Week Five: The Filibuster
Ever since Democrats took control of the US Senate with 50 Senators + 1 Vice President, there has been continuing “will they/won’t they” speculation about eliminating the Filibuster — the rather arcane Senate process through which most legislation cannot be brought to the Senate for action without a minimum of 60 Senators voting in support of “cloture.”
On April 6, the Brookings Institution in Washington DC had two of its Senior Fellows do a webinar on the Filibuster that they called, “Filibuster 101: An Explainer of the Senate Rule and Reform,” or “Everything You Want to Know About the Filibuster but Are Afraid to Ask.” During the webinar, Brookings Senior Governance Fellows Sarah Binder and Molly Reynolds discussed the filibuster broadly, its history, paths for reform, and the potential immediate and long-term effects of proposed changes. In addition to her work at Brookings, Sarah Binder is also a Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. Both Binder and Reynolds have written books on the Filibuster: Sarah Binder, Politics or Principle: Filibustering in the United States Senate (Brookings, 1996), and Molly Reynolds, Exceptions to the Rule: The Politics of Filibuster Limitations in the U.S. Senate (Brookings, 2017).
The session addressed questions including, “…how this quirky rule came to be so central to our nation’s governance? Where did the filibuster originate, and how has it become the 60-vote Senate cloture threshold used today? What would reforming or eliminating the filibuster really mean? How likely are we to see reform in 2021?”
The Brookings Institution webinar at the link below includes viewer questions and runs 47:18 minutes.