The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #4)

by Robert A. Caro

But the subcommittee of the subcommittee had been too busy to hold even a single hearing on the bill, and when, on November 21, an angry liberal, Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania, introduced a resolution on the Senate floor that would have taken the bill away from Appropriations and brought it to the floor for debate, vote and, hopefully, passage, the presiding officer had asked if there were any objections, and Richard Russell, sitting at his desk, had raised his arm, and said calmly, “I object.” The two words meant that a vote would have to be taken first, not on Clark’s resolution, but on Clark’s motion to bring the resolution to the floor. There could be a debate on that motion—and the debate could continue as long as Russell’s southern senators wanted it to continue; there could, in other words, be a filibuster against the motion to bring the resolution to the floor. And if the filibuster was, by some chance, ended and the resolution made it to the floor, there could be a debate on the resolution itself, and then a filibuster against any attempt to bring the debate to an end and actually vote on the bill.