Sandy Levin­son makes a good case that Wednes­day is the acid test for the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to “Change We Can Believe In.” On Wednes­day, the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, will be asked to rule that the Sen­ate is a non-con­tin­u­ing body, which he will do if he has any polit­i­cal instincts or a desire to accom­plish any­thing in the next 2 years. That will allow the Sen­ate to set new rules by a sim­ple major­i­ty, new rules that would restrict the use of the fil­i­buster and oth­er obstruc­tion­ist tactics.

This must hap­pen. The last two years have seen a near­ly-dys­func­tion­al Sen­ate, with leg­is­la­tion com­mand­ing sig­nif­i­cant sup­port by the Amer­i­can peo­ple, passed by the House, and endorsed by a major­i­ty of Sen­a­tors, nonethe­less die because of unprece­dent­ed acts of obstruc­tion. With a more close­ly divid­ed Sen­ate, this will only get worse in years to come. The fil­i­buster was an offense against the Con­sti­tu­tion for its entire his­to­ry, but nev­er gen­er­at­ed this lev­el of ire because it was nev­er wide­ly used. Now it has been, and now it must die.

Prof. Levin­son strikes one false note, writ­ing that after this his­toric Sen­ate vote:

The Pres­i­dent should hold a news con­fer­ence explain­ing why reform of the Sen­ate is absolute­ly essential

The Pres­i­dent did this already. It was his 2010 State of the Union, a speech which skill­ful­ly built to this con­clu­sion by list­ing the pri­or­i­ties of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, cit­ing leg­is­la­tion passed by the House which would address that need, and then observ­ing that the bill was stalled in the Senate.

Now, the House has passed a jobs bill that includes some of these steps. As the first order of busi­ness this year, I urge the Sen­ate to do the same, and I know they will. â€¦

a com­pre­hen­sive ener­gy and cli­mate bill with incen­tives that will final­ly make clean ener­gy the prof­itable kind of ener­gy in Amer­i­ca. I am grate­ful to the House for pass­ing such a bill last year. And this year I’m eager to help advance the bipar­ti­san effort in the Sen­ate. â€¦

I urge the Sen­ate to fol­low the House and pass a bill that will revi­tal­ize our com­mu­ni­ty col­leges, which are a career path­way to the chil­dren of so many work­ing fam­i­lies. â€¦

I’ve called for a bipar­ti­san fis­cal com­mis­sion … This can’t be one of those Wash­ing­ton gim­micks that lets us pre­tend we solved a prob­lem [TfK: It was].… the Sen­ate blocked a bill that would have cre­at­ed this com­mis­sion. So I’ll issue an exec­u­tive order that will allow us to go for­ward, because I refuse to pass this prob­lem on to anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans. â€¦

Of course, none of these reforms will even hap­pen if we don’t also reform how we work with one anoth­er. Now, I’m not naïve. I nev­er thought that the mere fact of my elec­tion would ush­er in peace and har­mo­ny and some post-par­ti­san era. I knew that both par­ties have fed divi­sions that are deeply entrenched. And on some issues, there are sim­ply philo­soph­i­cal dif­fer­ences that will always cause us to part ways. These dis­agree­ments, about the role of gov­ern­ment in our lives, about our nation­al pri­or­i­ties and our nation­al secu­ri­ty, they’ve been tak­ing place for over 200 years. They’re the very essence of our democracy.

But what frus­trates the Amer­i­can peo­ple is a Wash­ing­ton where every day is Elec­tion Day. We can’t wage a per­pet­u­al cam­paign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embar­rass­ing head­lines about the oth­er side ‑– a belief that if you lose, I win. Nei­ther par­ty should delay or obstruct every sin­gle bill just because they can. The con­fir­ma­tion of I’m speak­ing to both par­ties now. The con­fir­ma­tion of well-qual­i­fied pub­lic ser­vants should­n’t be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few indi­vid­ual sen­a­tors. â€¦

To Democ­rats, I would remind you that we still have the largest major­i­ty in decades, and the peo­ple expect us to solve prob­lems, not run for the hills. And if the Repub­li­can lead­er­ship is going to insist that 60 votes in the Sen­ate are required to do any busi­ness at all in this town — a super­ma­jor­i­ty — then the respon­si­bil­i­ty to gov­ern is now yours as well. Just say­ing no to every­thing may be good short-term pol­i­tics, but it’s not lead­er­ship. We were sent here to serve our cit­i­zens, not our ambi­tions. So let’s show the Amer­i­can peo­ple that we can do it together.

Sad­ly, No! called it “a pret­ty giant F.U. to the Sen­ate.” And it was. The Pres­i­dent laid down his mark­er in the high­est pro­file speech of the year. He told us why reform is essen­tial. It’s time change arrived in the Senate.