The disease of authoritarianism now afflicting our democracy spread to yet another of our governing institutions the night of May 21. Do not be fooled: The debate over Senate Republicans’ misuse of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) is not “inside baseball” or wonky or even complicated. Rather, it’s a simple story of legislators failing to follow the rules that they agreed to — and doing so to advance their policy agenda without heed to the rule of law wreckage they leave in their wake.
This is not to say that the more complex or wonky facts do not matter. They do.
Fact: In overruling the nonpartisan parliamentarian’s determination that the CRA does not apply to the Clean Air Act waivers issued to California, enabling it institute environmental regulations governing pollution from cars and trucks within its borders, Senate Republicans did obliterate that chamber’s filibuster rule — a result that Senate Republicans’ weak protestations to the contrary cannot change. Congress agreed to a limited loophole through the Senate filibuster when it enacted the CRA. Going beyond that loophole just a little is no different from going beyond it a lot; with loopholes, there is no principled way to distinguish a minor transgression from a major one.
Ironically, in eliminating the Senate filibuster, last night’s action has also effectively nullified the CRA itself. After all, why have a loophole to the filibuster if the filibuster no longer exists? (That the CRA now stands in for “regular order” lawmaking in the Senate is just semantics.)
Fact: Last night’s action is an affront to basic federalism principles that conservatives have long pretended to revere. The California Clean Air Act waiver has enjoyed decades of bipartisan support and was borne of the recognition that the state had been a leader in air pollution reduction policy long before the federal government entered the fray in the 1970s.
Fact: Rescinding the waiver will have significant policy repercussions. It will defeat a serious effort to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are currently cooking our planet, threatening to leave it uninhabitable for future generations. With its absence, a viable pathway to averting the worst consequences of climate disruption now seems beyond reach. And this is to say nothing of the economic damage that will be done, as American automobile manufacturing’s descent into irrelevance in the global market is now sure to accelerate.
Yes, these facts are important. But we should not let them distract us from the real significance of last night’s action — that Senate Republican leaders will recklessly toss aside any legal barriers that they perceive as preventing from them pursing their radical conservative agenda. It, of course, bodes ill for the reconciliation debate that will soon commence in the Senate. More than that, though, it signals the end of the rule of law and basic accountability in the Senate more broadly.
We now face an authoritarian Senate working in conjunction with an authoritarian president. I don’t need to tell you how terrifying that prospect is.