The Congress: Whether to Debate What's Up for Debate When It's Up for Debate

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Said Idaho's Democratic Senator Frank Church: "The Senate has been engaged in a debate as to whether the Senate should debate what is up for debate when it is up for debate." What Church was talking about was a proposed change in the Senate's rules. It would require that each working day the Senate devote at least three hours to debate germane to the bill before it as the scheduled order of business.

This revolutionary notion had been proposed by Rhode Island's Democratic Senator John Pastore. When his resolution got to the Senate floor three weeks ago, it was sidetracked almost immediately by, of all things, extraneous debate. Last week the Senate took it up again, and Pastore made a brief but impassioned speech on its behalf. No sooner was he finished than other Senators started talking on all manner and matter of other things.

Finally, late in the day, Pastore noted that "only three measly minutes" had been devoted to debate on the pending business—his resolution to hold debate to the pending business. Church called it "an indication of how this institution seems to be sinking into a quagmire, in which it thrashes about like a dinosaur about to become extinct."

Next day the Senate waxed a bit more germane. Georgia Democrat Richard Russell, an opponent of the resolution, pointed out that the rule could easily be sidestepped. If the Senate was debating an atomic energy bill, Russell suggested, and a Senator wanted to talk about cheese made from cow's milk, "all he would have to do would be to offer an amendment providing that 'nothing in this bill shall be construed to affect the price of cheese in Borneo.' " Agreed Pastore: "No matter what rule or law is passed or invented by the ingenuity of man, it is subject to violation." So noting, the Senate passed the resolution, 57 to 25.