Mr. Smith Threatens to go to Washington
BY SERENA LEKAWA
By definition, ‘filibuster’ is an informal term for an attempt to block or slow down a Senate action or bill by refusing to finish debating it. The origins of this quirky tool are not found in the Constitution, but rather in the perversion of a loophole in the Senate rulebook.
Originally, the official rulebooks for the House and the Senate were almost exactly the same. They both included something called the “previous question motion,” which allowed for a debate to be ended by a vote of a simple majority: “the previous question being moved and seconded, the question for the chair shall be: ‘Shall the main question now be put?’ and if the nays prevail, the main question shall not then be put.” In 1805, however, Vice President Aaron Burr called this double-mentioning of the “previous question motion” redundant. He thought the rules of the Senate should be cleaner, and advised the senators to drop it. At the time, officials of the still-young U.S. government were not seeking a mechanism to obstruct motions by endless speech—government polarization as it is thought of now certainly did not exist in the same sense at the time. The revision was accepted with few questions asked.
Within a few decades, filibuster chaos ensued, and attempts to reform the filibuster were themselves filibustered until President Woodrow Wilson asked the Senate for the adoption of a cloture rule a century later. According to this new rule, a filibuster could be cut off by a 2/3 vote, but in the absence of this 2/3 presence, senators were free to read lengthy cookbooks and verbose historical documents until they collapsed. In 1957, Strom Thurmond conducted the longest filibuster in history, lasting over 24 hours, in opposition to that year’s Civil Rights Act.
However, since 1975, significant changes have occurred, creating an important shift in the culture of filibuster. The 2/3 vote needed to enact cloture became a 3/5 vote. Furthermore, the number needed to stop a filibuster previously referred to senators physically present to vote, but in 1975 this was changed to mean senators in general, present or not. In other words, a senator’s intention equals the value of his or her attendance. Since then filibuster use has become increasingly common, especially in recent years. The 110th Congress alone (2007-2008) saw 112 cloture votes. Over the past 6 years, there have been a total of 278 votes on cloture. Compare that to the 100 votes that occurred between 1917 and 1974!
Today, little in terms of legislation and nomination remains untouched by the filibuster. The threat of the filibuster alone suffices to obstruct the will of the majority.
What does this spike in filibustering mean for the political process? Has it become an integral step that checks the powers of the majority, or an antiquated tool that delays progress and distorts the power of the minority? Checks and balances certainly remain key to the character of the federal government. But the filibuster seems to be acting less as a peculiar byproduct of legislative decision-making rules than as a constant ball-and-chain impeding timely action on important issues. The filibuster as it exists today is not a symbol of free speech as some once envisioned it. Rather, the excessive use of the modern filibuster only adds tension and bitterness to an already polarized government.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats are currently working actively in favor of filibuster reform, and their efforts are supported by President Obama. But will reform be enough to allow the Senate to proceed as a truly effective legislative body? Perhaps for the Senate to serve its original purpose, the filibuster ought to be abolished all together. On the other hand, maybe the persistence of this accident of procedural revision indicates the country’s need for the ‘underdog’ to have a serious say in government. Whether there is something inherently plucky and American in this idea or not, something must change. Progress in the name of the majority will—a majority by the American people—cannot halt altogether because a too-powerful tool magnifies the power of the minority. Abolished or reformed, the age of the faulty filibuster must come to an end.