views about senate procedure. and that is where you stand depends on where you sit. senators like to cloak their procedural principles or positions in principle but it's almost always about politics. there are very few not to say there aren't any but among senators there are very few procedural purists in the -- whether it has ever been used

like this before. finally, on this issue of reform, i would remind you of the debates about rule 22. these are not new to 2010 carrie. these are debates that they have had over the centuries. if we had them in the 1970's, and the 1960's. we had them in the 1890's and the 1850's, all the way back to the 1830's. senate leaders have fought for performed but more often than not -- for reform, but more often than not, they have been filibustered. finally, on the predicament here, dealing with employment benefits and moving consent to move for a boat is instructive to those who normally do not pay much attention -- for a vote is

instructive to those who normally do not pay attention. . . enate hostage if you're willing to stand the heat. and it varies a bit depending on the bills but one senator with a little bit of party support is willing to take the senate hostage you can imagine the predicament that the majority leader finds himself in. that he has relatively limited tools in order to move the senate to the basics of a vote. and, of course, the majority leader's job made harder by cohesive republican team play and not cohesive democratic team play on many issues. i would conclude by suggesting that we shouldn't feel too bad for senator reid. he's not the first leader to confront these issues and we've seen a whole host of issues of leaders since the '70s try to grapple and to innovate to try to come to terms with the difficulties of legislating. there's one leader asked about a rule that would require or

provide majority cloture, majority debate in the senate and that leader said, quote, that rule would be one of the greatest improvements of the age. henry clay? 1841. i'll stop right there. >> thank you. well, thanks for having me. i wanted to talk a little bit about the filibuster from my own experience of having worked in the white house. as john mentioned i worked for as john mentioned i worked for both president bush 41 and then did a brief stint doing confirmation with president bush 43. so a lot of my views on the filibuster is kind of shaped from kind of that perspective. i think where i come down on all this is i agree with bob that i wouldn't want to change the senate rules related to legislative filibusters. and i'm going to get into a little bit why that is in a minute.

i have some more mixed views about changing the rules or procedures related to judicial and executive branch nominations partially because of the battle scars that i have from trying to push some of those people, nominees through the process and some of the experiences that i had with that. let me talk a little bit about -- just a little bit about the dynamics filibuster reform discussion. part of it is really shaped by short-term events. i mean, we're having this event today and talking about filibuster reform. i think as sarah mentioned, it tends to come up a lot in the context of unified party government and that's when one party controls both the white house and the congress and they kind of want to push things through and you hear a lot of discussion about filibuster reform.

i will say this that when president bush 43 was re-elected in 2004 and he wanted to push social security reform through the senate in 2005 and was blocked, there wasn't a lot of discussion then that i recall at least from the democratic side about the need for filibuster reform. so i think, you know, to some of the points that some of the panelists have made kind of, you know, where you stand does matter depending on where you sit. i think in many ways, though, the proponents of filibuster reform really drive the -- their argument is driven by valuing one thing maybe more than anything else and that's legislative efficiency. my point from kind of having observed the senate, studied the senate, you know, worked with the senate is that i'm not sure that legislative efficiency

should be the primary goal that we're kind of after when we're talking about the senate. i think there's other values there. sarah talked a little bit about the historical context so i won't spend a lot of time on that. but i would -- i'll give a plug for her book -- or books. i learned a lot about some of the things that happened particularly in the 19th century when it related to filibuster reform. and there are a lot of myths about the filibuster. i mean, one of the things that they talk about in their book is that, you know, people tried to reform the filibuster often during the 19th century. and they did reform it successfully in the 20th century. i think the -- if you go kind of down the list of the various

changes that were made, you know, you had changes obviously in 1917 when rule 22 was first adopted and then you had further changes as sarah points out in her book 1949, 1959, 1975, 1979 and 1986. so there have been changes in the filibuster rule over the years. it's not like it's been this kind of stagnant progress that hasn't changed and that's something that's going to continue. the bottom line, i think, of all this is that reformers -- or people who want to reform the filibuster rules, i think, in many ways are trying to drive the senate to look more like the house. and i think that's a fundamental mistake. and while, again, one of the things i learned from sarah's book is that the -- you know, it wasn't that the founders necessarily wanted the senate and the house to share identical

