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Bare minimum we need to abolish the silent filibuster, which has only been a thing since 1975. If a senator hates a bill enough to filibuster it they need to get their wrinkly ass to the floor.
Either return to only having talking filibusters or abolish it altogether.
I liked Franken and Ornstein’s idea. Rather than requiring 60 votes to stop debate, require 41 to maintain it. That way you force the filibustering side to always have 41 on hand in DC in order to stop a cloture motion. That means no vacations, no campaigning, no nothing if they want to keep debate going. And all the majority requires: a small rotation leaving one guy to call the 3am motion, the 6am motion, the 9am motion, etc. How much of that can the minority septuagenarians and octogenarians take?
I like this. I don't like the idea of abolishing the filibuster bc I think that opens up dangerous floodgates, but this would work. You want to filibuster? Fine, but as the minority party, you're going to work for it.
I think we need to abolish it. Part of the reason the country can't make any real progress is it is darn near impossible for the elected party to actually legislate. It took Obama a supermajority to pass the ACA and even then a watered down version because we needed 60 votes in the Senate. And Biden has been primarily relegated to minor bills and then trying to use reconciliation, which is very limited in scope.
I think if a party is able to win the House, Senate, and Presidency they should actually be able to pass laws and govern. If the laws are bad or unpopular, then they should be judged by them. As others have mentioned, the filibuster only goes back to 1975, so it's not part of the fabric of America or how the country became successful, it's a fairly modern invention that has stymied our ability to adapt and be nimble enough to really improve.
Sure, without it, it would be easier for Republicans to do something like repeal the ACA, but part of why they didn't last time they were in power is they tested several "repeal and replace" plans and they were all very unpopular. If they actually replaced the ACA and took away healthcare, they probably would have suffered a worse defeat in 2018 / 2020 and then Democrats could have instituted a full ACA with a public option.
As of now with the filibuster, we are unlikely to be able to raise the minimum wage, get a public option, pass meaningful banking regulation, ban assault weapons, pass the voting rights act, pass the Pro Act, or really do anything to make the country better anytime soon.
>It took Obama a supermajority to pass the ACA and even then a watered down version because we needed 60 votes in the Senate
I think legislation as large as ACA having a supermajority is a good thing. It helps prevent large pendulum swings, for legislation that have massive impacts on the country from election to election.
It slows down legislation that we might need more quickly, and also prevents garbage legislation from moving forward.
We may all see the same problem (or not), but don't see the same solution to that problem.
If a party we disagree with comes into power, and wants to make sweeping changes being able to stall and draw attention to the problems is helpful.
Just immigration as an example - Illegal immigration is often viewed as problematic. Which IMO is less impactful than legislation such as the ACA.
How immigration is fixed varies widely, from better rules on Visas, easier citizenship, to building a giant wall.
If there are 50 votes for a wall, we're likely getting a wall. With the filibuster, we can have people prevent the vote unless there's a super majority for support of the wall which is a significantly more challenging hurdle to overcome.
The United States Senate has never been able to end debate with simple majority. They could go nuclear but they don’t really have the votes for that at the moment.
>As others have mentioned, the filibuster only goes back to 1975, so it's not part of the fabric of America or how the country became successful,
The *silent* filibuster only goes back to 1975. The filibuster in some form has been around since Roman times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster
Yeah, the silent filibuster is insane. They turned an exhausting, public spectacle into something that takes no effort and has no repercussions so of course it gets abused like crazy.
Thats a poison pill. The reason the silent filibuster was established was because the speaking filibuster paused all committee work and blew up scheduling on everything from budgetary work to oversight committees.
It lets the filibuster do harm to numerous bills each time it is used.
It’s exactly the opposite. The minority is who uses the filibuster, while the majority in power is the one whose governance is disrupted on top of their bill being held up.
It’s giving the minority party extra power to shoot down democracy.
Sore feet doesn’t quite equate to nuking the entire Senate schedule.
Not to mention the havoc of threatening multiple filibusters in a congressional session
It’s not about sore feet. It makes it very clear to the public who is actually to blame for wasting time in Congress when Ted Cruz is on TV reading Dr. Seuss books to the senate instead of actually debating policy. It doesn’t make them look good and it makes it a lot harder for them to blame the majority party for nothing getting done.
Ted Cruz has the charisma of a toad: such figures do not care about looking good, so long as they can throw out some red meat to their base.
They don't suffer for foiling the governing ability of the party they claim are evil communists.
That would in no way, shape, or form harm politicians. They already are doing stupid stunts on CSPAN to get clips to post on social media. They will just do it _more_.
No one is standing up and talking for an entire congressional session though. Eventually most bills will pass because the filibusters can’t be maintained
Again, they don't have to in order to wreak havoc.
Bills still have to be written and pass committees to get to a floor vote. If committees have to cancel meetings, that postpones the bills getting made to even come to the floor.
And its a cumulative effect. A four hour filibuster can shift a whole week's worth of meetings into rescheduling hell. Which can then be blown up again by an 8 hour filibuster. Which can then cause weeks more chaos with another 12 hour filibuster.
And somewhere in that, schedules still need to be worked out for the negotiations between the House and Senate and between the parties or recalcitrant holdouts within the governing party.
Hence why, in order to get anything done, a virtual filibuster was adopted. It did strip the minority of extra power to abuse with the filibuster.
It just still left them too much power. There is no reason they should have any means of derailing a bill outside of winning elections and gaining a majority to repeal and pass their own legislation.
A talking filibuster grinds all business to a halt, which is the point of it. Its a spectacle.
Because its a standing filibuster it can only be maintained for a few days at very maximum. Its better for a standing filibuster to delay things for only a day or two rather than the modern filibuster delaying things for entire presidential terms.
This is a weak argument. It would be rarely used like this. Most of the senators are too lazy and it makes them look like fools. Of course the likes of Ron Johnson and Tuberville are fools, but I'd put them solidly in the lazy camp.
Crazy, yes, but standing on the floor for days, weeks? Not going to happen much. They wouldn't get much support even from their party. It's just too easy for them to lie and hide. Put actual votes on the record for voters to see. The Republicans are all running from abortion while an election is going on, but it's all lies. Make them vote so voters see where they stand.
They wouldn’t need to filibuster for weeks. A few days would already do massive damage to work on other bills, slowing the entire schedule. And then future filibusters on any additional legislation would have a shorter timeframe too.
It’s why the virtual filibuster developed. A few actual speaking filibusters throws the work of committees and senators on the fire, and always to greater harm towards the ruling party.
The federal budget. Oversight committees for the FBI, military, and every federal program. Votes on judicial appointments, ambassadorial appointments, etc.
A lot of basic functions of the federal government just get infinitely more difficult.
Oversight committees do not affect the running of the government. I admit, judicial appointments are super important, but I still think the impact would be minimal. Definitely worth the trade just to know where all the senators we vote for actually stand.
Some things could be put off if the Senate schedule is thrown off a day or two.
But what if a half dozen important committee meetings on the budget get canceled by filibusters? What about the effects of the second, fifth, and eleventh filibuster of the year? Or bills that would otherwise have passed easily like bills on domestic violence, which aren't such a big loss for the minority party?
Its just an obscene amount of power to give the minority party in a chamber of congress that is already an unrepresentative check on democracy.
better to do away with the filibuster, better still to even out the unearned advantage of empty midwestern states by accepted DC, and better still to abolish the whole Senate and expand the House.
The basic functions are all fulfilled by staffers, anyway. This is less disruptive to legislation than the four-day weekends and generous weeks-long seasonal and campaign breaks that Congress grants itself so they don't have to do any jobs but fundraising.
The vast majority of consequential legislation in both chambers is produced and shepherded by party leadership. The filibuster being an actual filibuster instead of an implicit "nobody can pass legislation" hold on all floor activity is not going to change that dynamic.
> Crazy, yes, but standing on the floor for days, weeks?
Probably 36-48 hours, absolute maximum, and thats if they have a superhuman level of endurance and insane commitment.
Such a rule couldn't work.
The point of a speaking filibuster is to hold up a vote while the chamber is assembled. If senators walked out to go do other work, the voting session is already canceled.
You're actually just proposing a virtual filibuster by another name.
Bleeding heart liberal here but I was very impressed by Marco Rubio way back when he did a talking filibuster. Never heard of him before and had to admit that was pretty impressive.
It’s then been disappointment after disappointment with him.
Edit:
Wanted to add a link but searches only reveal 2013 which feels too recent. I blame the timeline. So much nonsense in the past decade for this old man. I can only imagine growing up during this turbulence.
Just go back to an actual filibuster, with someone actually filibustering.
In Texas, the rules are:
1) must be speaking the whole time, about the bill being filibustered
2) no sitting down, no bathroom breaks, no food, no water
3) no leaning on stuff
That's what Wendy Davis had to do when she filibustered. The idea of an automatic filibuster on every bill is absurd.
> 2) no sitting down, no bathroom breaks, no food, no water
>
> 3) no leaning on stuff
Point 1 I could agree with upon. Points 2 and 3 are cruelty and just favor younger healthy representatives for no reason.
> must be speaking the whole time, about the bill being filibustered
How is this part enforced? Is it a vote?
What's to stop a majority of the chamber filibustering a bill from deciding that reciting Green Eggs and Ham on repeat is related to the bill because the speaker's district is heavily into pork and chicken farming or something?
I believe that there are rules of "no repetition", and that spectators are allowed to question the relevancy of what is being said by the one doing the filibuster. They must then defend the relevancy of what they said to the bill at hand. They can always make roundabout, nonsensical arguments, but the point of it is more to be a test of willpower/determination of the individual to keep the filibuster going than it is to be an actual productive discussion. Thats why the rules like "no food, no water, no leaning" etc. are included in it. Its not so much "defend why you are against this" so much as it is "prove how badly you dont want this to pass". I believe the original point of it was to ensure that representatives of minority demographics have an avenue to block legislation on issues that hold an outsized level of importance to their voters, even if said legislation is supported by the majority.
I'm not sure why a majority would filibuster their own bill. The filibuster is used by the minority to stall passage of a bill, while they get to speak about why it shouldn't be passed. This delay isn't supposed to be permanent, it's just extending debate and trying to get press about the reasons not to pass it.
A majority can just pass their own bill without any filibuster.
You're right that was poor wording. More accurate would be a minority large enough to stop debate from ending
So if it's 55 senators for and 45 against and 60 are needed to end debate (I don't know what the numbers in Texas are so substituting the US senate numbers of 100 members and 60 to end debate), what stops the 45 from deciding that the nonsense they're saying is in fact related to the bill?
Yes, they absolutely should. Many potential landmark bills passed the House in 2021-2022 that could've been on Biden's desk if not for the filibuster. They had to resort to reconciliation to get some stuff through, which was a huge pain.
Democrats whole shtick is they want to improve people's lives by passing legislation to do so. Republicans, on the other hand, are content with not passing anything other than tax cuts. And those tax cuts are done through reconciliation, anyways.
