The case against the filibuster

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

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🗓️ 19 March 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

The fate of the Senate filibuster will decide the future of the Biden presidency. Today, we dive deep into the filibuster’s origins and myths — and we talk to people who say that killing this arcane procedural roadblock is the only way to save the Senate.

President Biden and Senate Democrats are faced with the question of whether to reform the rules of the filibuster — or even to terminate it altogether. In the view of many Democrats, it’s the only thing holding Biden back from executing ambitious plans on climate change, voting rights, immigration and the minimum wage.

“The disconnect between having a majority — which the Democrats now do — and needing 60 votes, which the Democrats can't get,” says national politics correspondent Philip Bump, “that disconnect really is shaping up to be one of the defining power struggles of the Senate.”

Today, Post Reports looks at the history of the filibuster — and why the myths about its origin obscure a more dismal story about its use to preserve slavery and prevent civil rights for Black Americans.

“They basically created a de facto supermajority standard for the passage of civil rights bills — and only civil rights bills,” says Adam Jentleson, author of a new book called “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.” His research explores the question of whether the Founding Fathers ever intended for a powerful tool like the filibuster. “The evidentiary record is very clear on this,” he says. “They were anti-obstruction.”

The repeated failure of the Senate to defeat filibusters that blocked civil rights was an “institution-wide failure,” according to U.S. Senate historian Daniel Holt, who explains the repeated attempts to bring the filibuster under control. “There was a reluctance to use the mechanisms at hand to force adoption of these bills — much to the detriment of the African Americans in the country.”

Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, recently penned an opinion piece for USA Today about the need to end the filibuster. The legacy of the obstruction of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he argues, is a dark stain on the Senate and its traditions. “People were literally being lynched, beaten and killed in order for that legislation to happen,” he says. “Blood was spilled in the streets in order to get to 60-plus votes.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.
0:08.0	I'm Martine Powers.
0:10.1	It's Friday, March 19th.
0:17.8	This week, President Biden was interviewed on ABC, and he was asked about the filibuster.
0:23.3	So, you're not likely to get Republican votes for the tax increase.
0:26.0	You're not likely to get Republican votes for HR1, expanding voting rights, or the John
0:30.4	Lewis voting rights act.
0:31.9	So, aren't you going to have to choose?
0:33.6	I know you've been reluctant to do away with the filibuster.
0:35.9	Aren't you going to have to choose between preserving the filibuster and advancing your
0:39.9	agenda?
0:40.9	Yes.
0:43.1	Biden gets asked about the filibuster a lot these days.
0:49.0	And at this point, he says that he might be open to some reforms.
0:52.8	I mean, you know, so the idea is almost as getting to the point where there's, you know,
0:58.6	democracies having a hard time functioning, a hard time functioning.
1:03.9	The reality is almost all of the ambitious things that Biden wants to do with his presidency.
1:09.8	This sweeping agenda that would change our society, bills on voting and immigration and
1:14.9	the minimum wage and climate change, almost none of that is actually possible right now
1:20.8	because of the filibuster.
1:26.3	But what I have been asking myself for these last few weeks, and I think what many Americans
1:31.0	are wondering right now is what is the filibuster again?
	...

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