procedural rules. it was never really much of an issue at the time. i think a lot of people would agree that they did want the two institutions to be different. that they wanted there to be some kind of institutional distinctiveness between the two bodies. and i think to the extent that we focus a lot on efficiency in trying to move things through the senate in a really quick manner, i think it tends to make those two institutions look more alike and i think that's a mistake. former majority dick armey, one of my favorite political philosophers used to say, you know, the pain is inevitable but the suffering is optional. and i think, you know, if the majority in the senate is going to do exactly what a majority in the house is going to do, you know, why go through the suffering of even waiting? so i think that's something to

keep in mind. filibusters do have their costs for the body itself in transacting quickly. but again this is i think where we need to kind of widen the lens. i think that there are other things -- other values that we should look at in terms of what the senate is trying to accomplish. you know, is it, you know, quick legislative change or quick policy change? is it creating more programs or more rules? is it just creating legislative accomplishments? i think one of the things, you know, to norm's point about how the people in the senate have changed or the senators themselves are more partisan now, political scientists like gary cox and matthew talk about this concept of team production that now in the congress there's a lot of emphasis on team production. just kind of getting things done. and i think that's a function of

a more partisan and polarized senate. but, you know, so are the only overarching goals here to get things done quickly? i'm not sure it is. big issues like healthcare and healthcare having a hard time getting through the process now, kind of again drawing more focus on the issue of changing the rules, but, you know, what about some of the other values? what about building consensus in the senate? what about protecting minority rights? what about the notion of even policy stability. that was actually one of the things i think that the founders had in mind particularly james madison in terms of the design of the senate. they didn't want to have to just another institution that would change things real quickly. you know, there have been a lot of proposals out there about changing the filibuster. bob walker, who a former republican congressman wrote a piece a couple months ago that i thought was kind of interesting

where he was actually arguing to move in the other direction instead of maybe having a three-fifths vote for a filibuster. he was arguing to go back to the two-thirds. and his idea is that when the three-fifths rule was put in place, nobody really ever contemplated that one party would get to that point. well, they did after the 2008 election. his point was that if you went back to two-thirds people would realize going into the process that you needed to have a broader consensus and that might foster more consensus-building and bipartisanship. again, despite all the concerns about the impact of the filibuster on the senate, i'd also remind people that, you know, things are still getting done. you know, in recent times, you know, the congress and the senate passed no child left behind. you know, the government hasn't had a shutdown since the 1990s.

more recently, you know, the democrats have been able to move, you know, stimulus legislation, schip legislation through the process. so things are getting done. i even -- i went back and looked at some statistics on the number of laws that have passed -- or i'm sorry. the number of bills that have passed the senate over the last 20 years thinking that if filibusters were an increasing problem that the number of bills that the senate would pass would have also declined. and while there has been some reduction in the number of bills, the average over the last 20 years was about 551 bills passed per year and last year it was 478. so it was a little bit below the average but you have to actually go back all the way to 2001 to find another year where the senate passed less bills than the average over the last 20 years.

so anyway, just to conclude on the legislative side, i'd say that, you know, we don't want the senate to look more like the house, to become more like the house. i think there have been a number of changes in the senate rules already over the past two centuries that have moved it in that direction. and getting rid of the filibuster or changing it significantly so that the senate becomes a pure majority rule institution i think would be a mistake. just a couple last comments on the other piece where filibusters come in to play and that's in judicial and executive branch nominations. i think there may be a little bit more of an argument to make some changes there for this one reason. once you get into a situation where senators are using

procedural rules, procedural power to basically block the executive branch from installing people into place, it has an impact on more than just the senate or just the congress. it becomes very hard for the executive branch to do its basic functions. and the other point i'd make is that the problems with nominations and holding people up in the senate is really not just a partisan issue, too. we faced a number of problems in 2001 trying to get the bush administration people confirmed that were actually being held up for republican senators for one reason or another. and i could go into a few of the specific examples of that later if you'd like. but it wasn't just a partisan issue. it was people from the president's party that were holding people up. and i think the same is going on today to some extent. so let me just conclude by

