Rothschild’s Prophecy

By Robert Romano

Since Rule 22 was adopted in 1917 as a way to bring an end to debate by way of a cloture vote (and modified in 1975 lowering the requirement to a three-fifths majority from two-thirds), Republicans have never had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Never.

Yet, in order to cut spending significantly in Washington, D.C., if we are to believe the establishment class, Republicans need to win more elections.

They need to reclaim the White House, win the Senate, and hold the House, we’re told. Moreover, we are led to believe that proposals to reform Medicare — ala House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan — or to use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract spending cuts are nothing more than foils to the GOP’s ascendant electoral aspirations.

But, unless Republicans wind up with a Senate majority larger than, say, 60, does anyone really expect that they could ever achieve the reforms needed to restore order to the nation’s fiscal house?

By design, the bicameral legislative system is supposed to be slow. It’s supposed to be hard to move legislation. And for about 125 years, it was a constraint on the growth of the state. But starting with Woodrow Wilson and then Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. has, slowly at first and then at lightning speed, expanded federal power to near-absolute levels.

Long gone is the bicameral system and the cooling saucer of the Senate being the way to slow down government’s expansion. Now, it is the means of halting any meaningful reform that might rein in this growing Leviathan. Meanwhile, the voice of the people in the equation is increasingly silenced.

Representative government has been replaced — by the rule of an intellectual elite. Now, unelected, faceless bureaucrats, academics, experts and, importantly, financial institutions have the most prominent role of all in the policy-making process.
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