And this will continue until we get a Democratic Senate Majority Leader with a spine.

Oh wait, that's an oxymoron.....

Larry

What you say may be true, but if the minority can block legislation by using the cloture rules, it seems reasonable that they would do it.

Without reform, necessarily legislation on life-or-death policies may enjoy the support of the House majority, the Senate majority, the president, and most Americans, and still may not pass because a small Senate minority says so.

This is all well and good. But if you were to do a poll asking Americans about the issue, surely vast majorities would have little or no knowledge of what exactly a filibuster is, never mind its history and proper role. So my point is, given that reform of the filibuster clearly needs to be at the top of the progressive "to-do" list, why isn't this issue getting more of a high profile, noisy push by liberal groups? What I worry is that, when efforts are finally under way to do something about the problem, a public that has not been educated by progressives will be easy prey for the inevitable GOP demagoguing on the issue. Maybe I'll start a Facebook group called "reform the filibuster!"

And if the Donkey-controlled house and senate and White House don't use their bully pulpit to educate the public and slam the GOP over this nonsense every opportunity they get, then they can pound sand.

Maybe I'll start a Facebook group called "reform the filibuster!"
You'd better make it a Twitter feed: the MSM has the attention span of a gerbil.

Consider a well honed Republican tactic of threatening a Constitutional Amendment to end the practice. If serious enough, this can cause moderation to avoid more drastic action.

Of course you would need either two thirds of both houses or two thirds of the state legislatures to get the process going.

What you say may be true, but if the minority can block legislation by using the cloture rules, it seems reasonable that they would do it.

That's what the nuclear option is for, If I remember my senate rules correctly...

But yes, as others have noted, its use actually assumes the body's leadership is sufficiently committed to a progressive agenda to be willing to risk a frown from David Broder. And Lord knows we can't have that.

Then this begs the question, why did the Senate change its ways, and why won't it change its ways back to what it was before?

The answer, I fear, is that the ruling class wants it that way. They do not want equality, they do not want equitable distribution of wealth and prosperity. The ruling class has decided to allow--and indeed, foster the reality--that civilized, western society devolve back into a feudal system, wherein there are those with the power, and there are the masses who support those with the power.

And Senators, by and large, are members of the ruling class, and/or are supported by the ruling class. The ruling class will see to it that nothing that will truly address inequality passes their chambers.

What has changed isn't how cloture rules are used; what has changed is how often they're used.

Ornstein's graph title is on the mark. The objective is to obstruct the business of the Senate. It will continue until the American people are told what is going on.

One thing is certain as the sun rises and falls: absolutely no restrictions on filibustering will occur until such time as republicans have a majority in the Senate.
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Lend-Lease happened in, what, 1940? There were 48 states, ergo, 96 senators, right?

How about employing the radical notion of forcing the GOP to actually mount a REAL goddamn filibuster? As it is, all they need to do is threaten to mount a filibuster, and the Dems tuck tail. I'm not under the illusion that it would necessarily be a cure-all, but until we know for sure what the impact would be if the GOP was repeatedly forced to bring the work of the Senate to a grinding halt in a very visible way, then the Dems have nobody to blame but their own cowardly selves.

If I'm reading the graph right, then filibusters from the minority Dems spiked while Clinton was still in his last term? Then the minority Dems slowed filibustering during Bush?

Anyway, you can bet that the Retardos will send that spike off the charts soon. Lemmings every one of them.

And the problem is that there will be absolutely no pressure on the Republicans to stop filibustering since most Americans have so little knowledge of how their government works that they don't even know what a filibuster is.

It's hard to get people upset enough to stop something that they don't even understand...

since most Americans have so little knowledge of how their government works that they don't even know what a filibuster is.

Including most of the people on this thread, unfortunately.

If I'm reading the graph right, then filibusters from the minority Dems spiked while Clinton was still in his last term?

You're right. And the last spike was by Republicans in the last two years when Bush was president. The reason, I suspect, is that a veto would be far more public, so a filibuster saves the Pres the embarrassment.

There's one little detail missing, though its importance questionable: The GOP spent 2001 - 2006 bitching and moaning like spoiled children about "up and down votes!" and the "will of the American people!" any time any Democrat even thought about blocking anything -- judges, legislation, et al.

