Democrats in the US Senate are set to introduce a bill this week to codify abortion rights into federal law, a move that will almost certainly fail due to the legislature’s rules.
President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party has a majority in the United States Congress, so why do many of the president’s supporters legislative proposals – ranging from police reform to voting rights – failed to pass?
The reason is that rules in the US Senate generally require a 60-vote margin to pass most laws due to a parliamentary weapon called “obstruction.” A filibuster is simply a tactic to keep debate on a measure open indefinitely, thereby preventing it from ever coming to a vote.
Once a rare feature of American politics, filibuster is now routinely used by the minority party in the Senate to block or delay the majority party’s agenda. Breaking a filibuster requires a majority of at least 60 senators to vote in favor of “closure,” a motion that ends debate and advances a bill to a separate vote on passage.
Biden’s problem is that the Democrats narrow margin of control in the Senate it falls in the middle, a sort of bottom zone, where Republicans can easily block legislation using filibuster and Democrats don’t have enough votes to get past it.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to introduce a motion on Monday to call for the closure of the abortion rights bill. How opposition Republicans vote will indicate where they stand on abortion, Democrats have said.
Al Jazeera explains how this works:
The House and the Senate
For a bill to become law under the US Constitution, identical versions must first pass by majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House has 435 members and the Senate has 100.
However, unlike the US House of Representatives, where the rules give the majority party control of the legislative process, the Senate operates largely on the principles of unlimited debate and unanimous consent.
“The intent of the framers of the Constitution was for the Senate to be a more thoughtful and deliberative body,” Michael Traugott, a professor of politics at the University of Michigan, told Al Jazeera.
What is a filibuster?
The word filibuster comes from a Dutch word for “filibuster,” meaning pirate, and came into use in the 1850s to refer to Senate rules that allowed any senator to capture debate in the floor and prevent action. legislative.
“Going back to the 19th century, the rule in the Senate was that they could go on as long as the senator wanted. There was no restriction on how long one could talk. The debate could go on forever,” said David Schultz, a professor of politics at Hamline University.
“Now what has happened over time is that filibuster has become a tool for some senators to keep issues from coming up for a vote,” Schultz told Al Jazeera.
senators’ rights
Senate rules place few limits on senators’ right to speak on the Senate floor, meaning that one senator, or a group of senators, can do a lot of talking to keep debate open and avoid a vote.
“The Senate has this problem that it lacks a rule that allows a simple majority to end the debate. A minority can prevent a bill from coming to a vote,” Steven Smith, a professor of politics at Washington University in St Louis, told Al Jazeera.
In that sense, “the Senate is really unique in American government and in the entire world,” Smith said.
How the Senate debates
The Senate’s core rule governing debate states that once a senator is recognized to speak, he or she may hold the floor for as long as they wish.
Senators may not be interrupted without their consent and there is no time limit, although to have the floor a senator must remain standing and may not give the floor to a colleague except for a question.
What is rule 22?
Rule 22, the closing rule, is one of the most important rules of the Senate. It was adopted in 1917 as the US was about to enter World War I to allow the Senate to overcome opposition from a few anti-war senators.
The 1917 rule stated that debate on a bill could be closed with the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the senators present and voting in the chamber. In 1975, the number of votes needed was reduced to three-fifths of the Senate, or 60 votes.
50-50 Senate
The 100-seat Senate is currently split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote that gives Democrats control of the agenda.
But because they only have 50 senators, the Democrats cannot win a closing vote without the support of 10 Republicans. That means any meaningful legislation must be bipartisan.
When was the longest obstructionist speech?
The longest obstructionist speech occurred in 1958 and lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes. It was given by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who was leading Southern Democrats in an effort to stop a federal voting rights measure. A compromise bill passed by a 71-18 vote within hours of the end of Thurmond’s speech.
Filibuster of the Civil Rights Act
One of the most notorious filibusters in US history lasted 60 days when a group of influential senators from southern states attempted to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The bill expanded the civil, legal and political rights of African Americans and was eventually passed after the Senate invoked closure in a 71-29 vote after the filibuster failed.
Judges, except budgets
In a major revision of Senate rules in 2013, the threshold for firing federal judges was lowered to a simple majority of 51 votes.
Faced with an outright Republican blockade of former President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees, Democrats changed the rules to allow the confirmation of more than 100 federal judges.
In 2017, Republicans struck back, lowering the confirmation threshold for Supreme Court justices from 60 votes to 51, allowing former President Donald Trump to appoint three conservatives to the US top court.
Annual budget measures that set spending and tax levels, such as Biden’s “Build Back Better” proposal, are also exempt from filibuster and cannot be used to make major policy changes.
Filibuster recently suspended
In late 2021, Republicans agreed with Democrats to drop the filibuster to pass an increase in the US Treasury debt limit with only Democratic votes.
The procedural trick allowed Congress avoid a breach on US Treasury debt, while giving Republicans a political cover to say they opposed the increase and did not vote for it, even though several had voted for the exception to the rules.