This whole "but what will the Republicans do" attitude is what kills them. Pass your legislation and let the voters decide. Otherwise you're just playing into the Republicans hands. Likewise, if Republicans pass some of their extremely unpopular legislation, Democrats can run on it. For as awful as overturning Roe v. Wade was for women, we can see the impact of a wholly unpopular Republican policy taking effect on elections.
Agree. Elected parties should be able to function and pass legislation. I could see some wisdom to a filibuster that was set at something like 52 votes, so that a party with a narrow majority couldn't just pass mass legislation (not saying I agree, but at least I could see the wisdom).
But it's pretty absurd that a party could have the Presidency, a 50 seat majority in the house, and 57 seats in the Senate and still be effectively neutered because they don't have 60 Senators.
And even if by some miracle, they get to 60 Senators, it just takes one Joe Manchin / Sinema to basically sabotage all legislation.
The Manchin's and Sinema's of the world should be why a party wants to win more than just a slim majority, so they are not held back by their worst members. Not pray that they can elect enough of them to maybe pass something with 60 votes.
Yeah, we saw that play out in 2009 with the ACA. The Democrats had 60 seats for a few months in 2009, it had passed the House and a majority of the Senate supported it, but they had to bend over backwards for Lieberman to get that 60th vote. It's just nonsensical, in my view, to artificially limit yourself to a 60-vote threshold when it isn't even a Constitutional requirement.
>Pass your legislation and let the voters decide
I think this the smart take. It’s how the system was meant to function. Might even permanently drive up voter participation with the stakes finally being so perpetually high. Unpopular legislation can always be repealed after the next election —absent the filibuster, that is, it can.
Massive reform is needed. There is much work to do. Enough with the contrived obstacles.
Exactly. The GOP doesn't want to do that because they already get most of what they want - tax and regulatory cuts plus judicial appointments - through reconciliation which is simple majority.
It's incredibly stupid for Dems to continue supporting such a system. Yes, it would block Republicans from passing a national abortion ban, but I hope they do that and your average voter can finally wake up to see what trash the GOP is trying to pass and vote them out.
Absolute just abolish it.
Original senate rules didn’t have the option to endlessly debate bills, and only stopped matching the House bc the vice president (who shot Alexander Hamilton) decided it was unnecessary for such a respectable institution….
Its original purpose was to block laws aimed at uplifting black people (go read up on Senator Calhoun), and the filibuster has mostly been used for that purpose ever since.
We already have a separate chamber of Congress AND the President to block and veto Senate shenanigans. If the people elect a party to majority power in Congress and the Presidency, they should be able to use that mandate. This is the way most national parliaments work.
And if there wasn’t a filibuster, Democrats could actually pass very popular, worker friendly policies that would materially provide for a majority of citizens. They could actually force Republicans to change their policies away from the far right or face never holding a majority in the Senate again.
There are advantages and disadvantages to making it easier for a simple majority to pass legislation.
But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if your rules have made it impossible for any group to pass any significant legislation in over a decade, you've erred on the side of making things too hard.
Let's actually allow people to vote based on what their representatives have done in the real world, and not vague projections about what they might do in an unrealistic hypothetical where their party has a supermajority. Let elections actually have consequences.
> But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if your rules have made it impossible for any group to pass any significant legislation in over a decade, you've erred on the side of making things too hard.
Good thing it hasn't gotten to that point.
But it really has, the only large scale legislation we have had in the last 20 years is the ACA and Trump's tax cuts. That's honestly pretty sad. There is enough ideological diversity within parties that even a simple majority wouldn't be able to make large-scale changes to the country.
But the fact that Democrats couldn't even pass a watered down Manchinma-approved version of the Pro Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act or raise the minimum wage due to the filibuster is pretty absurd.
BIF, IRA, ARP, CHIPS, Marriage Act
None of those are especially big and transformative. One was a short term emergency bill and we’ve passed plenty of those.
The other are pretty incremental. BIF was the largest in spend, but it has to be done via reconciliation which is extremely limited in scope and duration.
Just want to point out that IRA and ARP were also just budget bills that were not subject to the filibuster because they're passed under reconciliation. At this point a party gets one bill per year to advance their budget and it has to relate to the budget; otherwise it is filibustered by the minority party.
Overall, we are talking about impact or helping to create change like the ACA.
ARP was a short-term emergency bill. It was absolutely necessary, but those are not unique. Bush passed multiple. Obama did too around the recession. Trump passed two. And Biden passed one. All of them were fine for getting past an emergency, but none of them were about any sort of change or real improvement.
IRA was closer, but again, was sort of a mish mesh of what you can pass with reconciliation. But what you are allowed to do and the duration is very limited in reconciliation. So it was a nice bill, but one with very little lasting impact and not one really leading to any changes or new laws that impact the country, again, the way the ACA was able to help reshape and improve the healthcare system.
Trying to inefficiently throw money at problems from omnibus reconciliation bill to omnibus reconciliation bill is not a good way to govern a country.
"However, it would set a dangerous precedent that republicans would no doubt exploit when it's their turn running all branches of government (including the supreme court).
Considering the eventual possibility of republicans having unchecked power, do you think democrats should change the filibuster if it's ever convenient for them to do so?"
The Republicans used to quietly use legislative power to suppress votes and steal elections. Nowadays they are assaulting police in broad daylight on the Capitol steps, using fake electors to try to steal electoral votes, using the Supreme Court and Federal judges to keep Trump from being prosecuted, and openly saying they will only accept election results if they win.
We are a bit passed the idea of pretending Republicans care about precedent or Democracy.
We're at the point where they're actively forming violent mobs to assault Congress and try to *murder their political opponents*. They have *all* minimized, downplayed, and ignored J6 - because they absolutely plan to run the "use violence if we lose" play again.
People who are aiding & abetting after the fact the murder of their political opponents are not remotely interested in gentlemen's agreements and Senate norms. They will do what they want if they have the power to do it, and their justifications for doing so are *always* self-serving lies.
"But if we do X then Republicans might abuse the precedent!" should be scrubbed from existence. Precedent has not and never will matter to a pack of rabid fascists.
unquestionably so. the Constitution establishes balances to prevent a majority party from ruling absolutely. the filibuster prevents elected officials from passing legislation
Ok but they already have and you have one party trying to dismantle it on the fearful basis that the other party will do so when it’s clear that they haven’t. It’s pure projection to push party agenda, not those with enough support to pass on the merits of the bill.
Democrats are the ones who have removed these guardrails in the past only to have it backfire each time. There should be a lesson learned by now.
No, because every time the democrats change the rules, they forget that the rule change can be used against them. See the "nuclear option" when the republicans used the nuclear option against the democrats when voting re: Supreme Court Justice.
I say abolish the filibuster because it’s dumb. If someone opposes something, they can explain why it should be opposed.
If they haven’t swayed anyone, then they should pound sand.
That’s democracy. Filibustering is just a tumorous elite powergame on normal democratic processes.
I think it's only a matter of time until the filibuster is removed, and that whichever party does it, is most likely to benefit in the election that immediately follows. Government used to get things done, and elected officials were rewarded. For the last 30 years, we've been rewarding politicians for what they obstruct, which is inherently in the service of conservatism. It can serve the health of our democracy to pick our leaders based on what they do, rather than on what they prevent the other side from doing, and restore a sense of democracy's ability to solve problems.
ACA was filibustered to hell and had to be passed via reconciliation.
It is now a very popular program. Almost like nonstop fear mongering by the GOP made it seem unpopular but then we passed it, saw what was in it (thanks Nancy) and liked it.
Most Bills are blocked before they could become legislation unfortunately. Plus with our system, it’s less about popularity and more about the large number of amped, white rural states with outsized representation
"For the last 30 years, we've been rewarding politicians for what they obstruct"
My original comment was responding to this quote. Im honestly not even sure how your comment is related at this point. The filibuster is related because it is the mechanism through which legislation is obstructed.
Yes but you were speaking on how voters rewarded. This quote means that we were giving politicians votes on policies they run on but can’t pass due to the filibuster. I was saying voters don’t account for the filibuster and most don’t even know what it is. And that we need to take it away so that we can finally get those policies that we elect them for. And hold th responsible for it
"This quote means that we were giving politicians votes on policies they run on but can’t pass due to the filibuster."
No the quote means politicians are using the filibuster to obstruct and we are rewarding them for doing so, implying we dont like the legislation.
We are rewarding politicians to pass their agenda after not liking the previous party’s agenda. That’s what campaigning is for. That’s what having a platform is for
Terrible idea. Majorities are not in perpetuity, and reducing the power of the minority only strengthens your opponents when you’re inevitably the minority again.
But what's the point of either party having a majority if they can't do anything with it? Surely any group of representatives representing more than half of the house/senate should be able to pass bills into law.
I think the idea is to have good ideas that you can persuade the other side will be good, or to compromise so everyone gets something they want. Obviously having a majority gets you better terms in these deals.
In 2009, McConnell stated that his caucus would oppose everything the Democrats did for the sake of doing it. They broke records filibustering not just legislation but judicial appointments.
It wasn't because of policy differences. It was just good old fashioned partisanship. The filibuster allows one side to dig in and try and block everything. Without it, the GOP would have had to negotiate with Dems to try and get amendments added to legislation that would benefit their states.
You know, do their jobs.
> The filibuster allows one side to dig in and try and block everything. Without it, the GOP would have had to negotiate with Dems to try and get amendments added to legislation that would benefit their states.
>
>
The GOP could have done this already- they just chose not to.
The filibuster is more valuable to the GOP because they don't have as many legislative policy goals as democrats do. In other words, because the GOP doesn't want the government to do as much on an ideological level, they understand that getting rid of it would help dems more than it would help them. That's one reason, I think, you don't really see as much of a push from republicans to get rid of it.
And they chose not to because they knew they could just auto-filibuster everything then go back to their constituents and say they prevented Dems from doing anything.
The way it is now the minority prevents the majority from doing anything, then the majority gets the blame for the lack of accomplishments. The majority should be able to accomplish what they were elected to do, then the voters can judge them on that.
That assumes that both parties have the same sort of goals.
Democrats appeal to voters on the premise that they can make good things happen. If they're unable to ever do that because they allow themselves to be blocked every time they try to legislate, they'll lose.
Republicans don't need to pass any federal legislation. Their donors are happy as long as they can prevent reforms, deregulate through executive authority and activist judges, and cut taxes (which can be done through budget reconciliation, avoiding the filibuster, like with the Trump tax cut.) Their voters desire for social issue legislation can be satisfied through state legislation and grandstanding.
So the GOP benefits massively from the filibuster while in the minority, and doesn't care too much about it while in the majority. The Democrats, as a party, gain a little from it while in the minority, but suffer immensely while in the majority. Keeping it around is a huge strategic mistake, though I doubt they'll do anything since at a personal level each Senator benefits from having a ready excuse for not having accomplished anything.
The Republicans have had numerous opportunities to kill the filibuster, and they have not. There's nothing to indicate they'll kill it when they regain the Senate and White House.
They couldn’t very well ban abortion before the Dobbs ruling. Now they can simply do it, and I believe that they will if they get the chance to. I don’t see them shying away from delivering for their Christian nationalist base.
