The first filibuster was used in the Senate’s first meeting on September 22, 1789. On that day, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay wrote that the “design of the Virginians . . . was to talk away the time, so that we could not get the bill passed.” In the 1800s, the filibuster kept happening, but there was no formal procedure in place to stop it.
What are the origins of the word “filibuster”? According to Senate.gov, it is “Derived from a Dutch word for ‘freebooter’ and the Spanish ‘filibusteros’—to describe the pirates then raiding Caribbean islands—the term began appearing in American legislative debates in the 1850s.”
The instigation of a filibuster eventually leads to a demand for “cloture,” or to end the filibuster and have a vote. In 1841, the Democrats, who were in the minority, tried to run out the clock on a bill for a national bank. Henry Clay, a Whig senator, threatened to change the Senate rules and limit debate. This led to threats of longer filibusters so that the changes in debate could not be made. William King, a senator of Alabama, said, “I tell the Senator he may make his arrangements at his boarding house for the [entire] winter.” Some people did not like the filibuster, while others said that having unlimited debate was a tradition that needed to be kept since it helped to keep political majorities in check.
As filibusters kept happening more often throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was decided that changes needed to be made to the Senate rules to limit filibusters. The Senate had grown and had become a lot busier, so any disruption by a filibustering senator would “disrupt the progress of the body and gain concessions from senators who wanted to get their bills passed,” according to Senate.gov.
In 1917, frustration over the filibuster was growing, so President Woodrow Wilson urged the Senate to pass Rule 22, which would allow for the Senate to invoke cloture and therefore limit debate with a two-thirds majority vote. In 1919, this rule was put to use to stop a filibuster on voting for the Treaty of Versailles. Filibustering still remained an effective way to halt votes in Congress. In 1975, the Senate lowered the number needed to end the filibuster from two-thirds to three-fifths of the Senate.
Today about 150 groups want the Senate to end the filibuster because it “is a Jim Crow-era relic that can be used to block an upcoming voting rights bill and other priorities, and should be relegated to the ‘dustbin of history’,” according to the Associated Press. This move is happening after Georgia passed more restrictive voting laws and Congress is looking to pass the “For the People Act,” which is voting reform that would overturn more restrictive rules like the ones in Georgia or other states by “expanding voting access by allowing universal registration, early voting by mail and other options,” according to the Associated Press.
There is currently a 50-50 partisan split in the Senate, and Democrats have a slim majority in the House of Representatives. Given that divide and the filibuster, Republicans will be able to easily block bills from passing in Congress. Any Senator can stop a bill from advancing just by threatening to filibuster. There has been talk to lower the current number of Senators needed to stop a filibuster from 60 to 51. However, it would take all of the Democrats to pass this measure, and “centrists, including Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., are not on board,” according to the Associated Press.
The filibuster was and continues to be a controversial practice in the Senate to stop a vote on legislation from moving forward.
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