Your Life and the Filibuster

Culture and Commerce

For better or worse, our jobs and the economy might hinge on a little procedural rule in Congress.

It’s called the filibuster. We rarely think about it, but recently we’ve seen that this 250-year-old rule has great power to block legislation. Depending on your political views, that can be either good or bad. Regardless, we should all know something about this rule, which can have so much quiet influence in our daily lives.

The filibuster was designed by the US founders to politely allow members of a minority party to express their views. Over time, the filibuster rule has gradually been “weaponized” to block the will of the majority party. Politicians were allowed to drone on for hours or even weeks so that a bill could not go to a vote. For this reason, the filibuster is sometimes referred to as “talking a bill to death.”

The filibuster is merely a rule, not a Constitutional right. And rules can be easily changed. Typically, the political party in control grows increasingly inclined to weaken or abolish the filibuster rule if the minority party perpetually uses it to block the majority’s agenda.

This has been occurring more intensely since early 2021 when the Democrats gained a narrow majority in the US Senate. Republicans have used the filibuster to block popular legislation on voting rights, debt-ceiling limits, spending bills, and other measures.

In response to majority-party threats to change the rule, the minority party typically responds with a common counter-threat: “If you abolish the filibuster, then you will have no power to stop us when we’re back in power.”

Republican Senator Mitt Romney recently fired that warning shot at Democrats, stating that Republicans could feasibly regain control over the House, Senate, and presidency in a few years. “Have Democrats thought through what it would mean for them for Trump to be entirely unrestrained, with the Democratic minority having no power whatsoever?” (Washington Post, October 31, 2021).

There is nothing new under the sun, at least not in politics. Even the word filibuster has its origins conflict. A short word history is enlightening.

First appearing in the mid-1500s, filibuster originated from the Dutch term vrijbuiter, which in English means freebooter. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a freebooter was a self-interested privateer. The word later came to mean a pirate, plunderer, or robber.

In 1572, a British report on disturbances around England’s coast reminded then Queen Elizabeth I that, “The Queenes Maiestie doth strayghtly charge and commaunde al the Sea Rouers, commonly called Frebutters . . . to depart.” The missive seemed to gently encourage the Queen to reign in the freebooters’ obstruction against British commerce.

Then a certain R. Hakluyt, in 1598, recorded that British forces “tooke five . . . ships of the Freebooters, which lay within the sound of Denmark of purpose to intercept our English Fleete.”

The term freebooters was also applied to religious matters in 1630 when a Bishop J. Hall Occas expressed concern about “Those Spirituall free-booters that lye in wayt for our soules.”

Since the late 1770s, members of Congress managed to use the filibuster in polite ways. Those men were in fact so polite that, in 1806, Congress allowed senators to speak as long as they wanted about any topic—unless at least three-fifths of the senators voted to close debate and cast a vote.

That, however, led to problems. Anti-majority rule members of Congress saw that they could drone on endlessly, as an obstructionist tactic. Thus, a rule born from kindness turned into a weapon of obstruction.

However, between 1806 and 1975, the filibuster rules contained a physical deterrent to longwinded speaking. US senators who wished to filibuster had to be physically present on the floor of the chamber and speak continuously, either alone or with a relay system of like-minded senators. Moreover, at least one-third of the senators had to be sit in the chamber while the filibuster proceeded for hours on end. In other words, freebooters had to pay a high bodily cost. Political freebooting was exhausting.

In 1975, Congress decided to remove the physical torment involved with filibustering. According to legal experts Burt Neuborne and Erwin Chemerinsky, a “filibustering senator no longer had to hold the floor speaking for long periods of time . . . and supporters of the filibuster no longer had to worry about being in the Senate chamber. . . . Supporters of the filibuster could stay home in bed” (New York Times, January 27, 2021). Ever since, waging war against the majority requires zero fleshly sacrifice.

Some argue that the original rules should be reinstated, that senators should have to pay a physical price for a filibuster campaign. Proponents of this idea claim that it would re-establish the founders’ original intentions for Senate debates. Of course, any effort to change the rule would itself be highly contentious.

For now, we must bear with political division and confusion. Those who engage in filibustering, despite which party is the minority, can gain the upper hand, just as freebooters did throughout history. From the OED: “As England, Spain and France fought for supremacy over the West Indies, pirates and freebooters thrived in the confusion.”

GCN Press Webinar with British Actor James Fox

On Saturday, February 5, GCN Press will be hosting a live conversation with iconic British actor James Fox. More information here.

---