MinnPost: Klobuchar, Franken cheer potential filibuster reform

While most of Washington is focused on the “fiscal cliff,” the Senate has been engaged in a debate this week over the function of the most notable and notorious procedural trick in the chamber’s rulebooks: the filibuster.

The filibuster allows minority party senators to block consideration of legislation unless supporters are able to secure 60 votes for passage. Republicans, with their 47 members, have used the filibuster, by Democrats’ count, more than 300 times since Democrats took back control of the chamber in 2007, to block everything from legislation introduced by Democrats to White House judicial appointments.

The filibuster has become such a thorn in Democrats’ sides that for the first time, Majority Leader Harry Reid has said it’s time to change the way it works, by changing which Senate procedures are subject to the filibuster and requiring actual talking filibusters on the Senate floor — a proposal that has led to understandable opposition from Republicans.

Minnesota’s two senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, both pitched plans to reform the filibuster before the 112th Congress started back in January 2011. Their efforts largely failed then, but both said they’re heartened by Reid’s openness to changing the rule now.

“I think now it’s pretty clear that you’ve got a majority of Democrats supporting a change,” congressional scholar Norm Ornstein said. “They have to be careful that they do it right.”

Filibuster and past reform efforts

The filibuster has its roots in an early 19th century re-writing of the Senate rulebook. The change, coupled with a new rule added in the 1910s, allowed for unlimited debate on an issue unless enough senators, two-thirds at first, voted to end debate and move forward with consideration of legislation (a move that’s now called “invoking cloture”).

The filibuster was used infrequently during the next 150 or so years: it gained notoriety, perhaps, not because of its actual usage, but its appearance in the 1939 film “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,” in which Jimmy Stewart’s character gives an hours-long speech to hold up action on the floor of the Senate.

By the 1970s, it was used or threatened with enough regularity that a group of senators, led by Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale, sought, successfully, to lower the threshold to invoke cloture from 67 votes to 60. That was the last meaningful change to the filibuster rule, and now Mondale says it’s time for the Senate to reform it again.

“We’ve got to get some movement in the Congress,” Mondale said in an interview. “The rule leads to a paralysis. It’s really gotten to the point where deep reforms are needed.”

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© U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website, 2012. |
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