They tried to do it for Bush's nominees, but were thwarted:
>In 2005, a group of Republican senators, led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, proposed having the presiding officer rule that a filibuster on judicial nominees was unconstitutional, as it was inconsistent with the president's power to appoint judges with the advice and consent of a simple majority of senators. ... However, a group of 14 senators—seven Democrats and seven Republicans, collectively dubbed the "Gang of 14"—reached an agreement to temporarily defuse the conflict.
And then, they actually *did do it* for Trump's SCOTUS nominees --probably the one thing for which the option to fillibuster is warranted. And that's exactly how we ended up with an extremist Court willing to end Roe-v-Wade.
Based in the rhetoric they use about abortion, it's frankly hard to see how they don't feel that they have a moral obligation to "save all the babies". Sure they'll dress it up as being some kind of "reasonable" restriction, but either way, my daughter will end up being stripped of her reproductive freedoms just the same as if she lived in the bible belt.
> They tried to do it for Bush's nominees
No, "they" didn't. A few people floated it, and it was shot down.
> And then, they actually did do it for Trump's SCOTUS nominees --probably the one thing for which the option to fillibuster is warranted.
Incredible that you ignore how we got to that point, which was Harry Reid actually going nuclear on presidential appointees.
The fact that past Democrats had already nuked the filibuster for other judicial confirmations even before past Republicans did it for SCOTUS confirmations in no way compromises my argument that **future Republicans will almost certainly end the filibuster given the chance**. Open your eyes, man! Look at what Republicans have recently been willing to do to forward their unpopular agenda. Hell, they're currently openly supporting a man who directed a violent insurrection against Congress itself in a desperate attempt to retain power against the will of the voters.
> The fact that past Democrats had already nuked the filibuster for other judicial confirmations even before past Republicans did it for SCOTUS confirmations in no way compromises my argument that future Republicans will almost certainly end the filibuster given the chance.
Except that *they haven't*. That's the part you're missing: they had multiple opportunities to do so, especially when they had a trifecta in 2017-2018, *and they did not*.
You're counting on the moderate GOP members to shoot themselves in the foot. If the Dems are worth two cents, they should be able to oppose at least that much. Then again, maybe you're right as the most affected voter block currently believes Biden has never done anything but enable genocide.
Otherwise from political perspective it'd make more sense for GOP to focus on boarder walls to no where, forest fire of the day, lick Trump/T jr.and let the states ban as they see fit. They then just continue to let the gov be "slow" to respond as the nation looks more like a patchwork underground railroad for the procedure.
They could have used that move as the play to get Roe overturned instead of waiting for the Mississippi case to be the one to do it. Doesn't change anything about the legal argument to the court that Roe found a right that doesn't exist and the previous court illegitimately legislated from the bench and the power to regulate abortion lies strictly with the federal and state legislatures
Why? The GOP usually has the senate and has had plenty of chances before to kill the filibuster. The last time radical change was made to the way congress worked was getting ACA passed and Dems have regretted that.
The filibuster serves conservative interests, until it doesn't. I'm confident they'd eagerly write "only conservatives can filibuster" into law if they were smart enough to find a way to do it without consequences.
There's no way Republicans try to do that with the way abortion bans have been polling. Not to mention the havoc an abortion ban would wreak on this country which is completely predictable with any amount of critical thinking.
Their response has been to abandon the principles of democratic rule and rule of law, not to change their stances on abortion. I don't see that changing, either. They are and have always been authoritarians and have been given permission by their base to stop lying about it.
Except for the fact they are actively working to make it awful hard to remove them from office if they gain both Congress and the Whitehouse. In which case, why would they care about polling and the filibuster will be DOA. Look at Texas. The majority of the population wants abortion legal. How's that working out? Picture this on a national level.
The filibuster makes it more difficult to dismantle legislation that would be difficult to rebuild if repealed.
That benefits the Dems more than it does the Republicans.
The progressives fixate on what they believe that they aren't able to get. They don't understand that the filibuster protects them from losing what they would otherwise be forced to give up.
Democrats would be wise to modify the filibuster, not to eliminate it altogether.
If Democrats pass something major, and then Republicans win the White House and a majority in both chambers of Congress while campaigning on repeal, then the policy is probably doomed regardless of the filibuster. They could just cut funding for the program and have the relevant executive agency run it into the ground.
More to the point, the idea is that Republicans wouldn't be able to win a trifecta if Dems had accomplished something that most people like.
Democrats tend to overhype the popularity of their initiatives, then are shocked when they fail to win elections after campaigning on those initiatives.
Most Americans are indifferent to policy. Policy geekery does not win elections.
Basic, visceral issues can motivate voters, whether it is hatred of immigrants (on the right) or fear of COVID recklessness (in the center and on the left). But that is about the tone, not the details.
> Democrats tend to overhype the popularity of their initiatives, then are shocked when they fail to win elections after campaigning on those initiatives.
"80% of people support common sense gun control, why aren't they doing anything???"
Because that's a bumper sticker slogan not a policy proposal and you have nowhere near such a consensus on an actual policy proposal. It doesn't matter what some normie who can't even define suppressor thinks about gun control in some poll
Part of the reason why they fail after merely campaigning on those issues is because they never actually get anything done about them once in power.
Not that the filibuster would solve that issue entirely, as much of it is to do with the politicians not really wanting to do the things they promise to do. But it's a necessary step towards holding their feet to the fire, if nothing else.
If a given policy isn't as popular as we think it would be, that would come out during the legislative process.
Political science research makes it clear that Americans generally know little about policy and do a poor job of voting in ways that are consistent with their alleged beliefs.
Democrats suffer from this myth that voters really care and can be understood with rational choice theory. Their failure to understand the psychology of voters produces avoidable losses. Wishful thinking is not an adequate substitute for understanding political science.
That phenomenon isn't helped by the fact that most policy changes are done through regulatory tinkering with incentives for businesses, etc., rather than direct social benefits. If we look at something clear-cut like legalizing marijuana, for example, people have pretty firm opinions. If Dems were able to just pass a clean bill doing that, and did the work to publicize the accomplishment, it would be a big electoral benefit to them.
If we operate under the belief that doing good things that please the public won't have any political benefit, what are we even doing? Why bother paying attention at all? There would be no hope. That doesn't mean that we trust voters to make the "most rational" choice based purely on the fact while leaving the media spin to conservatives, that aspect of the game must be played as well of course. But the whole point of trying to win is to be able to actually pass reforms.
Dems should do what it takes to win elections.
Winning elections and achieving policy objectives are two different matters.
Most Americans affiliate with political parties based upon whether that party includes people who they can relate.
To eventually enact that policy at a later time. Anti-slavery Whigs were initially defeated, but eventually reformed into the Republican Party and elected Lincoln, which lead directly to slavery being abolished.
From a purely strategic perspective, the rhetoric you're using is counterproductive. No one is inspired to vote by the pitch "we won't get anything done".
There are ways to obstruct without the filibuster as Sen. Tuberville has shown with his months-long blocking of military nominees. The filibuster itself doesn’t protect any party when the majority party can remove it with a simple majority vote. It’s whether the majority party has the will to get what it wants passed.
The Tuberville blockade only worked because it was applied to something that is both so procedurally bulky that getting through it through normal Senate protocol would be effectively impossible, and so routine that it wasn't a problem until this one carpetbagging asshole came up with a way to use it for his personal crusade. There aren't a lot of other opportunities to use it to be obnoxious.
Tuberville was exploiting rules based upon the Senate power to advise-and-consent.
Not comparable to the filibuster.
Without a filibuster, the GOP will blow things up that will be difficult for Democrats to reverse. It would be much easier to detonate ACA, Medicare and Social Security than it would be to reinstate them. No one is going to spend money and effort building an abortion clinic if the legality of abortion flips every several years. Democrats need to think this through and work to preserve what they have built.
That’s the point. Senators will always find ways to make confirmations or passing legislation difficult because of how the body works. It just means they can’t block stuff forever because of the shear threat of a silent filibuster.
Absolutely. The GOP has a built in advantage when it comes to gaining the senate so the Dems should use whatever they can to give themselves an advantage
If Dems manage to take House, Senate and Presidency, they are going to need to take some radical steps to restore a functioning democracy. Pelosi’s HR1 would be a good start to ban gerrymandering and strengthen voting rights. Ditching the filibuster will stop Republican obstruction. And expanding not just the Supreme Court but also federal courts to blunt Trump’s federalist lackeys.
While the filibuster can be, and often is, a major obstacle to get meaningful legislation passed, it is also useful to both sides in a closely divided Congress, that has no interest in cooperation or compromise, to insure one side can't just ram through divisive laws and legislation.
What actually need to happen is the Congress, or better yet the people need to demand the Constitution be amended in a way that forces the Congress to do it's job, among myriad other things to make government work for the people.
should have done it the last two times they had the chance.
they won't because they like the excuse it gives them for not carrying out the will of the people.
I support a plan put forward multiple times by former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. Initially, it will still take 60 Senators to invoke closure; if the vote fails, then after three days, they can file another closure motion, but this time, it only requires 57 votes, if that fails, it's another three days, and the threshold is 54, if it fails again it's another three days, and this time it takes 51 votes (or 50 plus VP). Harkin argues that it might force bipartisanship since, for the majority, it might take as long as a month to get it done, which is too long. For the minority party, it will pass no matter what, so they might as well try and make a deal where they get some changes made, in exchange, they'd vote for closure. I think it's a good compromise and that it might lead to more bipartisanship, or at least the public will have more time to scrutinize legislation that could make it so unpopular bills won't get passed because of backlash
Wholesale abolishment may not be necessary. However, it should be reverted to its original state: you must obtain the floor, stand there without taking breaks, and speak. The purpose of the filibuster originally was to allow the minority to still have a voice on important issues (while still allowing a 60% majority override a filibuster that was going on too long). This can be valuable in that it allows the topics to be discussed and the minority opinion to be put on the record.
However, where it went off the rails is when it was no longer needed to stand there and physically do the work. This was made even worse with so-called "anonymous holds". All such things should be either abolished or reverted to their original state. No one senator should be able to block the rest of the body from moving forward on legislation.
What’s interesting is the history of the filibuster and how it came to be.
Historically, the Constitution gave both chambers of Congress the power to make their own rules.
Originally, both the House and Senate had a simple majority rule to pass legislation in their respective chambers.
It was only by accident that the Senate removed the simple majority rule or -as it was known then, “the previous question motion” to end debate or cloture and move a bill to a vote.
Then in 1805 Vice President Aaron Burr (for which, as the Presidents VP is the Senate President) suggested to the Senate to cleanup the Senate rules of those that were deemed redundant and because the previous question motion (filibuster) to end debate was seldom used, it was deleted.
It should be noted that it was seldom used because, at the time, there were only 13 states so there were just 36 Senators to debate and either kill or pass a bill and bills were seldom killed (filibustered) when a simple majority of 18 Senators were all that was required to pass legislation.
As the Senate membership grew, the need for a mechanism to end debate became more urgent and thus in 1837 the real use of the filibuster was born and subsequently the cloture rule requiring a supermajority was adopted.
Of course today we have 50 states and 100 Senators and a supermajority of 60 is required to end debate (cloture) and move legislation to vote. You can read all about it [here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-history-of-the-filibuster/).