saying i think it would be a mistake to try to make the senate more like the house. i think changing the filibuster rules is another step in that direction, although i have a little bit more sympathy for doing something on the nomination side. >> let me just have some discussion on the panel here. but i do want to throw one other issue on the table which i think is in many of your minds is the process of reconciliation. in fact, i'll let our panelists get a better definition than i will but say certainly a process that came out of the budget act which will allow some matters to be considered without unlimited debate and ultimately be decided by a majority vote. so when is it appropriate? i point to norm's column on the "new york times" a couple of weeks ago which had a chart of when

it was used. what are the potential pitfalls for using reconciliation for making changes to what we think will be the passage of the senate bill through the house? could we imagine this being pushed further where there's some talk that maybe within the reconciliation process, there will be other methods of delay, particularly the proposed >> of the endless amendments -- of the proposing of endless amendments. the process does not allow unlimited debate. maybe through the proposal, you might come to loggerheads and have some significant rulings made. >> just a few comments that build on where i started. it is great to have historical

perspective. most of us believe that we don't want the senate to look like a house. challenge today is how can you operate with these rules in a sharply partisan, ideologically polarized and hyperindividualized senate where you have 60 times as many cloture motions in a year as you had in the period before the reforms of the 1970s. where you have four times as many as you did when bill clinton became president. and whereas i said, they're done on routine matters and those that have overwhelming support only for the purpose of delay and there are ways of dealing with that while preserving the basic quality of the senate. the notion that you can have two bites at the apple on a given bill, a filibuster on a motion to proceed and then a filibuster on the bill itself. and each one takes days out of the senate's limited time to actually do its business it

seems to me is easy to change in concept although, of course, getting votes for anything will be difficult. having 30 hours of debate on each of these motions -- if you simply said it's divided between the majority and the minority so that you can only delay for 15 hours would be a nice little thing to do. i don't see any particular reason to have a two-day layover after a cloture motion is filed. you know, you can take six or seven days on any given cloture motion and what that does is even though you're getting bills passed authorizations aren't done anymore because it just takes too much time. that damages the fabric of governance. the hold is a nice thing if you have a notice. but we're now having dozens even hundreds of nominations held up not because people object to the nominees but as hostages for other things. it's wonderful for senators to have individual power. when you have the human cost of people who are making the sacrifice to come to serve in a

position in government and they're left twisting in the wind for months or even years, can't move their families, have already announced they're leaving their jobs, for no reason other than leverage for something else, there's something wrong there. and finding a way and there are ways, i think, to reserve filibusters for issues -- admittedly it w wasn't used tha way when any individual could take the floor and go on and on and on. it was individual leverage. but at least for significant issues where you have an intense minority feeling and then have a limited time and get to an action or a vote on nominations or bills that don't reach that point is theoretically doable, admittedly the chances of reform where you need two-thirds of the senators to go along are as george w. bush would say slim to none and slim just left the building. and just finally, broadly on the reconciliation point, a majority under those circumstances is going to look for any tool and leverage that it can find.

there are tools in the senate where you can bypass. they're crude and imperfect tools. they have been used regularly by both parties. what we have learned from the reconciliation is that it has been used for sweeping legislation affecting far more than one-sixth of the economy and tax cuts that cuts across area area of the economy being among them but these are not the tools you would hope to use to make basic policy. more and more we're going to have ways to make up the basic process unless you can find some fashion of moving back to at least some reasonable sense of comity. >> would you like to say something about reconciliation? >> let me talk about reconciliation because i was part of the group in 1974 that wrote the budget act. and i remember as we discussed

the reconciliation issue which we discussed maybe for 10 minutes because it seem almost like an ministerial function. i mean, the name "reconciliation" comes from the fact that what it was supposed to do was reconcile the difference between the appropriation bills, which had been passed in the summer and the second budget resolution, which doesn't even exist anymore, that was passed in the fall. and it was seen as a very minor thing. we came up with really a couple of ways of dealing with that issue. one was to hold back on sending those appropriation bills to the president in which case we would pass something called a reconciliation resolution to change those bills or if they had gone to the president and were now law that this bill would make those minor little changes. it was never used for that purpose. but in 1975, just a year after

it passed, a very canny senate committee chairman russell long of louisiana came into the parliamentarian office. and he had been having trouble with his tax bills because of the senate rules. people were offering amendments to them that he didn't like. they were debating them at length, and he didn't like that. and he saw in the budget act a way of getting around those pesky little problems. and he convinced the parliamentarian at the time, i was the assistant, that the very first use of reconciliation should be to protect his tax cut bill. and so in 1975 you had the very first use of reconciliation.

