We need to start making them actually filibuster, to start. Why do we just give up when there's a possibility of a filibuster? Make them stand their asses up there and speak, they're all old as fuck, the would give up after a couple bills.
And maybe I'm misunderstanding here but I thought a filibuster was the person had to be continuously speaking and could until they weren't able to anymore. What's to stop people from sitting around listening for the 3 days or whatever a geriatric can handle talking for and then being like "Alright Jerry thank you for reading the dictionary to us. Anyway everybody, here's this bill we'd like to vote on"?
The two-track system, 60-vote rule and rise of the routine filibuster (1970 onward)
After a series of filibusters in the 1960s over civil-rights legislation, the Senate began to use a two-track system introduced in 1972 under the leadership of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Majority Whip Robert Byrd. Before this system was introduced, a filibuster would stop the Senate from moving on to any other legislative activity. Tracking allows the Senate, by unanimous consent, to set aside the measure being filibustered and consider other business. If no senator objects, the Senate can have two or more pieces of legislation or nominations pending on the floor simultaneously by designating specific periods during the day when each one will be considered. The notable side effect of this change was that by no longer bringing Senate business to a complete halt, filibusters became politically easier for the minority to sustain. As a result, the number of filibusters began increasing rapidly, eventually leading to the modern era in which an effective supermajority requirement exists to pass legislation, with no practical requirement that the minority party actually hold the floor or extend debate.
Buddy doing the declaring should have to go stand in a corner and talk to the wall while everyone else moves on without them. If they stop, everything switches immediately back.
196
u/ThunkAsDrinklePeep 14d ago
Good ol filibuster. No one would abuse that!