When the Republic was formed, both representatives in the House and the Senate had the right to unlimited debate and could hold the floor for as long as they wanted. These "Filibusters" caused bills that would otherwise have majority support to "die" by being "talked to death" and not be voted upon.
There is absolutely ZERO Constitutional basis for this behavior and it is merely a "Rule" that can be changed by majority vote of the Senators at any time.
In the House of Representatives, the use of the filibuster was eliminated in 1842, when a permanent rule limiting the duration of debate was created.
The "disappearing quorum", was a tactic, whereby house members refused to answer role call when present, preventing the House from conducting business (no quorum), as not enough members where "officially" present. This tactic was used by the minority until Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed eliminated it in 1890. Speaker Brackett ordered the house clerk to mark members not answering role call as "Present", even though they refused to verbally acknowledge their own presence. Must have been simply hilarious to watch politicians argue that they were not present in the House and that they should not have their names recorded during the role call, etc.
The filibuster continues to be a powerful parliamentary device in the United States Senate, which was strengthened in 1975 and in the past decade has come to mean that most major legislation (apart from budgets) requires a 60% vote (3/5th) to bring a bill or nomination to the floor for a vote. In recent years, the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened and attempts to achieve cloture have failed.
In the past, the Senate has had a 2/3rd's rule to end the Filibuster and now has a 3/5th's threshold (60 votes). So even Bills that have a 51 vote majority support can simply not be voted upon. As you can imagine the presence of these rules are simply invitations to corruption, as "buying" off your fellow Senators by basic bribery is sometimes the only way to get things done.
Defenders call the filibuster "The Soul of the Senate." I would counter that the Filibuster is Destroying the Republic and preventing the People's business from getting done.
The removal or substantial limitation of the filibuster is called the "Constitutional Option" by proponents, and the "Nuclear Option" by opponents.
On November 21, 2013, the Senate voted, in a 52 to 48 vote, to require only a majority vote to end a filibuster of all executive and judicial nominees, excluding Supreme Court nominees, rather than the 3/5 of votes previously required. A 3/5 supermajority is still required to end filibusters on legislation and Supreme Court nominees.
Some will argue that losing the tradition (sic) of the Filibuster is a big mistake as once Republicans are in the minority, they will wish that the Filibuster was in-place. This is how losers think and is defeatist. The public is growing increasingly frustrated at the inability of government to function effectively. It seems that once the liberals create and enshrine new programs and/or government agencies they are sacrosanct and here to stay forever in one form of another.
As a Citizen I reject that argument 100%. Our leaders have an ethical and morale obligation to do the job the People have hired them to do, period. The Senate rules (nothing more) stand in the way of the People's business. Those rules need to be changed now.
Some will say, if it wasn't for the Senate rules, the Democrats would have already achieved 100% Socialism in this country. I disagree, as we have been getting there bit, by bit for the last 100 years. In some ways, it would have been better if they had screwed it all up long ago, as it only takes 2 years in the house and 6 years of elections in total for a compete reversal of power to occur. The bums would have been thrown out long ago.
As you can see below, from the U.S. Senate's own website, there have also been racist democrats who have used the Filibuster to deny their fellow Americans equality. Therefore we can accurately describe the Filibuster as an Outdated Racist Tradition.
From the U.S. Senate website (Public Domain):
Filibuster and Cloture
Using the filibuster to delay or block legislative action has a long history. The term filibuster -- from a Dutch word meaning "pirate" -- became popular in the 1850s, when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill.
In the early years of Congress, representatives as well as senators could filibuster. As the House of Representatives grew in numbers, however, revisions to the House rules limited debate. In the smaller Senate, unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue.
In 1841, when the Democratic minority hoped to block a bank bill promoted by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, he threatened to change Senate rules to allow the majority to close debate. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton rebuked Clay for trying to stifle the Senate's right to unlimited debate.
Three quarters of a century later, in 1917, senators adopted a rule (Rule 22), at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote, a device known as "cloture."
The new Senate rule was first put to the test in 1919, when the Senate invoked cloture to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. Even with the new cloture rule, filibusters remained an effective means to block legislation, since a two-thirds vote is difficult to obtain. Over the next five decades, the Senate occasionally tried to invoke cloture, but usually failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote.
Filibusters were particularly useful to Southern senators who sought to block civil rights legislation, including anti-lynching legislation, until cloture was invoked after a 60 day filibuster against the Civil Right Act of 1964. In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 of the current one hundred senators.
Many Americans are familiar with the filibuster conducted by Jimmy Stewart, playing Senator Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but there have been some famous filibusters in the real-life Senate as well. During the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor. The Louisiana senator frustrated his colleagues while entertaining spectators with his recitations of Shakespeare and his reading of recipes for "pot-likkers." Long once held the Senate floor for 15 hours. The record for the longest individual speech goes to South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond (a Democrat until 1964) who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
The Filibuster MUST be destroyed!!!!
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