and i will say that a number of democratic senators were, one, surprised, and, two, appalled. at the fact that they no longer could offer any amendment that they wanted to his tax bill. that they were going to be limited in debate time to 20 hours. you know, in the end he didn't win because president gerald ford vetoed that first reconciliation bill. but to me that was the first indication that what was designed as a very minor little thing could be radically changed. and then in 1980 it was radically changed. in the spring of 1980 which under the budget act as it was written that time you should never have seen a reconciliation bill. suddenly the majority leader of the senate, robert byrd, decided that in order to confront what

was seen as an economic crisis, namely inflation rates running at 13%, interest rates running at 17%, that the answer to that economic crisis was to balance the federal budget. and he basically took on the president of his own party, president carter, and proposed a budget resolution which rejected president carter's view of what the deficit should be. and i hesitate to tell you that it was only $35 billion. i mean, that's a rounding number now. but he wanted to reduce it to zero and he was going to do it using a process that no one had seen before. he was going to give instructions to all series of senate committees how they were going to change their programs to reduce the deficit to zero. in the end, of course, he was as disappointed as senator long because even though he got his

bill and it was passed that year, the country went into a recession in that summer and a recession you don't balance the budget. and the result was not a happy one for him. and i think it was particularly unhappy because having created that bill in the spring when the republicans took the white house in that november election and the senate, they said to themselves, a-ha, what was goose sauce for the goose will be sauce for the gander and we'll do a reconciliation bill in the spring, only it will be to implement the reagan economic program. and they proceeded to do just that. democrats still controlled the house. they thought they could thwart that. and, unfortunately, for the speaker, a group of democrats in the house led by then-democrat phil gramm voted with

republicans defeating the rule on the reconciliation bill, which is almost unheard of in the house. and basically we were off to the races on reconciliation. and for the next four or five years, reconciliation became a way of passing in my view just utterly outrageous things. i remember the senate commerce committee -- i think it was in 1983 decided they were having a lot of trouble with their legislative agenda. why not just send that entire agenda as part of their reconciliation language and have it included in the reconciliation bill. and there was no rule against that. and so in the mid-'80s the senate adopted what is now called the byrd rule, to keep that kind of thing from happening. but the result has not been happy. if there were anything i could undo in my life, it was ever

helping create the reconciliation process in the budget act. it is now a monster. and it is showing its monstrous qualities repeatedly as it's used by both parties. and the result, unfortunately, i think, is to eliminate what is to be the glory of the senate. is its ability to debate and amend. the amendment process is severely limited under reconciliation as is debate. and both parties have been guilty of using this cheap shortcut to stop debate on things that i think ought to be debated and ought to be amended. >> but it's perfect? >> as i have always said, the senate rules are perfect. >> anyone else want to weigh?

-- weigh in? one last point on the reconciliation process is going to -- would result in a finite debate but there is some talk about the question of republicans being able to offer dilatory amendments and whether that might cause the parliamentarian or the chair to rule, somehow that there is -- that those are out of order. without getting too in the process here, what's your thoughts on that? >> there's no such thing in the senate as dilatory amendments unless you are using the cloture rule and you're under cloture. for amendments to be ruled dilatory outside of cloture would be a total departure from senate practice. it has never happened. i hope it doesn't happen now. >> okay. we're going to open it up to the audience for questions. and please, we have a microphone

here coming around if you could identify yourself and -- >> i'm don richie the senate historian. we answer a lot of these questions so i'm really -- but the former eugene mccarthy used to say it wasn't worthwhile learning the rules of the senate because they were suspended all the time in regular order. they ask unanimous consent not to read the entire bill and go through all these processes. are some of the rules of the senate essentially vestigial organs of a bygone era that don't provide things to slow down. i think the reading of the bill that we came up in december on a couple of occasions. it seemed to have no other purpose other than to take up time?

