Many of the Senate’s antique rules and precedents have been warped beyond recognition by the modern pressures of partisanship. The hold, for example, was a courtesy extended to senators in the days of horse travel, when they needed time to get back to Washington and read a bill or question an appointee before casting their vote. Sarah Binder, who co-authored a book on the filibuster, calls the procedure a historical accident: in 1806, the Senate got rid of a little-used rule that allowed the “previous question” to be called to a vote. Suddenly, there was no inherent limit on debate, and by the eighteen-thirties senators had begun taking advantage of this loophole, derailing the proceedings by getting up and talking until their voice, legs, or bladder gave out. (The word “filibuster” comes from vrijbuiter—old Dutch for “looter.”)
In 1917, Woodrow Wilson, with his wartime legislative agenda blocked by filibusters, forced the Senate to pass Rule XXII, which allowed a two-thirds majority to bring a floor debate to an end with a “cloture” vote. For decades, the rule was rarely used; between 1919 and 1971, there were only forty-nine cloture votes, fewer than one per year. In the seventies and eighties, the annual average rose to about a dozen. (Frustration with this increase led the Senate, in 1975, to lower the threshold for cloture to sixty votes.) In the nineties and early aughts, the average went up to twenty-five or thirty a year, as both parties escalated their use of the filibuster when they found themselves in the minority. After the Republicans lost their majority in 2006, filibusters became everyday events: there were a hundred and twelve cloture votes in 2007 and 2008, and this session Republicans are on target to break their own filibuster record.
The tally of cloture votes reflects only a small fraction of senatorial obstruction. Three hundred and forty-five bills passed by the House have been prevented from even coming up for debate in the Senate. “Why?” Steny Hoyer, the outraged Democratic Majority Leader of the House, asked me. “Because they do not do their business in a way that facilitates noncontroversial things. Thankfully, the House of Representatives is not becoming the Senate.” Last week, six House Democrats expressed their displeasure with the upper chamber by staging a sit-in of sorts on the Senate floor.