Democrats have put the filibuster on the spot. This is where it comes from

But using this chilling notion of what the House passes to outright kill a bill by filibuster is not part of the US Constitution, and probably not what Washington had in mind.

According to the official Senate.gov website, it started so much in the mid-19th century that the term “obstruction” originated – derived from the Dutch word “freebooter” and the Spanish word “filibustros”, which were pirates who attacked a Caribbean. island at the time.

But there was no mechanism to defeat the filibusters during the first century and a quarter of the United States Senate.

It wasn’t until 1917 that a frustrated President Woodrow Wilson convinced the Senate to pass a rule – known as RULE 22 – that allowed senators to vote to break a filibuster. It was, and still is, known as the “invocation of the fence.” (Fun fact The first time the new rule was used was in an attempt to overcome a Versailles treaty buccaneer in 1919).

At first, the voting threshold for breaking a filibuster was a supermajority – 67 votes. But that has always been difficult to achieve and has become more and more difficult over the years, so in 1975 it was changed to 60 voices which it is today.

‘Relic of Jim Crow’

Southern senators have used filibuster for years to block civil rights legislation – including anti-lynching bills.

South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 in the longest unbroken filibuster in Senate history, according to Senate.gov.

It wasn’t until 1964 that Senators finally got over a filibuster to pass the landmark Civil Rights Bill when former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was president.

In 2013 Harry Reid, then Senate Majority Leader, was so fed up with the GOP’s obstruction of then-President Barack Obama’s presidential candidates, he spearheaded a major shift so that presidential appointments only needed a simple majority to be confirmed, which helped get more Obama judges on the bench. When Republicans took control of the Senate, they used the same threshold of 51 votes to confirm a record number of conservative judges appointed by then-President Donald Trump.

What does “Talking Filibuster” mean?

In recent years, senators have used filibuster so much that most bills are expected to need 60 votes to pass, rather than a mere majority of 51 out of 100 senators. .

It is now so cooked that Senate majority leaders tend to plan closing votes to immediately cross the 60-vote threshold.

The idea is to make it more painful to filibuster a bill – to have more events like when Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas spoke for hours against Obamacare, in part while reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” or when Sen Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, spoke for 13 hours against the use of military drones.

But experts like former Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin say “filibuster” would probably do little to stop the filibuster.

The reason: Let’s say the Republicans are filibustering HR1, the voting rights law that was passed by the House. If enough GOP senators are ready to speak, they could take turns and spend the night for days and days.

In addition, rather than acting as a deterrent, filibuster senators may find it politically advantageous to voice their opposition to a bill. So the process would change, but the result – a bill getting bogged down in the Senate with no end in sight – might not be.