{"id":5284,"date":"2012-11-29T00:46:28","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T08:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fogcityjournal.com\/wordpress\/?p=5284"},"modified":"2018-06-18T07:49:43","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T15:49:43","slug":"ending-the-u-s-senate-filibuster-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fogcityjournal.com\/wordpress\/5284\/ending-the-u-s-senate-filibuster-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"Ending the U.S. Senate Filibuster Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Illustration by Alan Dye (The New York Times).<\/p><\/div>\n

By Ralph E. Stone<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

November 29, 2012<\/p>\n

There is increasing sentiment in the U.S. Senate to end or reform the filibuster. \u00a0Supposedly all seven of the newly elected senators, including newly elected independent Angus King of Maine, have pledged their support to changing the Senate’s filibuster rule.\u00a0 As we have seen in the last sessions of Congress, a 41-vote minority of Republican senators has effectively bottled up or killed legislation.<\/p>\n

In the last session of Congress in early 2011, efforts to reform the filibuster fell seven votes short of passage. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who opposed and voted against the idea at the start of the last session of Congress, has recanted and thrown his weight behind the effort.<\/p>\n

A U.S. Senate filibuster\u00a0usually refers to any dilatory or obstructive tactics used to prevent a measure from being brought to a vote, according to Wikipedia<\/a>.\u00a0 Senate Rule XXII<\/a> permits a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose unless “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn”\u00a0(usually 60 out of 100 senators) brings debate to a close by invoking\u00a0cloture<\/a>. \u00a0Since 1917, there have been 1,372 cloture motions filed, 989 votes on cloture, and 440 cloture invoked. \u00a0In recent years, however, the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened and attempts to achieve enough votes for cloture have failed.<\/wbr><\/p>\n

In the last six years, the Senate has had 380 filibusters. \u00a0From the moment Obama won the presidency, right-wing conservatives’ goal was to make Obama a one-term president. \u00a0As Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell put it, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”\u00a0The Republicans used the filibuster or the threat of filibuster to further this obstructionist strategy.<\/p>\n

The Democrats have not been adverse to using the filibuster. \u00a0They used the filibuster to prevent the confirmation of conservative appellate court candidates nominated by President\u00a0George W. Bush<\/a>. \u00a0In the Republican-controlled\u00a0108th Congress<\/a>, ten Bush judicial nominees had been\u00a0filibustered<\/a>\u00a0by the minority Democrats.\u00a0\u00a0As a result of these ten filibusters, Senate Republicans began to threaten to change the existing Senate rules by using what Senator\u00a0Trent Lott<\/a>\u00a0termed the\u00a0“nuclear option<\/a>”\u00a0or sometimes called the “constitutional option.” This change in rules would eliminate the use of the\u00a0filibuster<\/a>\u00a0to prevent judicial confirmation votes. As a compromise, the so called\u00a0Gang of 14 signed an agreement, pertaining to the 109th Congress only, whereby the seven\u00a0Senate Democrats<\/a>\u00a0would no longer vote along with their party on filibustering judicial nominees (except in “extraordinary circumstances,” as defined by each individual senator), and in turn the seven Senate Republicans\u00a0would break with\u00a0the Republican leadership on voting for the “nuclear option.”<\/p>\n

Previously, a filibuster meant non-stop speeches made famous by Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, and infamously by Senator Strom Thurmond’s 1959 marathon oration against the civil rights bill. \u00a0Thurmond holds the Senate’s filibuster record of 24 hours and 18 minutes.<\/p>\n

Emmet J. Bondurant in his article “The Senate Filibuster: The Politics of Obstruction,” persuasively argues that “The notion that the Framers of the Constitution intended to allow a minority in the U.S. Senate to exercise veto power over legislation and presidential appointments is not only profoundly undemocratic, it is also a myth.” \u00a0\u00a0In this regard, Common Cause filed a lawsuit on May 16, 2012 asking the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to declare that “the\u00a0Senate\u2019s filibuster rule is unconstitutional and violates the core American principle of majority rule.”<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0changes to the Senate filibuster rule could be achieved by a simple majority. Nevertheless, under current Senate rules, a rule change itself could be filibustered, with two-thirds of those senators present and voting (as opposed to the normal three-fifths of those sworn) needing to vote to end debate.<\/p>\n

Despite this the possibility exists that the filibuster could be changed by majority vote, using the nuclear or constitutional option\u00a0mentioned above. \u00a0The Senate Democrats could override\u00a0the current filibuster rules by a simple majority vote and thus end a filibuster\u00a0or other delaying tactic.\u00a0\u00a0The new interpretation would become effective both for the immediate circumstance and as a precedent, if it is upheld by a majority vote.<\/p>\n

Under the U.S. Constitution, the Senate has the right to choose the rules governing its procedure by majority vote, including ending filibuster altogether or ending a filibuster (cloture) by a majority vote.<\/p>\n

The Senate’s authority and step-by-step guide to change the filibuster rule<\/a> can be found in “The Constitutional Option to Change Senate Rules and Procedures: \u00a0A Majoritarian Means to Overcome the Filibuster” by Martin B. Gold and Dimple Gupta.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the time has come to change the present Senate filibuster rule by invoking the nuclear option or constitutional option. \u00a0The filibuster has become a tool of obstruction, replacing majority rule by the tyranny of the minority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is increasing sentiment in the U.S. Senate to end or reform the filibuster. As we have seen in the last sessions of Congress, a 41-vote minority of Republican senators has effectively bottled up or killed legislation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1230,"featured_media":5285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,17],"tags":[2047,562,2046,380],"class_list":["post-5284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-politics","tag-cloture","tag-congress","tag-filibuster","tag-senate"],"yoast_head":"\nEnding the U.S. Senate Filibuster Rule - Fog City Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fogcityjournal.com\/wordpress\/5284\/ending-the-u-s-senate-filibuster-rule\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ending the U.S. Senate Filibuster Rule - Fog City Journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is increasing sentiment in the U.S. Senate to end or reform the filibuster. 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