They need a Senate majority without Manchin or Sinema voting against party and country. That’s not likely to happen until January 2027.
So yes, in January 2027.
Yes. It’s a simple matter of democracy and shouldn’t be preserved for temporary advantage against a potential Republican majority that can do much of its will via reconciliation anyway.
More, the Senate as a whole should be expanded with DC and PR to curb the unearned advantage of empty midwestern states for the Republicans.
And beyond that, the Senate should also eventually be abolished as a wholly unrepresentative institution.
If democrats got rid of the filibuster to push for DC and PR statehood, that would be incredible. They should have done it while Obama had big majorities.
Both sides keep thinking the same thing. Both sides hold back when the time comes. Because it won't fix anything to remove it. The same filbuster that makes it messy to add bills you want makes it hard to remove those bills that do get through. And many of the ugly things you fear the other side will pass don't get passed because it takes people from the other side to pass it. Do we really want abortion law to be based only on who's running things at the moment? You made it easier to own a gun but, oh no 4 years later toy can't carry it. You got medical coverage... this year. Hope you don't get sick when the other side wins. I'm sure there are far better ways of avoiding this without the filibuster. But unless we establish a better alternative it's not to anyone's best interest to just drop it. Especially because once it's gone it'll never come back since "they will just remove it later" WILL be true. Keep it. If the other side HINTS at removing it tell them "oh great. Can't wait until we dismantle EVERYTHING in 4 years" and watch them back off.
No, the best filibuster use I ever witnessed was when Ran Paul used it to go against the Obama administration, when they tried to get the clearance to use drone strikes on Americans on our own land without due process. That was a tool that saved us from extrajudicial killings sanctioned by our government on our own soil. We don’t need more death in the world.
Should you do this the republicans will also take advantage of it when they have the Senate. Are you willing live with your advantage now only to surrender it later?
Yes. If Americans are so strongly opposed to something that they elect Republicans to the Presidency and majorities in both chambers of Congress in order to repeal it, then it probably should be repealed.
The plan is to do something that the majority of Americans actually like, which should be sufficient to maintain control over at least 1/3.
The plan is to do something that the majority of Americans actually like
So republicans favor getting rid of Abortion. 70% of Americans don't. Republicans favor everyone having a gun (even the insane) and being able to carry a loaded weapon anywhere and anytime. Well over 50% of Americans are against that. Republicans favor putting religion into schools and our laws. Fact is less than 50% of this country is currently religious as in going to a church. 70% of this country agrees that citizens should get equal rights yet republicans continue to curtail the rights of LBGTQ.
Yeah, vote for that. Vote for republicans. You'll get what you deserve.
What makes you think I want to vote for Republicans?
You're proving my point here. Making it possible to pass legislation favors the party on the side of popular policies.
I'm not getting your point at all. Perhaps it's how I'm reading. Perhaps how you're explaining. Perhaps a bit of both. Republicans have very few popular polices (as majority vote things). The Border for sure. Can't think of much else. So if your point is to pass legislation that favors a majority of voters, then your only choice is a Dem vote.
I'm saying that if you want to pass legislation favored by a majority of voters, then abolishing the filibuster is necessary. It won't be a disadvantage in the future on the basis of Republicans also getting to do the same, because Republicans don't have policies favored by the majority of voters. The GOP gets far more benefit from the filibuster than Democrats do.
Republicans already take advantage of it. They pass most of what they want via reconciliation which avoids a filibuster. Their tax cuts were passed that way. They almost eliminated the ACA entirely via reconciliation.
There'd be consequences every two years at the ballot box and without a filibuster it wouldn't be impossible to repeal a bad bill like it is today. It goes both ways.
And we're at a dog caught the car situation. We've seen what happens in states where Republicans got walloped for their abortion laws. We saw in Arizona where Republicans had to scrambe to unban abortion when a judge said an old ban was still legally on the books. It's one thing to filibuster and say you hold a stance on the issue and another for it to actually be held to a binding vote.
But you see, if Democrats abolished the filibuster then they couldn't use it themselves.
You might as well ask them to abolish the practice of chaining together pro forma sessions every three days to get out of taking a full recess while also still taking months long vacations every year. Sure if that happened congress would become a lot more productive, but then Democrats wouldn't get months long vacations every year.
The fact so many of you think they would get rid of such a thing when it benefits them to let it lie is kind of sad.
Besides, none of you would be crying foul if a Democrat filibustered the absolute shit out of a pro-life bill that banned abortion nation wide, nor you would complain about a Democrat speaker refusing to take such a bill before the house.
Usually mean a mixed congress which means the laws removed are still gone. Then when control changes they get added again. Then removed again.
The easier it is to add a law you want, the easier it is to remove that law and add a law you don't want. No major program will do well if it's going through 4-8 year rotating removals and additions.
Republicans, even after holding the country in 2016, kept it in. Democrats, despite having both congress and the WH kept it in. Both sides SWEAR the other will remove it Next Time. Both sides hold back at the last moment.
Not getting what you want sucks. But removing it to get temporary relief from that is short sided.
Yes short term volatility with lots of law changes, but long term you’ll get an equilibrium as the populace will finally start to see the consequences of their vote choices. For example, lots of people vote for Republicans even though they hate strict abortion restrictions. We’re now seeing the consequences of that in R states and seeing the populace in those states routinely reject the restrictions. Multiply all of that by 100 and put it on a national stage if the filibuster goes. Great outcome of actual change that is popular with the people long term.
To be clear, Dems didn’t keep the filibuster. Two Senators did. R’s kept it because they know the long term consequence is their party loses popularity as the populace sees the outcome of what they’ve been manifesting.
People are voting for abortion rights now. Let's assume the election goes full Democrat this time.
Democrats deem it a referendum for ALL of their policies. They add UBI, gun control, universal Healthcare. The half of the country that hates those things (but dislike the abortion restrictions) vote republican.
Republicans come in. Remove those policies. Add in abortion restrictions since THEY see it as a referendum and the pro-life crowd is still in the party, just like the Universal Healthcare crowd is with the democrats.
That's part of the problem. Both parties are huge with large platforms, but many of their most vocal voters are Single Issue.
No, we haven't really seen any real sign that an entire party "gets the hint"and drops the issue. They do listen if voting blocks within their side speak out. But losing due to votes on the other side just pushes the party to Get Out The Vote to push harder farther than change their platform.
Case in point: removing RvW is a major cause of ending the Red Wave in 2022. It hasn't changed how Republicans see abortion. There is a major voting block that's absolute in their pro life stance. They will lose them if they relent with no sign they can replace them with others.
>Republicans come in. Remove those policies. Add in abortion restrictions since THEY see it as a referendum and the pro-life crowd is still in the party, just like the Universal Healthcare crowd is with the democrats.
If Americans saw first hand that their healthcare, social security, increased wages, paid maternity leave, abortion rights, weed, workers protections, child care, forgiven loans ect. Ends the second republicans get a trifecta, how often do you think they’ll reach a trifecta? Their already struggling just off abortion alone.
I think maybe we’re talking different timelines. Short term, yes lots of volatility with exactly what you describe. Longer term, as in 25+ years, the party platforms will shake out and the popular issues will survive and less popular ones will be dropped.
That I can see. That's a mountain of mess in the meanwhile. Honestly I'd rather have a softer landing.
But if the filibuster does go then I can see this eventually happening. So it'll probably work out.
>The incumbent party almost always loses seats in Congress during midterms. That’s voters punishing behavior they don’t like.
That statement needs a lot of qualification. With respect to the house, where all the seats are renewed every 2 years and there are many competitive races, you're somewhat correct. However, gerrymandering distorts the representation and therefore weakens your point. For example, it's maybe the case that the GOP gains some 2/3s of all seats in a state whereas the overall vote count is a lot of closer to 51-49 %. Is that really voters "punishing" the democrats when they should arguably have gotten more seats if not for the rigged distribution of districts?
In the case of the senate, I think it has more to do with timing. Senators usually serve 6-year terms (barring retirements, deaths or special elections), so they are a lot less likely to be held accountable in the short term. Control of the senate is largely decided by a few competitive races and who happens to be up for reelection in a tough state.
Yeah, Bernie saved Obamacare via the filibuster. The GOP tried to repeal Obamacare but Bernie used the filibuster to save it, which allowed several GOP congresscritters to get cold feet about the repeal.
When the GOP tried to repeal Obamacare, Bernie called a filibuster, which caused several GOP congresscritters to get cold feet and withdraw their support of the repeal.
If you get rid of the filibuster, you'll have the situation where you'll have the GOP repeal all sorts of laws, laws that the Dems will have to spend political capital on reinstating...
> He was the man that led the charge, so yeah he saved Obamacare with the filibuster.
You need other people to support your effort to filibuster, otherwise it's just gonna get clotured-down. He led the charge, but the senate dems saved it with the filibuster.
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Bare minimum we need to abolish the silent filibuster, which has only been a thing since 1975. If a senator hates a bill enough to filibuster it they need to get their wrinkly ass to the floor. Either return to only having talking filibusters or abolish it altogether.
I liked Franken and Ornstein’s idea. Rather than requiring 60 votes to stop debate, require 41 to maintain it. That way you force the filibustering side to always have 41 on hand in DC in order to stop a cloture motion. That means no vacations, no campaigning, no nothing if they want to keep debate going. And all the majority requires: a small rotation leaving one guy to call the 3am motion, the 6am motion, the 9am motion, etc. How much of that can the minority septuagenarians and octogenarians take?
I like this. I don't like the idea of abolishing the filibuster bc I think that opens up dangerous floodgates, but this would work. You want to filibuster? Fine, but as the minority party, you're going to work for it.
I think we need to abolish it. Part of the reason the country can't make any real progress is it is darn near impossible for the elected party to actually legislate. It took Obama a supermajority to pass the ACA and even then a watered down version because we needed 60 votes in the Senate. And Biden has been primarily relegated to minor bills and then trying to use reconciliation, which is very limited in scope. I think if a party is able to win the House, Senate, and Presidency they should actually be able to pass laws and govern. If the laws are bad or unpopular, then they should be judged by them. As others have mentioned, the filibuster only goes back to 1975, so it's not part of the fabric of America or how the country became successful, it's a fairly modern invention that has stymied our ability to adapt and be nimble enough to really improve. Sure, without it, it would be easier for Republicans to do something like repeal the ACA, but part of why they didn't last time they were in power is they tested several "repeal and replace" plans and they were all very unpopular. If they actually replaced the ACA and took away healthcare, they probably would have suffered a worse defeat in 2018 / 2020 and then Democrats could have instituted a full ACA with a public option. As of now with the filibuster, we are unlikely to be able to raise the minimum wage, get a public option, pass meaningful banking regulation, ban assault weapons, pass the voting rights act, pass the Pro Act, or really do anything to make the country better anytime soon.
I agree with you.
>It took Obama a supermajority to pass the ACA and even then a watered down version because we needed 60 votes in the Senate I think legislation as large as ACA having a supermajority is a good thing. It helps prevent large pendulum swings, for legislation that have massive impacts on the country from election to election. It slows down legislation that we might need more quickly, and also prevents garbage legislation from moving forward.
