MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D), OREGON: You"re welcome. It"s great to be with you, Rachel.

MADDOW: So help me--so help me clear this up. Can the Senate right now actually force a filibustering senator to read the phone book, to stay up all night and actually hold the floor?

MERKLEY: No, they can"t, and they never could. Folks who stayed up all night did it to dramatize their position, but they weren"t required to. Once they objected to the regular order of a majority vote, a simple majority of 51, then the responsibility goes to the majority to come up with 60 votes.

And so, they can simply object and go home to dinner and leave the institution suspended for a week, because it takes about a week under the debate rules before you can resolve an objection of this nature. And so, if we"re going to be there all night on that circumstance, the majority that has to stay and try to dramatize the fact that they"re objecting to the filibuster, as opposed to the filibustering senator having to stay on the floor.

MADDOW: Wow. OK. Well, you have proposed making what happens in the Senate more like what we imagine when we think of the filibuster. You wrote in this memo "The public believes that filibustering senators have to hold the floor. Indeed, the public perceives the filibuster as an act of principled public courage and sacrifice. Let"s make it so."

How would you do that? And why do you think it would be important to do that?

MERKLEY: Well, first of all, it"s very important for the public to know when someone"s objecting. If they say, no, a majority vote isn"t good enough and I"m objecting and therefore triggering--and a single senator can do it--a super majority, they should have to put themselves on record so the public can respond to that and say, yes, we support you, we think you"re a hero, or, why are you blocking unemployment insurance? You"re making life miserable for millions of working Americans who can"t find a job in this great Bush recession.

And so, they have to be accountable before the public. And the way to make that happen is to require a filibuster petition. That is for the filibustering senators to declare "we object to the regular order of a majority and we insist on continued debate," and then for them to stay on the floor and to continue speaking on the floor.

And if at any moment no one"s willing to speak, that ends it and we go to the vote. If at any moment, the required number do not stay on the floor, that ends it and we go to a vote.

The American public will see what"s happening, they can respond. It"s transparency, accountability. And that"s what we need.

MADDOW: If that were to have--if you got enough support among your Democratic colleagues to actually change the rules to this, what would be the sort of threshold that we"d be looking for? What would it take procedurally to change the rules so that would become the new rules? Would you need some giant number of senators to vote for that? Or could you just do it with the majority?

MERKLEY: It takes a simple majority under the Constitution to change the rules of the Senate. Now, back when Southern Democrats wanted to lock in their opposition to civil rights, they put in a clause in the rules that said the Senate is a continuing body and must abide by the previous rules.

No one believes that that would stand up to a constitutional challenge. You can"t have a body, years and years ago, lock in the way that the current Congress operates. Under the Constitution, we"re empowered to write our own rules.

So, we need 51 -- and, by the way, I hope it"s not partisan. I hope the Republicans say, hey, we"re going to be in the majority some day--I hope it"s a long time from now. But we"re going to be in the majority some day, we want a system that actually enables the Senate to debate and to tackle the problems America faces.

MADDOW: It would also--and I say this as a competitor of theirs--send C-Span ratings through the roof. And as a competitor of theirs, this would be so cool that I would support it anyway.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon--thank you for being willing to walk us through this and thanks for your time, sir.

MERKLEY: You"re welcome. Good to be with you.

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