Weekend Wordery: Permanent Filibuster
Jonathan Bernstein wants to clear up some confusion in the way we talk about obstructionism in the United States Senate. In particular, he wants us all to work from the same definition of the word filibuster:
To filibuster is to insist that a bill or nomination needs 60 votes to pass. A filibuster is a requirement that a bill or nomination takes 60 votes to pass.
The term filibuster predates the cloture rule from which the 60-vote requirement derives. But since the advent of the cloture rule, adopted in 19171, it has become possible to divide filibusters into two categories: the unbreakable, Big-F, full monty Filibuster with enough support to survive cloture; and the mere hindrance, little-f, small fry filibustering, in which the opposition knows it cannot survive cloture, but impedes the bill anyway with whatever parliamentary tactics are available.
Bernstein asks us to embrace the Big F as The Filibuster proper; the rest is just “stalling” or “delay.” But at the same time, Bernstein says, the distinction is not about whether the obstructionists actually succeed in blocking the bill or nomination. A filibuster can fail, after all, if it can’t garner 41 votes. “The decision that matters—the one that makes it a filibuster—is the decision to try to find 41 votes to block the bill or nomination,” he writes.
The sad fact is, the Senate minority is basically in perpetual pursuit of those 41 votes. And it’s a rare event for a senator to make a distinction between merely opposing a measure, and filibustering it. All of which means we are living in…the Era of Permanent Filibuster.
- Senate Rule 22, adopted in 1917, established a 2/3 majority requirement for ending debate. The rule was modified in 1975 to require just 3/5, or 60 of 100. [↩]
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