Pros And Cons Of Filibusters

For a bill to become a law in the United States, the process is rigorous, to say the least. The legislative process is quite difficult to navigate, with many ways for a bill to fail to become a law. A bill can be rejected at many points along the way, such as a bill being killed in committee before it even goes to a vote, a filibuster by the minority party in the senate preventing the process from continuing, and the dreaded presidential veto. At any of these points, a bill can be easily killed by a small amount of people. Through processes like these, the majority might not even get its way and the minority could stop the bill entirely. Congressional committees are designed to make the legislative process more efficient, but they often only

Even if a bill has majority support, the minority can still stop the process from continuing by using a filibuster. However, while this tool is incredibly useful, it is only allowed in the Senate. The idea behind a filibuster is simple: a senator in the minority can halt procedures in the Senate by continuously speaking for as long as they want. The senator (or senators) can speak on any subject they wish, and as long as they keep speaking, the bill cannot continue through to the next “stage” of the legislative process. The filibuster was put to particularly effective use by Southern senators “who sought to block civil rights legislation, … against the Civil Right Act of 1964” (Filibuster and Cloture). Additionally, “[d]uring the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor. The Louisiana senator frustrated his colleagues while entertaining spectators with his recitations of Shakespeare and his reading of recipes for ‘pot-likkers.’ Long once held the Senate floor for 15 hours” (Filibuster and Cloture). This practice of filibuster can give a single individual, or the entire minority party, a lot of influence on how the bill turns out. Filibusters can lead to a rejection of a bill, but can also lead to amendments to the bill. The only way for a bill to survive a filibuster is for the filibuster to be ended by a vote of cloture, which was instituted “in 1917, [when] senators adopted a rule (Rule 22), at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote, a device known as ‘cloture’” (Filibuster and Cloture). Although later, “the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths” (Filibuster and Cloture). Votes of cloture are fairly rare, because, most of the