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The Cloture Curse · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

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  This is plausibly Live, the official podcast of The Dave
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  Bowman Show. You know, some of history's
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  biggest headaches start when somebody forgets to do something
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  simple. Take the filibuster.
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  America's great tradition of talking things to death wasn't
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  born out of principle. It was born out of a mistake in
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  18 O Six Vice President Aaron Burr.
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  Yes, that Aaron Burr told the Senate their rule book was too
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  messy, He said clean it up. So they did.
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  They deleted a rule that led a simple majority vote to end
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  debate. At the time, nobody thought much
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  of it, but that one missing line created a hole big enough to
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  drive 2 centuries of gridlock through.
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  The Senate had just lost its off switch.
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  For a while, it didn't matter. Senators were polite, few in
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  number, and long winded only in moderation.
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  But as the country grew angrier, the Senate discovered that
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  endless talk could kill a bill without ever voting on it.
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  By the 1850s, it had become a weapon.
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  One man with strong lungs could stall the entire government.
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  Fast forward to 1917. America is about to enter World
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  War 1A. Handful of isolationist senators
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  filibuster President Wilson's bill to arm merchant ships while
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  German U boats are sinking them. Wilson blows his top, calling
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  them a little group of willful men.
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  The Senate Shame into action, creates Rule 22, the first
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  cloture rule allowing 2/3 of senators to vote to end debate.
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  It took them 111 years to patch Burr's blunder, and even then
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  they didn't fix it. They just gave it a name.
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  The filibuster didn't come from wisdom, it came from paperwork.
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  Aaron Burr didn't just shoot Hamilton, he shot the Senate in
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  the foot. And it's still limping along
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  today. By 1917, the United States
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  Senate had turned the art of delay into an Olympic sport.
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  For more than a century. There was no formal way to end
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  debate. If one senator wanted to keep
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  talking, the whole chamber had to sit there and listen.
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  Then came World War One. German U boats were sinking
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  American ships, and President Woodrow Wilson wanted Congress
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  to let merchant vessels arm themselves.
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  Most of the country agreed, but a small group of isolationist
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  senators refused. They filibustered the bill until
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  the clock ran out. Wilson was furious.
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  He called them a little group of willful men who had made the
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  government, quote, helpless and contemptible.
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  The insults stung. The Senate, embarrassed and
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  under pressure, finally decided to fix the mess Aaron Burr had
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  created a century earlier. On March 8th, 1917, they adopted
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  Rule 22, the cloture rule. For the first time.
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  Debate could end by a vote, but it took a 2/3 majority to do it.
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  It was the Senate's first real attempt to balance freedom of
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  speech with the need to govern. Of course, that balance didn't
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  last. Cloture would be used sparingly
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  for decades, mostly against civil rights bills.
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  But for one brief shining moment, the Senate admitted the
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  obvious that endless debate isn't noble, It's just endless.
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  The filibuster wasn't dead. It had just been given a leash.
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  And like any good dog, it learned to chew through it.
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  By the 1970's, the Senate was drowning in its own talk.
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  Cloture still required a 2/3 vote, and most bills never made
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  it to a decision. After Watergate, a new wave of
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  reformers said enough. They wanted a Senate that could
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  actually work. In 1975, Senators Walter Mondale
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  and James Pearson led the charge to lower the cloture threshold
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  from 2/3 to 3/5, or 60 votes. Vice President Nelson
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  Rockefeller, presiding over the debate, ruled that the Senate
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  could change its rules by a simple majority at the start of
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  a new session. That set off a procedural brawl
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  so fierce they called it the nuclear option of its day.
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  In the end, cooler heads cut a deal and the 60 vote rule became
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  law. But reform had an unintended
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  side effect. A few years earlier, the Senate
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  had adopted the two track system, allowing other business
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  to continue during a filibuster. No more marathon speeches, no
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  Jimmy Stewart drama. Now a senator could block a bill
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  just by threatening to talk. And so the silent filibuster was
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  born, A polite, bloodless form of gridlock.
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  By the 1990's, the filibuster wasn't rare.
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  It was routine. Every major bill assumed it
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  would need 60 votes. The Senate thought it had made
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  itself more efficient. Instead, it turned endless talk
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  into effortless obstruction. The world's greatest deliberate
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  of body learned how to stall without even standing up.
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  They say history has a way of repeating itself.
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  But in the case of the Senate's filibuster and cloture dance, it
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  more often resembles a broken record, skipping over the same
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  refrain talk until nothing happens.
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  We began with a clerical cleanup in 18 O 6A missing rule that let
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  debate stretch without end. Constitution Center.
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  Then came 1917, when the urgency of World War One forced the
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  Senate to admit it needed a switch to cut off endless
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  speeches. So they adopted the cloture
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  rule, requiring 2/3 U.S. Senate decades past.
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  Obstruction turned into strategy, and in 1975 the
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  threshold dropped to 60 votes, ostensibly reform, but in
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  practice a new ceiling on what a determined minority could block.
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  Brennan, Center for Justice. Here's what none of that checks
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  the drift from the Senate as a body of deliberation to the
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  Senate as a body of delay. A chamber meant to moderate, to
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  refine, to mend fractures, has become one that too often
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  rewards the determined whisper of no over the broad voice of
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  yes. If the filibuster was supposed
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  to give the minority a chance to be heard today, it too often
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  gives it the power to shackle the majority from governing.
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  There's something deeply traditional about the Senate.
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  It isn't the House. It moves slower.
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  It savers the moment. But tradition is not an excuse
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  for paralysis. And when one voice or 6 or 21
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  can stop the many from doing the work the many elected them to
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  do, that is not freedom of speech.
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  That's the tyranny of talk. So if you listen to senators
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  defend the filibuster as guardians of minority rights,
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  remember where this started? A rule they forgot to keep, a
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  vessel they never quite finished building.
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  A body that now reaches for 60 votes just to begin a debate.
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  The question now isn't whether we need more talk.
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  The question is whether we can repair the switch.
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  Because without it, the Senate remains the world's greatest
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  waiting room. And waiting rooms don't make
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  history.