[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 12, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S169-S170]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Filibuster

  Mr. President, I want to talk about two subjects today, and the first 
is this question of the rules of the Senate because I have listened 
with great interest over the last few days as my Republican colleagues 
have come down to the floor to extol the virtues of Senate tradition. 
They explained the danger of changing the rules so that the majority 
vote in the Senate can pass legislation.
  It doesn't sound like a radical idea; that if the majority of 
Senators want a piece of legislation to pass, it should pass. But this 
idea that the filibuster is part of the original design of our 
democracy or our Senate or that the current use of the filibuster is 
consistent with Senate tradition is just not true.
  Our Founding Fathers--yes, they built a system of government that was 
designed to make rapid change, even change supported by the majority of 
voters, really, really hard to implement.
  They designed two different legislative Chambers, the President with 
veto power, staggered terms for Senators, but our Founding Fathers 
considered a supermajority requirement for legislation in the Congress, 
and they rejected it as too great a limitation on the will of the 
people.
  Now, admittedly, at the time of our founding, there were other checks 
on the voters' will being quickly transformed into policy changes. Back 
then, for instance, only White men could vote. The citizenry at the 
time wasn't even trusted to directly elect the Members of this body. 
But in the decades that followed, the American people demanded more 
democracy, and they got it.
  Why? Because as our grand experiment of democracy continues, we saw 
proof of concept. The people could be trusted to govern themselves. 
They could choose leaders who were more able, more honest, more 
effective than any King or Queen or Sultan or Emperor.
  So we extended the franchise universally. We decided to have the 
Senate be directly elected, and as America expanded, the new States out 
in the West, they gobbled up even more democracy. The West decided to 
elect not just legislators but judges and prosecutors, dog catchers and 
insurance commissioners. The majoritarian rule, as America grew, became 
addictive, and as our country grew, our citizens demanded more of it.
  Now, in the context of the Founders' intentions and the long-term 
trend toward more democracy, this 60-vote requirement, this 
supermajority requirement in the Senate, which doesn't exist in any 
other high-income democracy--it stands out like a sore, rotting thumb. 
This anti-majoritarian drain clog is designed intentionally to stop the 
majority of Americans from getting what they want from government 
because that is what it is.
  Why should it not be up to the voters and not politicians to decide 
the laws of this Nation?
  With a 60-vote threshold, that decision is robbed from voters. Given 
that only one-third of the Senate is up for election every 2 years, it 
is just impossible for voters on their own to move one party from, say, 
46 or 48 Members of this body to 60 Members in one election, and we all 
know this.

  But right now the American public is in no mood for the choices of 
elites to be continually substituted for their collective judgment. 
Right now, Americans are in a pretty revolutionary mood, and you can 
understand why. More Americans today than at any time in recent history 
see themselves

[[Page S170]]

on the precipice of financial and spiritual ruin. So why on Earth would 
our message amidst this growing populous tempest be to tell voters that 
rules are required to protect them from their bad judgment, to take 
from them purposely the ability to change policies whenever and however 
they wish?
  Now, Senate Republicans will say that even though the filibuster is 
anti-majoritarian--right, it is. It says that even if the public 
installs a majority in the Senate that wants policy A, the rules are 
going to be constructed in the Senate to prevent it from happening. 
Senate Republicans will say that even though it is anti-majoritarian, 
it is for good reason because, as I have heard many of my colleagues 
say, it promotes compromise.
  Well, I have been in the Senate now for 8, 9 years. Once in a blue 
Moon, like this summer on the infrastructure bill, there is a big 
bipartisan achievement. But anyone who believes that the rules of the 
Senate right now incentivizes bipartisanship should just watch the 
Senate for, like, a few days.
  Today, the 60-vote threshold just allows the minority to sit back and 
say, no, no, no, over and over again, in large part, because its usage 
has changed so much. It didn't used to be that the filibuster, the 60-
vote threshold, was applied to everything.
  Up until the 1970s, cloture votes were almost nonexistent in the 
Senate. Big things routinely passed with 50 votes. Think about this. In 
1994, Senator Feinstein forced a vote here on one of the most 
controversial topics that we could talk about--a ban on assault 
weapons. It received, in 1994, fewer votes than did the Manchin-Toomey 
background checks bill 30 years later. But the assault weapons ban, 
arguably way more controversial than the background checks bill, passed 
and became law while the background checks bill didn't. Why? Because in 
1994, many important votes, even the assault weapons ban, were allowed 
to proceed on a majority-vote basis.
  That all changed, mostly when Democrats won the Senate in 2007, and 
Barack Obama was elected President. But no matter who started this 
policy of applying the 60-vote threshold to everything, today both 
parties use it. Democrats used it when we were in the minority.
  The practice of the filibuster doesn't jibe with this clarion call of 
adhering to Senate tradition because Senate tradition is not to use the 
60-vote threshold on everything. Let's be honest. We are not going back 
to a world in which Senators self-regulate the filibuster. And there is 
no sign that the claim the filibuster is an incentive for 
bipartisanship is going to suddenly become true.
  Today, millions of voters are wondering why they vote to change the 
people who get elected but then nothing actually changes.
  We should have a better answer than just Senate tradition.