Even the prospect of a filibuster can hold up a final vote or force a bill’s supporters to make changes in a bill. Then-majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, citing “unbelievable, unprecedented obstruction” by Senate Republicans, prompted a call to use the “nuclear option.” This option, voted in by a 52 to 48 vote along party lines, changed the rules so that all executive-branch Cabinet appointments and judicial nominations below the Supreme Court can proceed with a simple majority of 51 votes.Īpart from nominations, filibusters have become so engrained within the Senate’s process that new bills generally do not go to vote unless the leadership is assured they have at least 60 votes. In 2013, Democrats held a majority in the Senate and had grown frustrated by stalled nominations by President Barack Obama for cabinet posts and federal judgeships. One way the filibuster can no longer be used is in blocking executive and judicial branch nominees.
That number grew steadily since and spiked in 20 (the 110th Congress), when there were 52 filibusters. By the time the 111th Congress adjourned in 2010, the number of filibusters had risen to 137 for the entire two-year term. Wilson denounced the senators who had stalled his wartime proposal as a “little group of willful men” who had “rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” He rallied public outcry against the tactic and lobbied the Senate to adopt Rule 22. Finally, in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson urged change after his push to arm merchant ships against German U-boats during the run-up to World War I failed in the face of senate filibusters. The filibuster’s habit of stalling the legislative process frustrated various senators throughout the 1800s, who tried unsuccessfully multiple times to abolish the rule. The first successful filibuster was recorded in 1837, when a group of Whig senators who opposed President Andrew Jackson filibustered to prevent Jackson’s allies from expunging a resolution of censure against him.
Minority party senators soon figured out that talking endlessly on the Senate floor could prolong debate indefinitely and gum up progress on a bill or nomination.
By the mid-1800s the term had evolved to filibuster and taken on political meaning, describing the process by which long-winded senators hold the legislative body hostage by their verbiage. The term filibuster originated from the 18th-century word “flibustier,” which referred to pirates who pillaged the Spanish colonies in the West Indies, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. While various rule changes have tempered the filibuster’s power over the past century, it still offers unique leverage to the minority political party in the Senate. Senate rule that says a senator, once recognized on the floor, may speak on an issue without being impeded by anyone. The unusual tactic takes advantage of a U.S.
A filibuster is a political strategy in which a senator speaks-or threatens to speak-for hours on end to delay efforts to vote for a bill.
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