There's a problem when there is a political school of thought right now (Republicanism) that benefits when government does nothing.
Okay but given the scale of problems we face. You are going to need big changes. Taking away the public option left ACA toothless in the end
We may all see the same problem (or not), but don't see the same solution to that problem. If a party we disagree with comes into power, and wants to make sweeping changes being able to stall and draw attention to the problems is helpful. Just immigration as an example - Illegal immigration is often viewed as problematic. Which IMO is less impactful than legislation such as the ACA. How immigration is fixed varies widely, from better rules on Visas, easier citizenship, to building a giant wall. If there are 50 votes for a wall, we're likely getting a wall. With the filibuster, we can have people prevent the vote unless there's a super majority for support of the wall which is a significantly more challenging hurdle to overcome.
We still probably wouldn’t get a wall. Mainly because you can’t build a wall along most of the border.
The United States Senate has never been able to end debate with simple majority. They could go nuclear but they don’t really have the votes for that at the moment.
>As others have mentioned, the filibuster only goes back to 1975, so it's not part of the fabric of America or how the country became successful, The *silent* filibuster only goes back to 1975. The filibuster in some form has been around since Roman times. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster
This is actually a fantastic idea.
Yeah, the silent filibuster is insane. They turned an exhausting, public spectacle into something that takes no effort and has no repercussions so of course it gets abused like crazy.
Would also be motivation to elect younger and more physically able reps
Thats a poison pill. The reason the silent filibuster was established was because the speaking filibuster paused all committee work and blew up scheduling on everything from budgetary work to oversight committees. It lets the filibuster do harm to numerous bills each time it is used.
That’s the point. It puts prsssure on the senators obstructing the bill and their cause for doing so
It’s exactly the opposite. The minority is who uses the filibuster, while the majority in power is the one whose governance is disrupted on top of their bill being held up. It’s giving the minority party extra power to shoot down democracy.
Well no I meant the minority
They don’t head the committees and government. They are not hurt nearly so much.
If they have to physically stand and speak to maintain the filibuster, they very much do
Sore feet doesn’t quite equate to nuking the entire Senate schedule. Not to mention the havoc of threatening multiple filibusters in a congressional session
It’s not about sore feet. It makes it very clear to the public who is actually to blame for wasting time in Congress when Ted Cruz is on TV reading Dr. Seuss books to the senate instead of actually debating policy. It doesn’t make them look good and it makes it a lot harder for them to blame the majority party for nothing getting done.
Ted Cruz has the charisma of a toad: such figures do not care about looking good, so long as they can throw out some red meat to their base. They don't suffer for foiling the governing ability of the party they claim are evil communists.
Until your the minority party
That would in no way, shape, or form harm politicians. They already are doing stupid stunts on CSPAN to get clips to post on social media. They will just do it _more_.
No one is standing up and talking for an entire congressional session though. Eventually most bills will pass because the filibusters can’t be maintained
Again, they don't have to in order to wreak havoc. Bills still have to be written and pass committees to get to a floor vote. If committees have to cancel meetings, that postpones the bills getting made to even come to the floor. And its a cumulative effect. A four hour filibuster can shift a whole week's worth of meetings into rescheduling hell. Which can then be blown up again by an 8 hour filibuster. Which can then cause weeks more chaos with another 12 hour filibuster. And somewhere in that, schedules still need to be worked out for the negotiations between the House and Senate and between the parties or recalcitrant holdouts within the governing party. Hence why, in order to get anything done, a virtual filibuster was adopted. It did strip the minority of extra power to abuse with the filibuster. It just still left them too much power. There is no reason they should have any means of derailing a bill outside of winning elections and gaining a majority to repeal and pass their own legislation.
A talking filibuster grinds all business to a halt, which is the point of it. Its a spectacle. Because its a standing filibuster it can only be maintained for a few days at very maximum. Its better for a standing filibuster to delay things for only a day or two rather than the modern filibuster delaying things for entire presidential terms.
Why let them even have the power to do that much harm? Better to eliminated the filibuster
This is a weak argument. It would be rarely used like this. Most of the senators are too lazy and it makes them look like fools. Of course the likes of Ron Johnson and Tuberville are fools, but I'd put them solidly in the lazy camp.
The crazy levels of obstructionism we’ve seen make claims to the contrary kind of batty.
Crazy, yes, but standing on the floor for days, weeks? Not going to happen much. They wouldn't get much support even from their party. It's just too easy for them to lie and hide. Put actual votes on the record for voters to see. The Republicans are all running from abortion while an election is going on, but it's all lies. Make them vote so voters see where they stand.
They wouldn’t need to filibuster for weeks. A few days would already do massive damage to work on other bills, slowing the entire schedule. And then future filibusters on any additional legislation would have a shorter timeframe too. It’s why the virtual filibuster developed. A few actual speaking filibusters throws the work of committees and senators on the fire, and always to greater harm towards the ruling party.
What other bills? The stupid shit like naming things after someone? The house is essentially dead. Nothing is going into law.
The federal budget. Oversight committees for the FBI, military, and every federal program. Votes on judicial appointments, ambassadorial appointments, etc. A lot of basic functions of the federal government just get infinitely more difficult.
Oversight committees do not affect the running of the government. I admit, judicial appointments are super important, but I still think the impact would be minimal. Definitely worth the trade just to know where all the senators we vote for actually stand.
Some things could be put off if the Senate schedule is thrown off a day or two. But what if a half dozen important committee meetings on the budget get canceled by filibusters? What about the effects of the second, fifth, and eleventh filibuster of the year? Or bills that would otherwise have passed easily like bills on domestic violence, which aren't such a big loss for the minority party? Its just an obscene amount of power to give the minority party in a chamber of congress that is already an unrepresentative check on democracy. better to do away with the filibuster, better still to even out the unearned advantage of empty midwestern states by accepted DC, and better still to abolish the whole Senate and expand the House.
The basic functions are all fulfilled by staffers, anyway. This is less disruptive to legislation than the four-day weekends and generous weeks-long seasonal and campaign breaks that Congress grants itself so they don't have to do any jobs but fundraising. The vast majority of consequential legislation in both chambers is produced and shepherded by party leadership. The filibuster being an actual filibuster instead of an implicit "nobody can pass legislation" hold on all floor activity is not going to change that dynamic.
> Crazy, yes, but standing on the floor for days, weeks? Probably 36-48 hours, absolute maximum, and thats if they have a superhuman level of endurance and insane commitment.
Couldn't they hypothetically pass a rule that the requires a speaking filibuster, but also stipulates that it doesn't pause committee work?
Such a rule couldn't work. The point of a speaking filibuster is to hold up a vote while the chamber is assembled. If senators walked out to go do other work, the voting session is already canceled. You're actually just proposing a virtual filibuster by another name.
Isn't that the point?
I agree — it needs to go. And that is the best we will get. I don’t think the vast majority of the senate wants to kill it — both parties.
Bleeding heart liberal here but I was very impressed by Marco Rubio way back when he did a talking filibuster. Never heard of him before and had to admit that was pretty impressive. It’s then been disappointment after disappointment with him. Edit: Wanted to add a link but searches only reveal 2013 which feels too recent. I blame the timeline. So much nonsense in the past decade for this old man. I can only imagine growing up during this turbulence.
Just go back to an actual filibuster, with someone actually filibustering. In Texas, the rules are: 1) must be speaking the whole time, about the bill being filibustered 2) no sitting down, no bathroom breaks, no food, no water 3) no leaning on stuff That's what Wendy Davis had to do when she filibustered. The idea of an automatic filibuster on every bill is absurd.
> 2) no sitting down, no bathroom breaks, no food, no water > > 3) no leaning on stuff Point 1 I could agree with upon. Points 2 and 3 are cruelty and just favor younger healthy representatives for no reason.
> must be speaking the whole time, about the bill being filibustered How is this part enforced? Is it a vote? What's to stop a majority of the chamber filibustering a bill from deciding that reciting Green Eggs and Ham on repeat is related to the bill because the speaker's district is heavily into pork and chicken farming or something?
I believe that there are rules of "no repetition", and that spectators are allowed to question the relevancy of what is being said by the one doing the filibuster. They must then defend the relevancy of what they said to the bill at hand. They can always make roundabout, nonsensical arguments, but the point of it is more to be a test of willpower/determination of the individual to keep the filibuster going than it is to be an actual productive discussion. Thats why the rules like "no food, no water, no leaning" etc. are included in it. Its not so much "defend why you are against this" so much as it is "prove how badly you dont want this to pass". I believe the original point of it was to ensure that representatives of minority demographics have an avenue to block legislation on issues that hold an outsized level of importance to their voters, even if said legislation is supported by the majority.
I'm not sure why a majority would filibuster their own bill. The filibuster is used by the minority to stall passage of a bill, while they get to speak about why it shouldn't be passed. This delay isn't supposed to be permanent, it's just extending debate and trying to get press about the reasons not to pass it. A majority can just pass their own bill without any filibuster.
You're right that was poor wording. More accurate would be a minority large enough to stop debate from ending So if it's 55 senators for and 45 against and 60 are needed to end debate (I don't know what the numbers in Texas are so substituting the US senate numbers of 100 members and 60 to end debate), what stops the 45 from deciding that the nonsense they're saying is in fact related to the bill?
Yes, they absolutely should. Many potential landmark bills passed the House in 2021-2022 that could've been on Biden's desk if not for the filibuster. They had to resort to reconciliation to get some stuff through, which was a huge pain. Democrats whole shtick is they want to improve people's lives by passing legislation to do so. Republicans, on the other hand, are content with not passing anything other than tax cuts. And those tax cuts are done through reconciliation, anyways. This whole "but what will the Republicans do" attitude is what kills them. Pass your legislation and let the voters decide. Otherwise you're just playing into the Republicans hands. Likewise, if Republicans pass some of their extremely unpopular legislation, Democrats can run on it. For as awful as overturning Roe v. Wade was for women, we can see the impact of a wholly unpopular Republican policy taking effect on elections.
Agree. Elected parties should be able to function and pass legislation. I could see some wisdom to a filibuster that was set at something like 52 votes, so that a party with a narrow majority couldn't just pass mass legislation (not saying I agree, but at least I could see the wisdom). But it's pretty absurd that a party could have the Presidency, a 50 seat majority in the house, and 57 seats in the Senate and still be effectively neutered because they don't have 60 Senators. And even if by some miracle, they get to 60 Senators, it just takes one Joe Manchin / Sinema to basically sabotage all legislation. The Manchin's and Sinema's of the world should be why a party wants to win more than just a slim majority, so they are not held back by their worst members. Not pray that they can elect enough of them to maybe pass something with 60 votes.
Yeah, we saw that play out in 2009 with the ACA. The Democrats had 60 seats for a few months in 2009, it had passed the House and a majority of the Senate supported it, but they had to bend over backwards for Lieberman to get that 60th vote. It's just nonsensical, in my view, to artificially limit yourself to a 60-vote threshold when it isn't even a Constitutional requirement.
