[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 49 (Tuesday, March 16, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1534-S1535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Filibuster

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it is flattering when the Republican 
Senate leader comes to the floor and mentions your name, and Senator 
McConnell did just that this morning.
  The issue was the filibuster. Senator McConnell found a quote several 
years ago where I spoke in favor of the filibuster to protect minority 
rights in the Senate. It is true. I did say that. It was based on life 
experience. Having already served in the Senate for a number of years, 
I came to understand how it evolved as one of the procedures in the 
Senate.
  But I have to say to you that my impression of the filibuster 
changed, and the reason it changed was none other than the Republican 
Senate majority leader, now minority leader, Senator McConnell. You 
see, the filibuster really was created in the Senate through its own 
rules, as I explained yesterday, and it came to define the Senate in 
this respect. The Founding Fathers looked to the Senate to provide two 
representatives--literally, Senators--from each State, regardless of 
population, so smaller States, back in the original Colonies, like 
Delaware, would have the same number of Senators as a large State, like 
Virginia. That was their intention.
  So the protection of minority rights was kind of built into the 
definition of the U.S. Senate, and the filibuster became its 
manifestation in the daily procedure of the Senate. Under that 
filibuster, of course, one Senator could stop the debate, or at least 
slow it

[[Page S1535]]

down, by insisting on a filibuster, only to be stopped by an 
extraordinary majority of the Senate voting to return to the regular 
business.
  That was the case in 1957 because, in August of 1957, Senator Strom 
Thurmond took to the floor of this U.S. Senate and initiated the 
longest filibuster in its history. For 24 hours and 18 minutes, the man 
stood by his desk and spoke without stopping. He didn't have any 
permission to leave the floor for any reason and certainly couldn't sit 
down without losing his filibuster. He did it. He did it for the wrong 
reason, I am afraid, because he was trying to stop the march of civil 
rights in this country, but he did it. Determinedly, he achieved that 
goal.
  When he did, in 1957, that was the broken fifth filibuster in the 
history of the Senate in the previous five decades. In other words, if 
you went back to 1919 and all the way to 1957, Strom Thurmond's was the 
fifth time in history a filibuster was broken. Once every decade, a 
filibuster was broken on the Senate floor.
  Well, that world has changed--dramatically changed. We can now have 
five filibusters in a couple of weeks. We now have, on average, 80 
filibusters a year because of the urging and direction of the Senator 
from Kentucky, Senator McConnell. He has institutionalized the 
filibuster to the point where it is now the normal course of business, 
not an extraordinary procedure.
  I recounted the fact that I introduced the DREAM Act 20 years ago--20 
years ago. Durbin, what kind of a Senator are you that in 20 years you 
can't pass the DREAM Act? Well, I brought it to the Senate floor on 
five different occasions, and on five different occasions it was 
stopped by the filibuster. Other Members can tell the story of their 
legislative experience on the floor too.
  The point I am getting to is this: It wasn't until Senator McConnell 
and the Republicans who follow him decided to make the filibuster just 
daily business in the Senate that it was abused to the point where the 
Senate stopped doing regular legislative business.
  I would like Senator McConnell to come to the floor the next 
opportunity he has and explain this to me. In the last calendar year, 
2020, the Senate considered 29 amendments on the floor of the Senate in 
the entire year. Now, that doesn't count a vote-arama, which is an 
aberration that I don't think would ever be accused of being 
deliberative. But 29 regular-order amendments during the course of a 
year--embarrassing, isn't it? When you think of this great so-called 
debating society, 29 times we brought an amendment to the floor? Well, 
it was an improvement--an improvement over the previous year, a 30-
percent improvement, in fact--because in the year 2019, under Senator 
McConnell's leadership, we had 22 amendments.
  So when Senator McConnell and others come to the floor and plead for 
us to hang on to the traditions of the Senate, I would tell you that 
their interpretation of the traditions is strangling this body. They 
have beaten the old filibuster to the point where it is hardly 
recognizable and is now the regular order of business in the U.S. 
Senate.
  That is why many of us, frustrated with having worked so hard to come 
here, wanting to do the best we can to represent the people who have 
sent us here, are so frustrated by the current state of procedure. And 
for Senator McConnell and other Republicans to come to the floor and 
plead for hanging on to this tradition is actually pleading for the 
Senate to continue to do less and less each year.
  There are those of us now in control on the majority side--the bare 
majority side--on the Democratic side, who really believe there is much 
more to be done in the Senate. The American people expect us to 
respond.
  Now, you might ask: Well, how did you pass the American Rescue Plan 
if there is a filibuster used so frequently? It was under a process 
called reconciliation, which depends on a majority vote. You can't 
filibuster under the reconciliation. That is why this amazing bill, 
this new law, the American Rescue Plan by President Biden, is so 
sweeping in its reach. We had to try to combine, under this law, so 
many provisions that had been affected by the pandemic and the state of 
the economy because we knew that returning to the regular order of 
business with the filibuster looming every single day would tie our 
hands just as sure as we have seen in the past several years.
  So, Senator McConnell, thank you for mentioning my name, but if I 
became skeptical of the filibuster, it is because of your use of it. I 
hope that you understand that you can't have it both ways. It can't be 
a rare procedure and be a procedure that dominates the actual business 
of the Senate as this has done for so many years.