I'm Ron Elving at NPR, welcome to my office hours.
Today we're going to talk about how you punish a senator.
Traditionally, the Senate has two options
— censure and expulsion.
But no one has been censured in nearly 30 years.
And no one has been expelled since … wait
for it ...
the Civil War.
But now sexual harassment and assault accusations
have reached Capitol Hill, not for the first
time, but in an atmosphere far less tolerant
than has been historically the case.
Now, the Constitution tells us that each chamber
of Congress
shall be the judge of its own members elections … and qualifications"
and that they can be disciplined for "disorderly behavior.”
It doesn’t say whether the behavior must
have happened after they were seated in Congress.
But as a practical matter, no one has ever
been disciplined for behavior prior to their election.
An expulsion would require a two-thirds vote
of the whole Senate.
And if that sounds like a high hurdle, believe me, it is.
That’s why the last time the Senate actually
voted to expel anybody, the offense was supporting
the Confederate rebellion in the 1860s.
Since then, nada.
In fact, it’s been 75 years since the Senate
even tried to vote on an expulsion.
Proceedings have begun against 18 senators
who were not expelled –
although six of them did resign.
The latest senators to do that were John Ensign
of Nevada in 2011
and Bob Packwood of Oregon in 1995.
Both cases, by the way, involved allegations
of sexual improprieties.
The Senate does have a lesser disciplinary
option called censure.
And it only requires a majority vote, but
it’s been used even less often than expulsion
– just nine times in all the nation’s history.
The latest censure came in 1990 against Sen.
David Durenberger of Minnesota.
He was accused of improper reimbursement for
certain kinds of expenses and donations.
Censure doesn’t carry any penalty other
than the public shaming,
although it does tend to signal the end of a career.
Only one of the nine senators who were censured
was ever re-elected.
Will censure be back for an encore in the
politically and emotionally charged atmosphere
of Washington in 2018?
It’s an election year, and this time, the
drama may be starting
well before before the first primaries.
So I’m Ron Elving for NPR, thank you for
coming to my office hours.
