“If you give up your rights now, don’t expect to get them back.” --Rand Paul
In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spearheaded an impactful change on the Senate floor. An overwhelming majority of Senators voted to eliminate the filibuster in situations where legislation was being introduced on the Senate floor. Later on, Reid invoked the “nuclear option,” which eliminated the filibuster on executive branch and judicial nominees. This change in Senate procedure signaled the beginning of the end for a procedure that has stood to protect the ability of the minority to have an impact in the Senate. In today’s Congress, the Republican majority will likely kill the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees at the first sign of Democratic resistance, which will further gut the procedure. The filibuster has been an important tool for the minority in the Senate, and its loss will further polarize an already divided legislative body.
In the early days of the United States, both the House of Representatives and the Senate had the same rules for debate in their chambers -- it could be ended quickly and moved to a vote. However, Vice President Aaron Burr convinced the Senate that this ability was underused and should be eliminated. The filibuster was born at this moment, and although it took a while for its usage to become commonly accepted, it soon became a staple of the Senate chambers. Over the next few centuries, the filibuster became a tool to extend debate for an unlimited amount of time and could only be killed through a cloture vote, which typically involved more than a simple majority of senators voting to end debate.
The Democrats’ changes to the filibuster in 2013 were made because of frustration with Republican resistance to confirm President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. A similar situation occurred in 2005, when Republicans threatened to eliminate the filibuster because of Democratic resistance. When Democrats actually invoked the nuclear option, they changed the way the Senate operated in an irreversible manner. The Senate has historically been the body of Congress that has passed legislation in a more deliberate manner. Unlike the House, Senators have always been more moderate because of a larger swath of constituents that they must represent. However, party politics have changed this in the past few decades. Now, senators will act with their party no matter the issue. We have seen this with Republican resistance to the Obama agenda and Democratic resistance to the Bush/Trump agenda. This means that a majority will have almost absolute power in Congress, and a minority party will have next to none save for the power of the filibuster. If that is gone, then there is little that will stop a majority party from pushing its agenda and its nominations through without recourse.
The filibuster has always been a tool to promote bipartisan compromise and minority rights in the Senate, but it has recently become a way for senators to drag their feet if the other party is doing something that they don’t like. Unfortunately, this will lead to its likely elimination in the near future, destroying one of the last parts of government that punishes polarized attitudes in a body that is severely polarized.
