Filibusters kinda suck. A filibuster is when a minority party stalls legislation in the Senate by debating ceaselessly. This leads to an annoying, counter-productive waiting game that wastes time and money. Although the filibuster can be used to give a voice to a minority party, it has become too widely used and has become an obstruction to democracy rather than a tool to progress democracy.
The filibuster has recently become the tool of a vindictive, grudge-holding minority GOP who simply tries to block any piece of legislation that comes to the Senate. In the 1960s, only 8% of major bills were filibustered. Today, around 80% of major bills are filibustered. This has led to a lack of meaningful progress within Congress and has merely prevented anything useful from happening and has led to, according to the Daily Kos Poll, an abysmal approval rating of just 12% for republicans in Congress. Clearly, the filibuster no longer serves its purpose of being a weapon for the underrepresented in Congress.
What can we do about it? There re lots of ways to preserve the filibuster and the power it provides while allowing progress in the Senate. One option is to limit the number of filibusters allowed. This would bring the filibuster back to its original purpose of allowing the blockage of bills deemed essentially important to the minority party while destroying the function of the filibuster as a tool of simple obstruction. Another option is to allow multiple bills to be o the floor at one time. This would let the minority party block necessary bills while still letting other bills be voted on, ending the logjam and backup created by filibusters. A final option is to change rules of cloture in a novel way. Under current rules of cloture, a filibuster can be broken with 60 votes against it. I propose that there should be allowed one vote for cloture per week. The first week, cloture would require 60 votes, but the second week would require 57, the third week 54 and so on. This would preserve filibuster to a point but still eventually lead to progress within Congress. I think at least one of these should be implemented in an effort to have some meaningful legislation happen for once in congress.
