Senate: An Attempt To Ease The Filibuster

The Senate has become plagued with a procedure formerly known only by Washington types and intense followers of the Senate. But it has become common knowledge in recent years because it has become common practice in the Senate. It is called cloture.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the word, I bet you are familiar with what it does.

I’ll start from the beginning (but I’ll make it brief).

- Any one Senator can block anything from moving forward in the Senate. This is called a filibuster.

- To overcome a filibuster, 60 Senators must agree. The vote to overcome a filibuster is called a cloture vote.

- If 60 Senators agree, then the Senate is able to move on to the pending business, and thus a final vote.

- If 60 Senators do NOT agree, then the issue is dead until they try again.

(Filibuster is the stalling tactic and cloture is the vote to overcome the stalling tactic.)

The cloture vote used to be for rare occasions. From 1949 – 1970, it was used just 30 times.

Since the Democrats regained control of the Senate in 2006, the cloture vote was necessary to overcome mostly Republican filibusters 154 times. That’s more than double the number of cloture votes the three years prior to 2006 when the Republicans controlled the Senate.

Earlier this year, Vice President Joe Biden said, “No democracy has survived needing a super majority.”

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is trying to change the perpetual stalemate. He introduced a measure, for the second time (the first was in 1995) to reform cloture. “This filibuster system has made Congress unworkable,” Harkin said.

Harkin said the filibuster has become “tit for tat” because Republicans say Democrats used to filibuster the Republican agenda. Harkin compared it to long-running, deadly conflicts. “It’s like the Serbs and the Bosnians. They go back to the 11th century about who started what first. Or the Israelis and the Palestinians, who started what first?” Harkin said.

In his proposal, the threshold to overcome a filibuster on an issue would decrease over time. After a couple of weeks of failed cloture votes, only a simple majority would be necessary.

The challenge is to pass his reform. Three-fifths, or 67, members have to agree to change Senate rules. That’s more difficult than overcoming a filibuster.

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