Democrats put the obstruction in the spotlight. This is where it comes from

But using this notion of cooling down what the House approves of to eliminate an obstruction bill is not in the US Constitution, and it is probably not what Washington had in mind.

According to the official website Senate.gov, this started to happen so much in the middle of the 19th century that the term “obstructionist” was born – derived from the Dutch word “freebooter” and the Spanish word “filibustros”, who were pirates attacking the Caribbean island in season.

But there was no mechanism to overcome obstructors in the first century and a quarter of the United States Senate.

It was only in 1917 that frustrated President Woodrow Wilson convinced the Senate to adopt a rule – known as RULE 22 – that allowed senators to vote to break an obstruction. It was, and still is, known as “clotting”. (Curiosity! The first time the new rule was used was to try to overcome an obstruction of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919).

In the beginning, the vote limit for breaking an obstruction was a supermajority – 67 votes. But this has always been difficult to achieve and has become more difficult over the years, so in 1975 it was changed to 60 votes, which is what it is today.

‘Jim Crow Relic’

Southern senators took advantage of the obstruction for years to block civil rights legislation – including anti-lynching bills.

Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, in the longest uninterrupted obstruction in the history of the Senate, according to Senate.gov.

It was not until 1964 that senators finally overcame an obstacle to passing the civil rights bill, when former Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson was president.

In 2013, the then Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, was so fed up with the Republican Party’s obstruction of then-President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees that he led a major change so that presidential nominations needed only a simple majority to be confirmed, which helped to get more Obama judges. the bank. When Republicans took control of the Senate, they used the same 51-vote limit to confirm a record number of conservative judges appointed by then President Donald Trump.

What does ‘Talking Filibuster’ mean?

In recent years, senators have used the obstruction so much that most legislation is expected to require 60 votes to pass, rather than a simple majority of 51 out of 100 senators.

Now he is so devastated that Senate majority leaders tend to schedule so-called coagulation votes to immediately overcome the 60 vote limit.

The idea is to make it more painful to stop an obstruction against a bill – to have more events like when Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas spoke for hours opposing Obamacare, partly reading “Green Eggs and Ham”, or when the Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, spoke for 13 hours against the use of military drones.

But experts like former Senate congressman Alan Frumin say the “talking obstruction” probably wouldn’t do much to prevent the obstruction.

The reason: let’s say the Republicans are obstructing HR1, the voting legislation passed in the House. If enough Republican Party senators are willing to speak, they can take turns and spend the entire night for days and days.

In addition, instead of acting as a deterrent, obstructing senators can see how politically advantageous it can be to demonstrate their opposition to a bill. So the process would change, but the result – legislation bogging down in the Senate with no end in sight – may not.