i'm asking everybody but i think bob is probably the -- >> okay. it is true that the senate rules -- most of which were written in 1884 at the time the senate didn't have the post of majority leader or minority leader. ... if you wanted to go through those roles and find those roles, you might find some. interesting enough, since i heard the comment that it is outrageous that you have two debatable motions with a bill. one is to proceed and then the bill itself.

if you follow the rules, there is only one debatable motion because the motion to proceed during the morning our is not debatable. senator byrd knew that and regularly used in that role. majority leaders have not used that honor than senator byrd. i am not sure why. in the back of my mind, one of the reasons why they might not use it is that it is a nice test vote. you make a motion that is debatable and you file cloture. if you cannot get cloture, you have wasted no time on the bill because the motion can be withdrawn. if you don't have 60 votes, what is the point of proceeding? that is the supposition that i

have about the fact that that rule is not used. it is true that that rule exists and could allow the senate to get to any bill by a non debatable motion. >> the house has a lot of rules that might be considered vestiges of the past. it is not as the senate that does that. >> i have been criticized often by house staffers. rs, that the senate only has two rules, unanimous consent and exhaustion. my view is the house doesn't have any rules at all. and has the house rules committee, which is just a wonderful way of changing the way they take up bills by bill by bill. and the absolutely no attention

to that very thick rulebook that is in the house. dane just to comment on don's point. i actually having been said the chance of changing the rules are slim to none, i would offer a caveat to that. i have had some conversations with at least a few republican senators, who are interested in cleaning up the rules a little bit. and we make it a test of this on the reconciliation issue, not just with a number of amendments offered but i can imagine someone tried to offer a 500 page amendment and insisting it be read as another way of stretching out the debate. and there may well be at the beginning of the next congress enough votes to streamline this process so that you at least begin to return to the use of a filibuster for something that people actually oppose and a significant number of them do, that you got to move to a super majority. and not just one individual denying unanimous consent and

having debates stretched out in the way that brings discomfort to everybody, but has nothing to do with an intense minority viewpoint except by one individual. >> i was just going to weigh in for a second. another way of thinking about these questions and to respond to bob's point. there are other non-debatable motions in the senate rulebook, and why don't leaders use them? right. i think if i had to step back and look from the '70s to the present, there is the sort of procedural arms race going on between oftentimes between the party. certainly the '70s across coalitions. when majority leader encounters a form of abstract and come and so he changes the practice to try to do with that abstraction. so today we have, the notice is sent out to get clearance for a bill. but they didn't always do clearance, but when the majority leader institute's clearance, then it is an easy opportunity for the minority or others to

register a complaint. and that, of course, then pushes the majority leader to try a new tactic. and then of course that begins other response. today's latest response of course is probably that astronomical number of cloture votes that north pointed to. that's not an isolated problem. that's response to the ways in which the senate has developed. the question is, if the majority leader were to take the birch gadget using the morning hour of going to the motion proceed, what other response would that provoke. and then the increasing cloture motions might be we don't talk about him or because there is some of the problem on on the floor. so the dilemma i think for majority leaders to try to figure out how are you going to solve this procedural arms race that shows no sign of stopping? >> if i could say one response, is the majority leaders filling the amendment tree. that has been used, i think,

repeatedly in conjunction with cloture votes to, in effect, put the minority party in the position of either voting for cloture, in which case they have lost their right to amend, or voting against it. and to me, one of the course of the senate is the right to amend. and that use of filling the amendment tree by a majority leader to restrict and basically eliminate the right of the minority to offer amendments, to me, is a part of this whole war that has escalated on the senate floor. >> could the majority leader used to link the amendment tree on the reconciliation bill to head off a filibuster by amendment? >> at some point those amendments get disposed of, and at that point then you can offer endless amendments. so it would not eliminate