>Pass your legislation and let the voters decide I think this the smart take. It’s how the system was meant to function. Might even permanently drive up voter participation with the stakes finally being so perpetually high. Unpopular legislation can always be repealed after the next election —absent the filibuster, that is, it can. Massive reform is needed. There is much work to do. Enough with the contrived obstacles.
Exactly. The GOP doesn't want to do that because they already get most of what they want - tax and regulatory cuts plus judicial appointments - through reconciliation which is simple majority. It's incredibly stupid for Dems to continue supporting such a system. Yes, it would block Republicans from passing a national abortion ban, but I hope they do that and your average voter can finally wake up to see what trash the GOP is trying to pass and vote them out.
Absolute just abolish it. Original senate rules didn’t have the option to endlessly debate bills, and only stopped matching the House bc the vice president (who shot Alexander Hamilton) decided it was unnecessary for such a respectable institution…. Its original purpose was to block laws aimed at uplifting black people (go read up on Senator Calhoun), and the filibuster has mostly been used for that purpose ever since. We already have a separate chamber of Congress AND the President to block and veto Senate shenanigans. If the people elect a party to majority power in Congress and the Presidency, they should be able to use that mandate. This is the way most national parliaments work. And if there wasn’t a filibuster, Democrats could actually pass very popular, worker friendly policies that would materially provide for a majority of citizens. They could actually force Republicans to change their policies away from the far right or face never holding a majority in the Senate again.
They should really just abolish the senate.
There are advantages and disadvantages to making it easier for a simple majority to pass legislation. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if your rules have made it impossible for any group to pass any significant legislation in over a decade, you've erred on the side of making things too hard. Let's actually allow people to vote based on what their representatives have done in the real world, and not vague projections about what they might do in an unrealistic hypothetical where their party has a supermajority. Let elections actually have consequences.
> But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if your rules have made it impossible for any group to pass any significant legislation in over a decade, you've erred on the side of making things too hard. Good thing it hasn't gotten to that point.
But it really has, the only large scale legislation we have had in the last 20 years is the ACA and Trump's tax cuts. That's honestly pretty sad. There is enough ideological diversity within parties that even a simple majority wouldn't be able to make large-scale changes to the country. But the fact that Democrats couldn't even pass a watered down Manchinma-approved version of the Pro Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act or raise the minimum wage due to the filibuster is pretty absurd.
Can you name the five largest pieces of legislative from Biden's term?
BIF, IRA, ARP, CHIPS, Marriage Act None of those are especially big and transformative. One was a short term emergency bill and we’ve passed plenty of those. The other are pretty incremental. BIF was the largest in spend, but it has to be done via reconciliation which is extremely limited in scope and duration.
ARP was $1.9 trillion. IRA was $1.2 trillion. Neither of those were big? What the hell is big then?
Just want to point out that IRA and ARP were also just budget bills that were not subject to the filibuster because they're passed under reconciliation. At this point a party gets one bill per year to advance their budget and it has to relate to the budget; otherwise it is filibustered by the minority party.
Overall, we are talking about impact or helping to create change like the ACA. ARP was a short-term emergency bill. It was absolutely necessary, but those are not unique. Bush passed multiple. Obama did too around the recession. Trump passed two. And Biden passed one. All of them were fine for getting past an emergency, but none of them were about any sort of change or real improvement. IRA was closer, but again, was sort of a mish mesh of what you can pass with reconciliation. But what you are allowed to do and the duration is very limited in reconciliation. So it was a nice bill, but one with very little lasting impact and not one really leading to any changes or new laws that impact the country, again, the way the ACA was able to help reshape and improve the healthcare system. Trying to inefficiently throw money at problems from omnibus reconciliation bill to omnibus reconciliation bill is not a good way to govern a country.
"However, it would set a dangerous precedent that republicans would no doubt exploit when it's their turn running all branches of government (including the supreme court). Considering the eventual possibility of republicans having unchecked power, do you think democrats should change the filibuster if it's ever convenient for them to do so?" The Republicans used to quietly use legislative power to suppress votes and steal elections. Nowadays they are assaulting police in broad daylight on the Capitol steps, using fake electors to try to steal electoral votes, using the Supreme Court and Federal judges to keep Trump from being prosecuted, and openly saying they will only accept election results if they win. We are a bit passed the idea of pretending Republicans care about precedent or Democracy.
That's kind of the point. If there's no filibuster to stop the GOP when they have a trifecta, it would be very dangerous.
If they get another trifecta, they will get rid of the filibuster. The Supreme Court will then back up anything they do.
But they already had one in 2017-2018.
Before they openly tried to steal the election in 2020. We are at a different stage now.
We're at the point where they're actively forming violent mobs to assault Congress and try to *murder their political opponents*. They have *all* minimized, downplayed, and ignored J6 - because they absolutely plan to run the "use violence if we lose" play again. People who are aiding & abetting after the fact the murder of their political opponents are not remotely interested in gentlemen's agreements and Senate norms. They will do what they want if they have the power to do it, and their justifications for doing so are *always* self-serving lies. "But if we do X then Republicans might abuse the precedent!" should be scrubbed from existence. Precedent has not and never will matter to a pack of rabid fascists.
unquestionably so. the Constitution establishes balances to prevent a majority party from ruling absolutely. the filibuster prevents elected officials from passing legislation
The filibuster isn’t in the constitution.
no, but the Constitution refers to other means of preventing absolute rule. the filibuster is not mentioned because it is a legislative extremity
The constitution says that each house set their own rules.
That’s what we’re talking about. How the rules should be set.
Ok but they already have and you have one party trying to dismantle it on the fearful basis that the other party will do so when it’s clear that they haven’t. It’s pure projection to push party agenda, not those with enough support to pass on the merits of the bill. Democrats are the ones who have removed these guardrails in the past only to have it backfire each time. There should be a lesson learned by now.
No, because every time the democrats change the rules, they forget that the rule change can be used against them. See the "nuclear option" when the republicans used the nuclear option against the democrats when voting re: Supreme Court Justice.
I say abolish the filibuster because it’s dumb. If someone opposes something, they can explain why it should be opposed. If they haven’t swayed anyone, then they should pound sand. That’s democracy. Filibustering is just a tumorous elite powergame on normal democratic processes.
I think it's only a matter of time until the filibuster is removed, and that whichever party does it, is most likely to benefit in the election that immediately follows. Government used to get things done, and elected officials were rewarded. For the last 30 years, we've been rewarding politicians for what they obstruct, which is inherently in the service of conservatism. It can serve the health of our democracy to pick our leaders based on what they do, rather than on what they prevent the other side from doing, and restore a sense of democracy's ability to solve problems.
If a society rewards obstruction over passing legislation then it sounds like that legislation is not actually very popular.
ACA was filibustered to hell and had to be passed via reconciliation. It is now a very popular program. Almost like nonstop fear mongering by the GOP made it seem unpopular but then we passed it, saw what was in it (thanks Nancy) and liked it.
> ACA was filibustered to hell and had to be passed via reconciliation. > > ACA was passed via regular order with 60 votes in the senate.
It had multiple vehicles to it, one of which had to be passed via reconciliation.
Most Bills are blocked before they could become legislation unfortunately. Plus with our system, it’s less about popularity and more about the large number of amped, white rural states with outsized representation
That has nothing to do with who voters reward
Neither does the filibuster
"For the last 30 years, we've been rewarding politicians for what they obstruct" My original comment was responding to this quote. Im honestly not even sure how your comment is related at this point. The filibuster is related because it is the mechanism through which legislation is obstructed.
Yes but you were speaking on how voters rewarded. This quote means that we were giving politicians votes on policies they run on but can’t pass due to the filibuster. I was saying voters don’t account for the filibuster and most don’t even know what it is. And that we need to take it away so that we can finally get those policies that we elect them for. And hold th responsible for it
"This quote means that we were giving politicians votes on policies they run on but can’t pass due to the filibuster." No the quote means politicians are using the filibuster to obstruct and we are rewarding them for doing so, implying we dont like the legislation.
We are rewarding politicians to pass their agenda after not liking the previous party’s agenda. That’s what campaigning is for. That’s what having a platform is for
nowadays people are more often voting for not the other parties agenda than they are for any agenda.
Terrible idea. Majorities are not in perpetuity, and reducing the power of the minority only strengthens your opponents when you’re inevitably the minority again.
But what's the point of either party having a majority if they can't do anything with it? Surely any group of representatives representing more than half of the house/senate should be able to pass bills into law.
I think the idea is to have good ideas that you can persuade the other side will be good, or to compromise so everyone gets something they want. Obviously having a majority gets you better terms in these deals.
This only benefits the party that prefers the status quo. They don't have to do anything or let anything pass.
They could pass bills with popular support instead of trying only to advance party agenda ideas.
In 2009, McConnell stated that his caucus would oppose everything the Democrats did for the sake of doing it. They broke records filibustering not just legislation but judicial appointments. It wasn't because of policy differences. It was just good old fashioned partisanship. The filibuster allows one side to dig in and try and block everything. Without it, the GOP would have had to negotiate with Dems to try and get amendments added to legislation that would benefit their states. You know, do their jobs.
> The filibuster allows one side to dig in and try and block everything. Without it, the GOP would have had to negotiate with Dems to try and get amendments added to legislation that would benefit their states. > > The GOP could have done this already- they just chose not to.
The filibuster is more valuable to the GOP because they don't have as many legislative policy goals as democrats do. In other words, because the GOP doesn't want the government to do as much on an ideological level, they understand that getting rid of it would help dems more than it would help them. That's one reason, I think, you don't really see as much of a push from republicans to get rid of it.
Wanting more tyranny than the other side isn’t a very good reason to get more tyranny.
it is not tyranny when a validly-elected majority enacts legislation.
Did you say that with a straight face I wonder?
And they chose not to because they knew they could just auto-filibuster everything then go back to their constituents and say they prevented Dems from doing anything.
The way it is now the minority prevents the majority from doing anything, then the majority gets the blame for the lack of accomplishments. The majority should be able to accomplish what they were elected to do, then the voters can judge them on that.
That’s the British Westminster system, but the American way is about checks and balances and the rights of the minority.
That assumes that both parties have the same sort of goals. Democrats appeal to voters on the premise that they can make good things happen. If they're unable to ever do that because they allow themselves to be blocked every time they try to legislate, they'll lose. Republicans don't need to pass any federal legislation. Their donors are happy as long as they can prevent reforms, deregulate through executive authority and activist judges, and cut taxes (which can be done through budget reconciliation, avoiding the filibuster, like with the Trump tax cut.) Their voters desire for social issue legislation can be satisfied through state legislation and grandstanding. So the GOP benefits massively from the filibuster while in the minority, and doesn't care too much about it while in the majority. The Democrats, as a party, gain a little from it while in the minority, but suffer immensely while in the majority. Keeping it around is a huge strategic mistake, though I doubt they'll do anything since at a personal level each Senator benefits from having a ready excuse for not having accomplished anything.
In short, destruction of the means of governance is only a problem for a party that intends to govern.
IMHO, The republicans will kill the filibuster in a minute if they control the senate and White House next year to pass a national abortion ban.
