The Senate rules provide two ways to break a filibuster. The first is the mechanical way, by invoking cloture (the Senate’s term for ending debate), which requires 60 votes. The second, which has existed within the Senate’s rules since its inception, is by making senators talk — the “talking filibuster.”
The talking filibuster is a strategy that, first and foremost, imposes a physical and psychological cost of obstruction on filibustering senators. Second, it forces a public political process that has implications for those who oppose the bill. In other words, it doesn’t allow them to hide behind a single vote. If Democrats want to oppose securing the vote from the interference of noncitizens, they should have to explain why — at length and in public.
Strassel has provided several reasons for opposing this strategy, challenges she calls “false promises and huge problems.” But her essay leaves out critical details, makes some key factual errors, and is based on unwarranted assumptions. I’ll respond to each of her objections one by one. //
Demanding an airtight guaranteed result before bringing a bill to the floor began roughly 20 years ago and is an aberration of the modern Senate. For 200 years before that, Senate leaders would bring bills to the floor with a degree of uncertainty, and the momentum created by debate, amendment, exhaustion, and negotiation usually (but not always) resulted in passage of the bill. Bringing a bill to the floor when you already know the outcome is not fighting, leading, or even legislating. It’s just scheduling. //
When former Democrat Majority Leader Mike Mansfield brought the Civil Rights Act to the floor in 1964, he didn’t have the votes necessary for cloture on either side of party lines. According to the Senate’s historian, while his Democrat caucus had 67 members, “barely 40 expressed strong support for cloture.” He spent 60 days forcing southern Democrats to filibuster the bill. During that time, a public political process put immense pressure on the opponents, allowed proponents to execute an ongoing strategy and build bipartisan support, forced both sides into a legislative negotiation, and the result was the filibuster being broken with 71 votes.
A talking filibuster forces a process. A specific outcome is never guaranteed — that’s the legislative process! — but the first step toward getting any kind of outcome at all, besides ignoring the bill entirely, is to try. //
Or, to put it in the words of Sen. Robert C. Byrd when he forced a talking filibuster in 1988: “There is no point of having an easy gentlemen’s filibuster back in the cloakrooms. Let’s have it right here on the Senate floor where the American people can see it.”
Americans want to see the Senate rise to the level of their expectations: to tangle with hard questions and deliberate with skill and strategy. The talking filibuster has been a tool in the Senate’s arsenal for 200 years, and returning to it could unlock the majesty of the institution, which has for too long been dormant and increasingly irrelevant.
