-The filibuster. -The filibuster.
-Filibuster?
-Filibuster.
-The filibuster.
It's regarded by some as an outdated rule
that broke the Senate.
-We need to get rid of the filibuster
to keep our democracy.
-Others say it protects the right
of the minority and fosters bipartisanship.
-It's basically designed, Chuck,
to make sure the minority has input.
-You may know it as the time Ted Cruz read
"Green Eggs and Ham"
and talked on the Senate floor for over 21 hours.
-"Do you like green eggs and ham?"
-But what exactly
is the filibuster and why does it exist?
-A filibuster really is any attempt in the Senate
to block or delay a Senate from getting to a vote.
That can be endless debate.
It can be offering endless amendments.
It can be offering obstructive motions.
-Put simply, it's a loophole within Senate rules
that blocks legislation.
Rather than requiring a simple majority to pass a bill,
it requires at least 60 votes to just end debate.
Once that's over, voting can begin.
But that wasn't always the case.
-The filibuster came to be, we believe,
because of an unintended consequence
of a very small change
in cleanup of the Senate rulebook in 1806.
-You can blame that on Aaron Burr.
Just a year earlier, Vice President Burr,
freshly indicted for murdering Treasury Secretary Alexander
Hamilton in a duel,
told the Senate they had too many rules.
The Senate responded by eliminating a rule
that could've been used to cut off debate,
opening the door for lawmakers to talk for hours
to delay proceedings.
For years, business went on as usual
until one senator wised up
and decided to exploit the change.
In the 1840s, Senator John Calhoun
took the opportunity to block bills
he feared would diminish the power of slave-holding
states by talking for hours on end.
Some senators took notice of the tactic,
and, decades later,
the act of endless debate became more common,
ultimately earning the name filibuster.
The name actually comes from a Dutch term for "pirate,"
which is pretty appropriate given that a filibustering
senator is essentially taking the Senate captive.
-Get dressed. We're going to have company.
-Politicians on both sides of the aisle were frustrated
that a single senator's never-ending speech
could destroy legislation supported by the majority.
So, in 1917, at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson,
Senate rule 22 was adopted.
It allowed the Senate to end debate
with a two-thirds majority vote, also known as a cloture.
This was later reduced even further to a three-fifths vote.
Even still, long-winded talks were very much possible.
The record for the longest single-person filibuster
is held by South Carolina's Strom Thurmond,
who tried to stop the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
He went on and on for over 24 hours
and failed to convince a single senator to change their vote.
Fast-forward to today.
The filibuster is now more common than ever.
But unlike the old days, they're rarely passionate,
hours-long speeches.
-And I'm going to stay right here
and fight for this lost cause,
even if this room gets filled with lies like these!
-Regardless of opposition senators' intent in voting
against cloture,
the outcome, more often than not, is just deadlock,
that these issues just remain on the agenda year
after year and, in fact,
never get to a vote beyond the procedural vote on cloture.
-Both Democrats and Republicans have toyed with eliminating
the legislative filibuster over the years.
One way to do that is the complicated nuclear option,
when senators override an existing rule,
like the number of votes needed to end debate.
-The term "the nuclear option" is applied to one route
or one procedural path
to abolishing the filibuster, meaning --
usually meaning lowering the threshold of requiring
60 votes of cloture down to, say, 50 or a simple majority.
-Harry Reid used the nuclear option in 2013,
clearing the way for executive branch nominees
to reach approval with a simple majority.
-It's time to get the Senate working again.
-Mitch McConnell followed up in 2017
by extending the simple-majority vote
to Supreme Court nominations.
-When Democrats used it in 2013, the opposition,
the minority party, threatened to say,
"If you use this particular procedural route,
we are going to blow up all the other bridges in sight.
Every time you need consent from a member of the other --
of 100 senators, we're going to object.
We're going to make your life so miserable,
it's going to be like nuclear war."
-Deadlock in the Senate isn't going away anytime soon.
And whatever the future may hold for the filibuster,
it's likely to remain a point of contention
regardless of who's in power.