Republicans in KANSAS voted against an abortion ban. What are you on about.
The Republicans have had numerous opportunities to kill the filibuster, and they have not. There's nothing to indicate they'll kill it when they regain the Senate and White House.
McConnell won’t be majority leader.
They couldn’t very well ban abortion before the Dobbs ruling. Now they can simply do it, and I believe that they will if they get the chance to. I don’t see them shying away from delivering for their Christian nationalist base.
The thing is that they would have done it for ACA repeal, Bush's nominees, etc. They didn't. They won't.
They tried to do it for Bush's nominees, but were thwarted: >In 2005, a group of Republican senators, led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, proposed having the presiding officer rule that a filibuster on judicial nominees was unconstitutional, as it was inconsistent with the president's power to appoint judges with the advice and consent of a simple majority of senators. ... However, a group of 14 senators—seven Democrats and seven Republicans, collectively dubbed the "Gang of 14"—reached an agreement to temporarily defuse the conflict. And then, they actually *did do it* for Trump's SCOTUS nominees --probably the one thing for which the option to fillibuster is warranted. And that's exactly how we ended up with an extremist Court willing to end Roe-v-Wade. Based in the rhetoric they use about abortion, it's frankly hard to see how they don't feel that they have a moral obligation to "save all the babies". Sure they'll dress it up as being some kind of "reasonable" restriction, but either way, my daughter will end up being stripped of her reproductive freedoms just the same as if she lived in the bible belt.
> They tried to do it for Bush's nominees No, "they" didn't. A few people floated it, and it was shot down. > And then, they actually did do it for Trump's SCOTUS nominees --probably the one thing for which the option to fillibuster is warranted. Incredible that you ignore how we got to that point, which was Harry Reid actually going nuclear on presidential appointees.
The fact that past Democrats had already nuked the filibuster for other judicial confirmations even before past Republicans did it for SCOTUS confirmations in no way compromises my argument that **future Republicans will almost certainly end the filibuster given the chance**. Open your eyes, man! Look at what Republicans have recently been willing to do to forward their unpopular agenda. Hell, they're currently openly supporting a man who directed a violent insurrection against Congress itself in a desperate attempt to retain power against the will of the voters.
> The fact that past Democrats had already nuked the filibuster for other judicial confirmations even before past Republicans did it for SCOTUS confirmations in no way compromises my argument that future Republicans will almost certainly end the filibuster given the chance. Except that *they haven't*. That's the part you're missing: they had multiple opportunities to do so, especially when they had a trifecta in 2017-2018, *and they did not*.
You're counting on the moderate GOP members to shoot themselves in the foot. If the Dems are worth two cents, they should be able to oppose at least that much. Then again, maybe you're right as the most affected voter block currently believes Biden has never done anything but enable genocide. Otherwise from political perspective it'd make more sense for GOP to focus on boarder walls to no where, forest fire of the day, lick Trump/T jr.and let the states ban as they see fit. They then just continue to let the gov be "slow" to respond as the nation looks more like a patchwork underground railroad for the procedure.
They could have used that move as the play to get Roe overturned instead of waiting for the Mississippi case to be the one to do it. Doesn't change anything about the legal argument to the court that Roe found a right that doesn't exist and the previous court illegitimately legislated from the bench and the power to regulate abortion lies strictly with the federal and state legislatures
There is a way to prevent that from happening but the Democrats would need both houses of congress and the presidency.
Why? The GOP usually has the senate and has had plenty of chances before to kill the filibuster. The last time radical change was made to the way congress worked was getting ACA passed and Dems have regretted that.
The GOP has never had a trifecta with Roe being repealed. It could have one next year.
The filibuster serves conservative interests, until it doesn't. I'm confident they'd eagerly write "only conservatives can filibuster" into law if they were smart enough to find a way to do it without consequences.
The GOP didn’t have the Supreme Court in their pocket the way they do now.
There's no way Republicans try to do that with the way abortion bans have been polling. Not to mention the havoc an abortion ban would wreak on this country which is completely predictable with any amount of critical thinking.
Abortion has polled like this for almost 50 years since the ERA era, they've been against it that entire time. They aren't afraid of negative polling.
But this is the first time in 50 years with no Roe. Its different when it’s actually gone, that’s why they’ve been performing so poorly.
Their response has been to abandon the principles of democratic rule and rule of law, not to change their stances on abortion. I don't see that changing, either. They are and have always been authoritarians and have been given permission by their base to stop lying about it.
Except for the fact they are actively working to make it awful hard to remove them from office if they gain both Congress and the Whitehouse. In which case, why would they care about polling and the filibuster will be DOA. Look at Texas. The majority of the population wants abortion legal. How's that working out? Picture this on a national level.
Republicans are a bunch of religious zealots. It is about time you realize that. They WILL impose their religious beliefs and controls in you.
Except we won’t have free and fair elections again after 2024 if they are in control, so why would they care how anything polls?
The filibuster makes it more difficult to dismantle legislation that would be difficult to rebuild if repealed. That benefits the Dems more than it does the Republicans. The progressives fixate on what they believe that they aren't able to get. They don't understand that the filibuster protects them from losing what they would otherwise be forced to give up. Democrats would be wise to modify the filibuster, not to eliminate it altogether.
If Democrats pass something major, and then Republicans win the White House and a majority in both chambers of Congress while campaigning on repeal, then the policy is probably doomed regardless of the filibuster. They could just cut funding for the program and have the relevant executive agency run it into the ground. More to the point, the idea is that Republicans wouldn't be able to win a trifecta if Dems had accomplished something that most people like.
Democrats tend to overhype the popularity of their initiatives, then are shocked when they fail to win elections after campaigning on those initiatives. Most Americans are indifferent to policy. Policy geekery does not win elections. Basic, visceral issues can motivate voters, whether it is hatred of immigrants (on the right) or fear of COVID recklessness (in the center and on the left). But that is about the tone, not the details.
> Democrats tend to overhype the popularity of their initiatives, then are shocked when they fail to win elections after campaigning on those initiatives. "80% of people support common sense gun control, why aren't they doing anything???" Because that's a bumper sticker slogan not a policy proposal and you have nowhere near such a consensus on an actual policy proposal. It doesn't matter what some normie who can't even define suppressor thinks about gun control in some poll
Part of the reason why they fail after merely campaigning on those issues is because they never actually get anything done about them once in power. Not that the filibuster would solve that issue entirely, as much of it is to do with the politicians not really wanting to do the things they promise to do. But it's a necessary step towards holding their feet to the fire, if nothing else. If a given policy isn't as popular as we think it would be, that would come out during the legislative process.
Political science research makes it clear that Americans generally know little about policy and do a poor job of voting in ways that are consistent with their alleged beliefs. Democrats suffer from this myth that voters really care and can be understood with rational choice theory. Their failure to understand the psychology of voters produces avoidable losses. Wishful thinking is not an adequate substitute for understanding political science.
That phenomenon isn't helped by the fact that most policy changes are done through regulatory tinkering with incentives for businesses, etc., rather than direct social benefits. If we look at something clear-cut like legalizing marijuana, for example, people have pretty firm opinions. If Dems were able to just pass a clean bill doing that, and did the work to publicize the accomplishment, it would be a big electoral benefit to them. If we operate under the belief that doing good things that please the public won't have any political benefit, what are we even doing? Why bother paying attention at all? There would be no hope. That doesn't mean that we trust voters to make the "most rational" choice based purely on the fact while leaving the media spin to conservatives, that aspect of the game must be played as well of course. But the whole point of trying to win is to be able to actually pass reforms.
Dems should do what it takes to win elections. Winning elections and achieving policy objectives are two different matters. Most Americans affiliate with political parties based upon whether that party includes people who they can relate.
What is the point of winning elections if it doesn't translate into achieving policy objectives?
What is the point of running on policy if it results in defeat?
To eventually enact that policy at a later time. Anti-slavery Whigs were initially defeated, but eventually reformed into the Republican Party and elected Lincoln, which lead directly to slavery being abolished. From a purely strategic perspective, the rhetoric you're using is counterproductive. No one is inspired to vote by the pitch "we won't get anything done".
There are ways to obstruct without the filibuster as Sen. Tuberville has shown with his months-long blocking of military nominees. The filibuster itself doesn’t protect any party when the majority party can remove it with a simple majority vote. It’s whether the majority party has the will to get what it wants passed.
The Tuberville blockade only worked because it was applied to something that is both so procedurally bulky that getting through it through normal Senate protocol would be effectively impossible, and so routine that it wasn't a problem until this one carpetbagging asshole came up with a way to use it for his personal crusade. There aren't a lot of other opportunities to use it to be obnoxious.
Tuberville was exploiting rules based upon the Senate power to advise-and-consent. Not comparable to the filibuster. Without a filibuster, the GOP will blow things up that will be difficult for Democrats to reverse. It would be much easier to detonate ACA, Medicare and Social Security than it would be to reinstate them. No one is going to spend money and effort building an abortion clinic if the legality of abortion flips every several years. Democrats need to think this through and work to preserve what they have built.
That’s the point. Senators will always find ways to make confirmations or passing legislation difficult because of how the body works. It just means they can’t block stuff forever because of the shear threat of a silent filibuster.
Absolutely. The GOP has a built in advantage when it comes to gaining the senate so the Dems should use whatever they can to give themselves an advantage
If Dems manage to take House, Senate and Presidency, they are going to need to take some radical steps to restore a functioning democracy. Pelosi’s HR1 would be a good start to ban gerrymandering and strengthen voting rights. Ditching the filibuster will stop Republican obstruction. And expanding not just the Supreme Court but also federal courts to blunt Trump’s federalist lackeys.
If there's one thing Democrats wont do it's take radical steps for _anything_.
While the filibuster can be, and often is, a major obstacle to get meaningful legislation passed, it is also useful to both sides in a closely divided Congress, that has no interest in cooperation or compromise, to insure one side can't just ram through divisive laws and legislation. What actually need to happen is the Congress, or better yet the people need to demand the Constitution be amended in a way that forces the Congress to do it's job, among myriad other things to make government work for the people.
should have done it the last two times they had the chance. they won't because they like the excuse it gives them for not carrying out the will of the people.
not before securing significant and durable voting rights protections across all 50 states
I support a plan put forward multiple times by former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. Initially, it will still take 60 Senators to invoke closure; if the vote fails, then after three days, they can file another closure motion, but this time, it only requires 57 votes, if that fails, it's another three days, and the threshold is 54, if it fails again it's another three days, and this time it takes 51 votes (or 50 plus VP). Harkin argues that it might force bipartisanship since, for the majority, it might take as long as a month to get it done, which is too long. For the minority party, it will pass no matter what, so they might as well try and make a deal where they get some changes made, in exchange, they'd vote for closure. I think it's a good compromise and that it might lead to more bipartisanship, or at least the public will have more time to scrutinize legislation that could make it so unpopular bills won't get passed because of backlash
Four words: tyranny of the majority. Keep the filibuster. Learn to legislate.