Yet the day after the 2006 midterm elections, there was Trent Lott and Co. going on and on about how they'd ensure nothing got done.

And the media's response was somewhere between chirping crickets and a shrug.

If we had a better media, we'd have a better-informed electorate. And I'm betting that a better informed electorate wouldn't put up with this shit.

I'd write a letter to McCaskill asking her to put forth a measure changing the rules, but she seems more interested in blocking Obama's plans and worrying about a non-existent Social Security crisis than acting like an actual Democrat. So if anyone else can fire off an email ...

Steve, your phrasing suggests that there was some limit on the usage of the filibuster in the past, other than senatorial restraint. The rules are always in place for everything that happens in the senate: everything requires unanimous consent, or a vote. Depending on what they are voting on, different majorities are required. Rule changes take a larger majority, cutting off debate requires 60 votes, passing legislation: 50 votes.

Why do they have these different limits? You focus on one narrow rule and look for an answer to your question by considering the final requirement of a simple majority to pass a bill.

Why shouldn't rules be subject to a majority vote? Why not engage the issue more honestly as actual senators don't seem as bent out of shape as you are.

The whole "make them stage a real filibuster" think is misguided. The problem isn't the will of the current Senate leadership. It's the rules.

The key change that happened was when they changed the rules in the mid-70s so that instead of needing 67 votes to break a filibuster, you needed 60.

Good thing, right?

Wrong. At the same time they did that, they made it so that instead of it having to be 2/3 of member "present and voting," it had to be 3/5 of "sworn in members."

With the old system, you basically had a situation where 34 senators could make a lot of effort and stop a piece of legislation that they really cared about.

Then they changed it so that 41 senators can stop legislation without putting any effort into it at all - the effort all has to be on the part of those who want to break the filibuster.

That's the basics of it, and it's absurd.

"note that as recently as the 1960s, filibusters were rare (and as it turns out, largely inconsequential)" Read Caro's "Master of the Senate" on LBJ as Majority Leader and his problems with the filibuster. In the 1940's and 50's it was the white South's nuclear option to defend "their way of life."

Two thoughts:

(1) The extensive use of 'unanimous consent' to move almost everything, and the correlated use of 'secret holds' by which even one Senator can hold up legislation, have been even more pernicious than the filibuster. If you want to see what happens in a political system in which the parliament requires unanimous consent, consider Poland from about 1650 to 1795. In 1650, Poland was a going concern... but increasingly, laws passing through the Sejm, the parliament, required a unanimous vote. As time passed, the requirement became more and more rigorous (for reasons not unlike those that have favored filibuster and unanimous consent in the Senate: minorities always like such rules, and anyone can imagine being in the minority on something.)

In 1795, there was no more Poland, as its neighbors had taken advantage of the inability of the Sejm to reach any decision that gored any nobleman's axe, and had partitioned Poland into oblivion.

(2) If you want to see a modern US situation where a supermajority requirement has backfired -- enough that there is now a serious movement underway to eliminate it -- look at the State of California, where all budgetary measures require a 2/3 vote. The result has been irresponsible governing by both parties, who always gave things away in order to get the requisite 2/3...until there was nothing left to give. And then, the Republican rump, just over 1/3 in each house -- that is, outnumbered nearly 2 to 1 -- continued to block any response to the current fiscal crisis. Moreover, happy in their minority status, they also refused to propose any alternatives of their own: the Democrats in the majority owned the problem, but the Republic party minority blocked the solution.

I would be willing to bet that those 41 Republicans represent less than 41% of the country's population.

the Senate arose mostly to get the low-population states to ratify the Constitution, and to obstruct the majority - preventing tyranny of the majority and all that. Long ago it served its first useful purpose, but it continues doing the second purpose better than ever.

LBJ was able to achieve his ends in spite of the filibuster, though Wish we had someone of his caliber currently as majority leader.

Smaller states would be eaten alive by more populous ones if not for the Senate. The founding fathers were wise there.

I would be willing to bet that those 41 Republicans represent less than 41% of the country's population.

Actually if you divide the population of each state in two, assigning half to each of its senators, Republicans represent 37% of the total US population.

DUH! We've been screaming about this for 2yrs now yet nothing has been done to correct the situation.

It was never intended to operate this way and should be abandoned altogether.

