what exactly is the filibuster?
In: 21
When a new motion for a law/policy is made theres almost always a time limit on the dicussion. A Fillibuster is just wankers talking bollocks endlessly to use up said time so there cant be any actual discussuion.
It should incur the death penalty.
In the US senate, voting on a bill can’t happen until debate has finished.
That means that, if you really don’t like a bill, you can debate it. And debate it. And debate it. And debate it. Until the sun burns out.
This tactic of taking the debate floor and just talking and talking and talking until someone dies is the “Filibuster”
A 60 vote supermajority can shut it down so one holdout can’t stop the other 99, but for bills that only have 50 likely favorable votes it’s effective.
These days the process is a little more expedited and you can simply declare a filibuster rather than actually needing to rotate speakers for days, but the idea is the same: your bill has a barest majority of support and we’re not going to agree to vote on it.
Politicians are hesitant to kill it because they’re likely to want to use it next time they’re the minority party.
A politician stands up to speak on a debate, in some locations the person speaking can decide when to stop speaking and who to give way to another speaker. So long as the person is speaking then the debate can’t end so no vote can take place on what is being discussed, so the speaker is basically blocking a vote from taking place. In some places there are time limits on individual speakers or a guillotine (a time limit in total for the debate to take place), so votes aren’t obstructed by speakers.
It is a politically acceptable method of throwing a tantrum, until the topic or bill is dropped.
Essentially going full Karen on your coworkers for a bill you don’t like instead of voting it down like a grown adult (or allowing it to be vetoed by the president).
The Senate deals with thousands of potential bills every year. There is a process the bills have to go through before they can even be officially voted on. A small percentage of bills will reach an official vote. Within this process is a debate period, which can go on until 60 of the 100 senators vote to end the debate period and have an official vote. Now imagine if there is a bill that 55 senators support, but 45 don’t. Even though a majority of senators agree to the bill, it will never get past the debate period because of the 60 senators necessary to have an official vote. This is an example of a filibuster.
When one side don’t get what they like, or there’s a tight race, they like to grandstand as long as possible. It’s all a show. They don’t care
Its worth pointing out that its not a real rule.
They can (and do) pass whatever on a simple majority
There is a deadline for when bills have to be voted on. If the senator is filibustering a bill they talk until that deadline arrives, making it impossible for the bill to be voted on.
The US Senate has procedural rules that govern how it operates. Every legislative body has those. Most of the time, these procedural rules are really boring.
Since the US Senate was meant to be slower paced, more thoughtful, more polite, etc, than the rowdier US House of Representatives, they have “more gentlemanly” procedural rules. You aren’t allowed to call the other guy a dirty son of a whore, you have to say things like “my distinguished colleague”. One of those slower paced, gentlemanly rules is when a bill is up for debate, once somebody is speaking, they have the floor. They can continue to speak their mind about the bill until they have said their piece and choose to sit down. Now you can vote to end debate, but it takes 60 votes to do it. When they guy just stays up there and keeps talking and talking and talking… that is called a filibuster.
Once upon a time, when somebody wanted to filibuster, they had to actually stand up and do it. But nobody really wants to sit there and listen to some guy read from the phone book for 22 hours straight, so today the threat of the filibuster is all that is needed. You know they’ll do it if you force them to, so why put yourself through that.
One thing to keep in mind is that as much as people might complain about the filibuster when their opponents use it, both sides like to have it available when they are in the minority (you can find Youtube videos of politicians talking about how terrible it is, and then there’s one from 6 years earlier where the exact same guy is talking about how crucial the filibuster is to the democratic process). If you can get 60 votes to terminate debate, then there’s probably a good amount of support for your bill. If you can’t get 60 votes, then it’s probably going to be unpopular with a large chunk of the country.
Keep in mind that not every politician is from a deep red or deep blue state. Sometimes a Democrat from a conservative state (or a Republican from a more liberal state) doesn’t really *want* to vote for or against a particular bill, because it will make it hard for them to run for re-election. The filibuster is a good way for them to avoid taking a position on something that might hurt them in the future.
Thank you reddit for giving me a small civics lesson today. Love ya’ll <3.
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