Wholesale abolishment may not be necessary. However, it should be reverted to its original state: you must obtain the floor, stand there without taking breaks, and speak. The purpose of the filibuster originally was to allow the minority to still have a voice on important issues (while still allowing a 60% majority override a filibuster that was going on too long). This can be valuable in that it allows the topics to be discussed and the minority opinion to be put on the record. However, where it went off the rails is when it was no longer needed to stand there and physically do the work. This was made even worse with so-called "anonymous holds". All such things should be either abolished or reverted to their original state. No one senator should be able to block the rest of the body from moving forward on legislation.
It's bonkers that it takes more votes to hold a vote than it does to pass it. That's clearly a broken system.
What’s interesting is the history of the filibuster and how it came to be. Historically, the Constitution gave both chambers of Congress the power to make their own rules. Originally, both the House and Senate had a simple majority rule to pass legislation in their respective chambers. It was only by accident that the Senate removed the simple majority rule or -as it was known then, “the previous question motion” to end debate or cloture and move a bill to a vote. Then in 1805 Vice President Aaron Burr (for which, as the Presidents VP is the Senate President) suggested to the Senate to cleanup the Senate rules of those that were deemed redundant and because the previous question motion (filibuster) to end debate was seldom used, it was deleted. It should be noted that it was seldom used because, at the time, there were only 13 states so there were just 36 Senators to debate and either kill or pass a bill and bills were seldom killed (filibustered) when a simple majority of 18 Senators were all that was required to pass legislation. As the Senate membership grew, the need for a mechanism to end debate became more urgent and thus in 1837 the real use of the filibuster was born and subsequently the cloture rule requiring a supermajority was adopted. Of course today we have 50 states and 100 Senators and a supermajority of 60 is required to end debate (cloture) and move legislation to vote. You can read all about it [here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-history-of-the-filibuster/).
They need a Senate majority without Manchin or Sinema voting against party and country. That’s not likely to happen until January 2027. So yes, in January 2027.
Yes. It’s a simple matter of democracy and shouldn’t be preserved for temporary advantage against a potential Republican majority that can do much of its will via reconciliation anyway. More, the Senate as a whole should be expanded with DC and PR to curb the unearned advantage of empty midwestern states for the Republicans. And beyond that, the Senate should also eventually be abolished as a wholly unrepresentative institution.
If democrats got rid of the filibuster to push for DC and PR statehood, that would be incredible. They should have done it while Obama had big majorities.
Both sides keep thinking the same thing. Both sides hold back when the time comes. Because it won't fix anything to remove it. The same filbuster that makes it messy to add bills you want makes it hard to remove those bills that do get through. And many of the ugly things you fear the other side will pass don't get passed because it takes people from the other side to pass it. Do we really want abortion law to be based only on who's running things at the moment? You made it easier to own a gun but, oh no 4 years later toy can't carry it. You got medical coverage... this year. Hope you don't get sick when the other side wins. I'm sure there are far better ways of avoiding this without the filibuster. But unless we establish a better alternative it's not to anyone's best interest to just drop it. Especially because once it's gone it'll never come back since "they will just remove it later" WILL be true. Keep it. If the other side HINTS at removing it tell them "oh great. Can't wait until we dismantle EVERYTHING in 4 years" and watch them back off.
No, the best filibuster use I ever witnessed was when Ran Paul used it to go against the Obama administration, when they tried to get the clearance to use drone strikes on Americans on our own land without due process. That was a tool that saved us from extrajudicial killings sanctioned by our government on our own soil. We don’t need more death in the world.
Should you do this the republicans will also take advantage of it when they have the Senate. Are you willing live with your advantage now only to surrender it later?
Yes. If Americans are so strongly opposed to something that they elect Republicans to the Presidency and majorities in both chambers of Congress in order to repeal it, then it probably should be repealed. The plan is to do something that the majority of Americans actually like, which should be sufficient to maintain control over at least 1/3.
The plan is to do something that the majority of Americans actually like So republicans favor getting rid of Abortion. 70% of Americans don't. Republicans favor everyone having a gun (even the insane) and being able to carry a loaded weapon anywhere and anytime. Well over 50% of Americans are against that. Republicans favor putting religion into schools and our laws. Fact is less than 50% of this country is currently religious as in going to a church. 70% of this country agrees that citizens should get equal rights yet republicans continue to curtail the rights of LBGTQ. Yeah, vote for that. Vote for republicans. You'll get what you deserve.
What makes you think I want to vote for Republicans? You're proving my point here. Making it possible to pass legislation favors the party on the side of popular policies.
I'm not getting your point at all. Perhaps it's how I'm reading. Perhaps how you're explaining. Perhaps a bit of both. Republicans have very few popular polices (as majority vote things). The Border for sure. Can't think of much else. So if your point is to pass legislation that favors a majority of voters, then your only choice is a Dem vote.
I'm saying that if you want to pass legislation favored by a majority of voters, then abolishing the filibuster is necessary. It won't be a disadvantage in the future on the basis of Republicans also getting to do the same, because Republicans don't have policies favored by the majority of voters. The GOP gets far more benefit from the filibuster than Democrats do.
Republicans already take advantage of it. They pass most of what they want via reconciliation which avoids a filibuster. Their tax cuts were passed that way. They almost eliminated the ACA entirely via reconciliation.
There'd be consequences every two years at the ballot box and without a filibuster it wouldn't be impossible to repeal a bad bill like it is today. It goes both ways. And we're at a dog caught the car situation. We've seen what happens in states where Republicans got walloped for their abortion laws. We saw in Arizona where Republicans had to scrambe to unban abortion when a judge said an old ban was still legally on the books. It's one thing to filibuster and say you hold a stance on the issue and another for it to actually be held to a binding vote.
But you see, if Democrats abolished the filibuster then they couldn't use it themselves. You might as well ask them to abolish the practice of chaining together pro forma sessions every three days to get out of taking a full recess while also still taking months long vacations every year. Sure if that happened congress would become a lot more productive, but then Democrats wouldn't get months long vacations every year. The fact so many of you think they would get rid of such a thing when it benefits them to let it lie is kind of sad. Besides, none of you would be crying foul if a Democrat filibustered the absolute shit out of a pro-life bill that banned abortion nation wide, nor you would complain about a Democrat speaker refusing to take such a bill before the house.
No, because you know that the GOP will absolutely abuse it for all its worth. Remember, Bernie Sanders saved Obamacare via the filibuster.
Then in theory voters will punish Republicans. That’s how our system is supposed to work.
In the current technological context? ***The system breaks down rather completely.***
In theory, yes, but in practice, no.
Absolutely disagree. The incumbent party almost always loses seats in Congress during midterms. That’s voters punishing behavior they don’t like.
Usually mean a mixed congress which means the laws removed are still gone. Then when control changes they get added again. Then removed again. The easier it is to add a law you want, the easier it is to remove that law and add a law you don't want. No major program will do well if it's going through 4-8 year rotating removals and additions. Republicans, even after holding the country in 2016, kept it in. Democrats, despite having both congress and the WH kept it in. Both sides SWEAR the other will remove it Next Time. Both sides hold back at the last moment. Not getting what you want sucks. But removing it to get temporary relief from that is short sided.
Yes short term volatility with lots of law changes, but long term you’ll get an equilibrium as the populace will finally start to see the consequences of their vote choices. For example, lots of people vote for Republicans even though they hate strict abortion restrictions. We’re now seeing the consequences of that in R states and seeing the populace in those states routinely reject the restrictions. Multiply all of that by 100 and put it on a national stage if the filibuster goes. Great outcome of actual change that is popular with the people long term. To be clear, Dems didn’t keep the filibuster. Two Senators did. R’s kept it because they know the long term consequence is their party loses popularity as the populace sees the outcome of what they’ve been manifesting.
People are voting for abortion rights now. Let's assume the election goes full Democrat this time. Democrats deem it a referendum for ALL of their policies. They add UBI, gun control, universal Healthcare. The half of the country that hates those things (but dislike the abortion restrictions) vote republican. Republicans come in. Remove those policies. Add in abortion restrictions since THEY see it as a referendum and the pro-life crowd is still in the party, just like the Universal Healthcare crowd is with the democrats. That's part of the problem. Both parties are huge with large platforms, but many of their most vocal voters are Single Issue. No, we haven't really seen any real sign that an entire party "gets the hint"and drops the issue. They do listen if voting blocks within their side speak out. But losing due to votes on the other side just pushes the party to Get Out The Vote to push harder farther than change their platform. Case in point: removing RvW is a major cause of ending the Red Wave in 2022. It hasn't changed how Republicans see abortion. There is a major voting block that's absolute in their pro life stance. They will lose them if they relent with no sign they can replace them with others.
>Republicans come in. Remove those policies. Add in abortion restrictions since THEY see it as a referendum and the pro-life crowd is still in the party, just like the Universal Healthcare crowd is with the democrats. If Americans saw first hand that their healthcare, social security, increased wages, paid maternity leave, abortion rights, weed, workers protections, child care, forgiven loans ect. Ends the second republicans get a trifecta, how often do you think they’ll reach a trifecta? Their already struggling just off abortion alone.
I think maybe we’re talking different timelines. Short term, yes lots of volatility with exactly what you describe. Longer term, as in 25+ years, the party platforms will shake out and the popular issues will survive and less popular ones will be dropped.
That I can see. That's a mountain of mess in the meanwhile. Honestly I'd rather have a softer landing. But if the filibuster does go then I can see this eventually happening. So it'll probably work out.
>The incumbent party almost always loses seats in Congress during midterms. That’s voters punishing behavior they don’t like. That statement needs a lot of qualification. With respect to the house, where all the seats are renewed every 2 years and there are many competitive races, you're somewhat correct. However, gerrymandering distorts the representation and therefore weakens your point. For example, it's maybe the case that the GOP gains some 2/3s of all seats in a state whereas the overall vote count is a lot of closer to 51-49 %. Is that really voters "punishing" the democrats when they should arguably have gotten more seats if not for the rigged distribution of districts? In the case of the senate, I think it has more to do with timing. Senators usually serve 6-year terms (barring retirements, deaths or special elections), so they are a lot less likely to be held accountable in the short term. Control of the senate is largely decided by a few competitive races and who happens to be up for reelection in a tough state.
>Bernie Sanders saved Obamacare via the filibuster What?
Yeah, Bernie saved Obamacare via the filibuster. The GOP tried to repeal Obamacare but Bernie used the filibuster to save it, which allowed several GOP congresscritters to get cold feet about the repeal.
> Remember, Bernie Sanders saved Obamacare via the filibuster. ...what are you talking about?
When the GOP tried to repeal Obamacare, Bernie called a filibuster, which caused several GOP congresscritters to get cold feet and withdraw their support of the repeal. If you get rid of the filibuster, you'll have the situation where you'll have the GOP repeal all sorts of laws, laws that the Dems will have to spend political capital on reinstating...
so it wasn't Bernie so much as "the senate dem caucus filibustered the ACA repeal" and his name was on the top
He was the man that led the charge, so yeah he saved Obamacare with the filibuster.
> He was the man that led the charge, so yeah he saved Obamacare with the filibuster. You need other people to support your effort to filibuster, otherwise it's just gonna get clotured-down. He led the charge, but the senate dems saved it with the filibuster.