amendments, but it could be used to recruit them for a considerable period of time. >> i will immediately confess to being a totally ignorant ram is when it comes to anything that happens on the hill, much less the senate rules. but norm, i would have to come as a victim of the whole under bush 41, i want to assure you the practice was alive and well before the clinton era. let my question really goes on the unanimous consent issue. and why is it that the senate permits itself to get put in the position of being held hostage to needing unanimous consent? in the case of bunting on the jobs bill, couldn't the senate,

with foresight, have put the bill in transit was not subject, so that unanimous consent would not be required? >> well, the use of unanimous consent agreements as a regular practice was perfected by the majority leader in the '50s, senator lyndon johnson. and he would preclude those unanimous consent agreements through his contacts that were referred to in the '50s as the club. and frankly, it worked very well. now, it is true that any single senator can object to a unanimous consent agreement. and that frustrates whoever is trying to get it. but the use of unanimous consent agreement is simply a reflection of the enormous power that

individuals senators have. i don't know how you're going to eliminate senators right when anybody ask unanimous consent to do anything to simply say, i object you. >> my name is steven roberts. perhaps this is just me being an old fogey, heavily for bygone days, but you know, when folks used terms like bison teen and outdated, a guy automatically cringe because it seen is that history has proven that a lot of these things actually do work, especially as opposed to these modern paradigms of efficiency. and for you folks love a good knowledge of the history of senate, i was wondering if this is merely an expansion of the old jeffersonian, john adams

debate over a country of laws, country of men. and whether the senate is necessary supposed to be a sufficient as a restraint upon popular web so that to quickly evolve into a country that forgets its history and becomes captive to build its subjective efforts on capitol hill that you mention, ma'am. >> it's a very reasonable question. i think i would think about it this way, is i'm not sure the choice is between changing senate rules on one hand, and inefficiency. i'm not sure that the opposite filibuster is seeking efficiency. if you go back to jeffersonian views about the senate who he wrote sort of the guidelines for the senate and senate rulebook. they believe that the senate should come to a vote. there wasn't any evidence here that there were ruminations about minority rights and so forth. and individual rights. that there shouldn't be a vote in the senate. the fact that filibuster prevent from getting an apple and downhill, that's sort of a

matter of creating a real legislative body. i can't come up, another way to think about it, i can't come up with sort of a theoretical basis for supermajority threshold. what's the basis for it? how do we get to the magic number of 60? well, one answer is it's arbitrary. that's not very rewarding theoretically. the other answer is that's the outcome of political bargaining in 1975. that's not very rewarding philosophically or theoretically either. but we do have a history of majority rule, both classically, right? and i don't think you say that you think about the rules that were necessarily seeking efficiency, but there's some of the value there that is being sought by trying to find a way of amending rules that would leave as soon as a legislature to be able to cast up or down votes. >> you know, one point i want to add to that, and it kind of goes back to the comments i was making, is that i do believe

that the founders wanted the senate to be almost like intra- institutional check and balance. they wanted it to be a different type of institution in the way that it operated. one of the things that we have seen over the years is not only a chance, but actually successful attempts, to change the senate over and over again so that it operates more like the house. it isn't completely gotten there but it is moving that direction. one of the things that, in addition to the changes in the filibuster rules that i outlined, that have been done repeatedly during the 20th century, is even more recently than that, reconciliation is another example of how the senate rules will allow major pieces of legislation to move through, you know, with a certain time requirements and things like that. but also, it's not in effect

right now but we have done that over the years on trade agreements as well. as another example of where the senate rules have been changed to make it more efficient, i think. and i'm not sure that's always the highest value. >> i will turn back any minute but i want to follow up on something that sarah said. sarah mentioned that 1970s, we had more cross party coalition's for and against the filibuster, against the majority. and that was true of much of the 20 century that our parties were not as polarized as they are today. so does our situation today with the parties in most voting studies show that the parties really are well situated on the right and left of each other? is that putting more pressure on the senate, more likely that we will see these continuing, not only times when a party of 60 votes or just showed a 60 votes, but just giving a party in the senate, pressure from the house, the house is often a place that