Why is it everything republicans touch they ruin. Enough is enough. Reid could change this rule by getting a majority senate vote...except now we've got "the blue hogs" who've decided to join with republicans on blocking Obama's and the majority's agenda. We already know it is unconstitutional for a small minority of senators to be able to obstruct the will of the majority...so what are we gonna' do about?

btw...just in case you missed the article by Benen here about how the filibuster works...the party filibustering does not have to say a word...or even be there with all it's members...they just need one person there sitting quietly reading a book who stands up and says, anytime the other side brings up a vote to end debate, "Do you have a quorum (a majority of 60votes) then I object", and the filibuster goes on. Usually it's removed from the floor so they can go on to other business.

Sucks doesn't it.

Steve- got any links to you complaining about this while Bush was president?

Thought not.

Steve- got any links to you complaining about this while Bush was president?

Thought not.

How quickly they forget...Let me help you out a bit...google "nuclear option."

For the record, at that time, I took the position "Oh please, please, please do away with that arcane inanity. They aren't going to be the majority forever and the House does just fine without it, so let it make a meal of their ample asses in a few years..."

Unfortunately, this is a GOP trend that's only going to get worse until they provoke the necessary rule changes to stop such nonsense.

In California, 14 GOP state senators -- out of 40 in the Senate, and out of 120 state legislators total -- held up that state's budget for months, thanks to the two-thirds majority requirement in each chamber for the passage of any fiscal spending bill. I've never seen such a sustained effort at collective irresponsibility in my life.

Decatur Dem: "Lend-Lease happened in, what, 1940? There were 48 states, ergo, 96 senators, right?"

And Lend-Lease happened because the GOP's candidate for President that year, the worldly Wendell Wilkie, chose to play the part of statesman rather than political hack.

Wilkie publicly endorsed and advocated for President Roosevelt's initiatives to aid Great Britain, to the deep consternation and despair of the influential majority-isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

Roosevelt never forgot the selfless gesture, and in early 1941 tapped Wilkie as his personal envoy to Prime Minister Winston Churchill's beleaguered government in London. In 1942, Wilkie traveled to Moscow and China to represent Roosevelt in the same capacity.

Wilkie also joined with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943 to establish Freedom House, and publicly called for vigorous post-war international peacekeeping efforts in his book, One World.

Alas, like President Roosevelt, Wendell Wilkie did not live to see the end of the war, dying of a heart attack in October 1944.

How can it be changed? How can it be brought to the attention of the public. Television media, one would guess, have never heard about it and if they knew probably would not bring it up. Congress could use a little nudge.

Not only that, but to vote against cloture is almost always insincere. The people who vote against cutting off debate don't want to spend more time talking about a bill because they are genuinely unsure which way they should vote; they want to kill the bill, or extort changes, by threatening to keep it stuck in the Senate indefinitely.

Yeah, I know that's a big shock to everyone, but still, it's the nominal purpose of voting against cloture (well, the official, polite purpose), and it's an utter crock of shit.

At some point, Democrats should raise a point of order that Senate rules permit the filibuster, but not its abuse, so cloture votes will only require a simple majority for the remainder of the 111th Congress.

The elephant in the room is the elephant in the room. The founders never anticipated a collection of such dullards and dimwits as is presented by today's GOP. The rules are fine for a responsible minority. In the hands of sociopaths? Not so much.

Here's a compromise -- the minority party gets a certain number of filibusters per year. Sort of like time-outs in a pro football game, or peremptory challenges to prospective jurors in court. The minority party has to decide how and when to use them, but they don't get so many that they can filibuster everything.

Dennis-SGMM: the MSM has the attention span of a gerbil.

Be careful of how you malign gerbils. My kid had some that were a lot brighter than the present bobbleheads "as seen on TV."

That the present system needs to be reformed because it is so open to abuse is obvious. I have seen one suggestion that I think is worthwhile. It rests on the fact that the filibustering party needs only have one member there talking, while the other party needs to have a reasonable presence. I don't recall how many. If the rules were changed so that 60% of those present and voting could invoke cloture, it would make it more difficult for the minority to maintain their filibuster. They would have to maintain at least 40% of the senators present.

Another reform that just occurred to me is analogous to football games. Each side is allowed so many timeouts per half so that they can't endlessly stall. The same principle would apply. Each party gets say 10 filibusters per session, and when they use them all up, it's a new game.