Yes. The filibuster is allowed to exist because of a mutual consensus to reserve it for contentious issues, and not to simply filibuster 100% of the time. Republicans broke the disarmament agreement by filibustering (essentially) the entire appointment process, so the Democrats re-armed. It just goes to show how important norms and not breaking them are to the functioning of society. If you insist on living by the letter of the law in contravention of the spirit, expect the law to change.
The Senate has the constitutional authority to make and change its own rules. It is possible that if Senate Democrats filibuster this legislation the Republican majority might eliminate the filibuster by rule change.
The filibuster is never actually used anymore, just threatened. That's good enough to get what you want. No one these days has the patience or balls to actually make someone go through with it.
As an outsider, this seems like a disingenuous take, but I might be missing something.
Do you think there's any negative effect to allowing a filibuster to occur on things guaranteed to be rejected by the Republicans? Could that time be better spent otherwise? If so, doesn't this imply that it's a soft limitation (sure they could put up a lame duck bill I guess).
Democratic Senators need to be careful what they filibuster. Absurdly, it only takes a majority vote for the Senate to change the rules to disallow filibusters.
Then again, the vote to change the rules to disallow filibusters could itself be filibustered.
But, the Senate, despite all that, could (on motion) declare the filibuster unconstitutional, and only require a simple majority vote to affirm it.
They can absolutely abolish the filibuster or make exceptions for it. Stop parroting the party line excuses and learned helplessness. The fillibuster is a Senate rule not a constitutional one.
The filibuster is a set of rules that both parties agreed to. One might well ask why Democrats in the senate agreed to this rule once again, knowing full well it would impede their ability to accomplish their publicly touted platform over the next few years.
The filibuster is just a product of the Senate rules and could be changed at any time. There's no incentive to do so now because the Democrats currently control the Senate but they couldn't pass anything even without the filibuster because the Republicans control the House. I suspect it's going to happen with the next trifecta.
It's been a traditional courtsey in the Senate for the party in power not to shove through votes often, in respect that in the future they would eventually be the minority party, and occasionally need to filibuster as well. The possibility of removing the ability to filibuster has been discussed, but not undertaken for this reason.
By filibustering so often, the Republicans are showing that this is no longer the custom. Which is fine; I think it's a silly custom, and we'd benefit as a nation if blocking legislation like that were impossible. But it is absolutely a break from common procedure.
I'm not sure that makes sense. The modern filibuster is a bipartisan agreement for inaction.
It's really a bipartisan agreement to defer to Senate Republicans on everything controversial, and to let them take both the blame and credit for it. Democrats are happy with that because when their votes don't count, they can pretend to support anything. When Democrats lose, it energizes their base. Republicans are happy to take credit for economically liberal and nationalistic legislation. And for the legislation that just rewards the wealthy for being wealthy (say, bailouts), movement right-wing and libertarian Republicans can vote against it (and they're mostly in the House) while small consistent groups of Democrats can cross over to make sure it passes anyway.
The filibuster has always seemed anti-democratic - it’s not in the constitution, and I’m pretty sure that historically it was a way to make give the minority senators more power at the expense of the people.
The House used to have a filibuster rule in the 1800s. They finally got rid of it exactly because it ended up blocking everything... then restored it... then got rid of it again.
True, but you're really dodging the issue here which is the current dysfunctional Congress. There have been a record number of filibusters this past year; Congress hasn't been so divided since the Civil War. Requiring 60 votes (the number required to prevent a filibuster) to pass a bill is against the intentions of the founders. In all cases where more than a majority is required, the founders explicitly noted the ratio (ex: the confirmation of treaties). No ratio is specified for the passage of bills or the confirmation of appointments. Whatever it going on in Congress today, it's not something that was intended by the founders. Hell, filibusters weren't even put into the Senate rules until the early 1900s.
Personally I think the Dems should exercise the nuclear option and amend the constitution to require 3/5 for appointments to the Supreme Court. They used to be confirmed by that much anyway; it's most been under GW Bush that we've had Court appointees pass by narrow margins. Cliton had over 90 votes for all of his and most of Reagan's were unanimous. GW never broke 60.
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