stalled reforms as well because the fracture coalitions, is that putting more pressure on the senate and senate rules? >> i would offer one way of thinking about that. it's the issue that procedure has become a matter of -- it's become a party cause within the democratic caucus and republican conference. that's become the issue. so that we get not only sort of polarization on the policy issues, but they're sort partisan on top of it. that gets played out through voting on cloture, old pushing the majority leader cafaro cloture motions in the majority are always thinking has to file a cloture motion. so it's all about procedure all the time. and then it's very hard i think to unwind from that wants it all becomes about procedure. >> i think another thing that's happened as the members have become more polarized is that both parties, republicans and

democrats, whether they are in the majority or minority at a particular time, the minority party has kind of recognize that hanging together maximizes their power. and i think that's maybe something that didn't, you know, maybe didn't always exist that way. but that certainty seems to be something that operates very often right now. >> we are our here and then he here. >> the mike is coming right here. my name is james. i work on the hill in the senate, and my question in a popular and academic narratives about the filibuster, basically cloture is always use as a measurement of minority obstructionism. my question is, to what extent is it the measurement of majority obstructionism? ivan, seems to me that there

seems to be a filing by the majority leader. if you look at the breakdown, it is quite bipartisan. if they were given the opportunity to offer a few amendments. it would not turn into a and this cloture -- endless cloture. >> that was the point i was trying to make. the amendment tree is another part of the coin. the tradition of the senate to freely debate and to amend. anything that attacks those traditions are a problem. >> it is hard for political scientists to take those numbers and deal with the alternatives that you lay out. there are the facts that the majority leader would like to

have some certainty. those are the ops'-- the observational equivalent. erent view about in the majority side would give you counter evidence, well, no, we couldn't get consent agreement. we weren't willing to agree to those amendments. but the minority party will give you a different view, and it's tough to arbitrate between those, between those views. >> sometimes it's not just stopping the minority from offering amendments, because the majority leader wants to move the process along, oftentimes feel the amendment tree because you're afraid there's going to be politically embarrassing amendments that could be offered as well. it's not just trying to move the process along by trying to maybe protect your caucus, too, from politically embarrassing oaks. -- folks.

>> my name is mimi. i am an attorney with the center for justice. to me, what's most troubling about the filibuster, as it is playing out in the current senate, is that it leads to a lack of accountability. i mean, this is not, i heard a reference to a game. this is not a game. like these people are supposed to lead our country. and the combination of the stealth filibuster and anonymous holds, and in constant filibuster is that lead to constant obstruction. we have a situation where people are not actually making decisions where they're supposed to make decision. i would just love to hear your thoughts on that and understanding that there is some important reasons to keep the senate rules as they have historically been. you know, whether not we could reach a point where this is so troubling for our, you know, little d. democracy. that something has to be done.

>> since i'm the one who referred to the senate as a gain, it is a game in the sense that there are very intricate rules. and it's important to be able to use those rules to play it. and i will say sometimes i am reminded of what casey stengel said after coaching the mets in the 1960s, does anybody here know how to play this game? it can be played. it can be played very well. it has been played very well by a couple of leaders that i mentioned, lyndon johnson and robert byrd. so that i don't think the problem, frankly, is in the rules. >> one thing i would just add, i'm not sure if it is directly to your question but i think it's important to keep in mind,

builds on the point that sarah made that i agree with, is that the rules in the way they are applied, really is a constant kind of changing process to some extent. so i'm not sure, you know, just because there's some problems right now, that that's necessary always going to be the case. i mean, going back again using a house example, in the 19th century, the house had big problems towards the end of the 19th century with obstructionism and disappearing quorum's and things like that. there was an adaptation that was made to correct that. and i think as these things kind of play out over time, there's going to be adaptations in the rules or adaptations in the way the senators operate.

>> my name is adam foster. i had a quick question for the professor. in a world where the most conservative democratic senator is generally, you know, more liberal than the most liberal republican, what measures would you say the current majority leader or future majority leaders can employ kind of bridge that gap like you're talking about in the '70s? what avenues are available that they are not using? >> the same avenues that were used by senator baucus in the finance committee last summer. when he managed to get the vote of olympia snowe for his bill. those opportunities are out there right now, and being followed by, for example, senator lindsey graham of south carolina and the senator kerry on the issue of climate change. to me, those opportunities are not gone at all. and it is the way the senate operates. you do need to form some sort of

bipartisan consensus to pass important legislation. >> i want to take the opportunity to ask the last question here of the panel. i think all of us, we talk about reconciliation but maybe we could ask the panelists to give us a preview of what we might see in the next several weeks or month or so of procedure dealing with the health care bill. what are the things you like to highlight, what are the likely, what's the likely course of the health care bill and what are the likely obstacles and will we do, what's your top pick on something that we should watching for that we might not be? >> i can go first, and you say that i think that the real challenge is going to be actually passing the senate bill in the house. and so i think that's probably the main thing to look at. i think the fixes that they may

try to make in reconciliation in the senate may or may not happen. and, you know, there's the issue of what things could get knocked out on. on rules violation i saw today that senator mcconnell had a letter from all 41 republican senators saying that they would hang together on not voting to waive the rules on any byrd rule, anything that comes a. i think it could be a number of things that could get knocked out. and i think it's going to become it's going going to be difficult to figure out which changes can be made in the reconciliation process, and i think actually, bob knows better than anyone, i love those things will not be decided for really a little while now, and tell the language is actually presented.

>> a friend e-mailed me a bloomberg story is one that trotted out an old tom foley, i think that that was the republicans are the opposition but the senate is the enemy. and i think if it were just a matter of speaker pelosi doing whatever she could to get 216 votes, she could do it, right? house majorities can get there. they can secure and by those votes eventually. but it's embedded in this intense by dispute, and i think we lose sight of the impact by campbell is a monster to make. it arises typically in these present unified party control. when we least expect it. and that is what i think has the potential here for the rating health care off the rails. >> well, i will go back to the lovely title parliamentarian emeritus, which is a friend of michael the americas comes from the latin, out in marriages

meaning ought to be. [laughter] >> i am very glad. i am out of the parliamentarian's chair. because what i will be watching over the next few weeks is the role that allen from, the commentary of the senate will be playing. it is enormously important role. i have every confidence he will play well. and i'm really glad i am not doing it. >> well, i would use a prerogative that i have asked moderator and chair of this meeting to bring the debate to a close. a power that the senate chair does not have in many

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> the senate for american progress posted a discussion on the filibuster. tom udall discussed how this is become an obstructionist measure and there needs to be new rules. >> good evening, everyone. this is a joint forum with the center for american progress. i want to say at the beginning that all of us are saddened by

senator reid's wife's accident. his wife is in serious condition. they were rented by a tractor- trailer on interstate 95. they are both in the hospital right now. a moment of silence would be good to send good thoughts to the family. this is the 30th anniversary of our center. this happens to be the 30th anniversary of c-span. c-span has covered many forms. they usually cover the ones that we do together. we have five of them. issues are important -- we

discussed the issues that are important to congress. we have a forum on the filibuster. to put this in context, if is a problem. i think it is a problem. there are efforts by senator udall to change the rule. rule 22 on the cloture vote. let's put it into the context of the perception of the american people on the institution of congress and many problems facing the institution. this is one problem facing the institution. we have holds that clogged the legislative work and confirming legislative branch officials couldn't do we have a lack of true deliberation and debate in the senate. there is a breakdown frequently.

there is an excessive use of earmarks. there is a debate as to whether they are excessive or not. sometimes these become a crutch to act on significant policy issues that cannot be acted by the of the risers. sometimes the tendency to have government by continuing resolution. there is the abuse of the conference committee. the only met recently. there is a lack of civility with the american people. there is a lack of true bipartisanship. that is controversial because some people think that we don't need bipartisanship. some of this comes from the

polarization of congress where there are less and less moderates. if you look at supports as we do in political science, now 8 is 5%-8% moderates. then there is criticism of the institution for no oversight of the executive branch. it is within these trends that we look at the filibuster. they have led to a serious decline of public confidence in the institution. trusting congress continually and discouraging public participation and trust in the institution of congress. the form is primarily within the filibuster. it is within that context that we look at the filibuster.

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