Abuse of the Filibuster: Republicans Play Dirty 'Block and Blame' Game

With one of the most contentious presidential primary battles in history finally behind us, media attention is beginning to focus on a fight of a different kind -- that for control of the Senate in 2009.

As things stand the Democrats maintain a paper-thin majority of 51 votes, thanks to the Senate's two Independents who tend to vote democrat; but that slim advantage so far hasn't been enough for them to assert control over the chamber.

With 35 Senate seats up for grabs in November, the majority is hoping to pick up the extra votes it needs for a 60-vote "supermajority" and with it the mandate to finally start making progress on platform issues like Medicare drug reform and a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

For anyone who's ever taken a Civics class, the notion that it takes 60 votes to conduct business in the Senate may come as a surprise; after all, in the Senate all that's required to pass legislation is a simple majority, right?

In theory, the answer is yes; but in practice, Senate protocol incorporates a number of procedural devices designed to give the minority some leverage; chief among these is the filibuster.

Senate Democrats complain that for the past year and a half, the Republican leadership has been waging a dedicated campaign of obstruction, using the threat of filibuster to block the bulk of the Democrats' 2006 election initiatives, and in the process subverting the will of the American electorate.

In the past two weeks alone, Senate Republicans have blocked votes on four vital measures -- at least two of which had wide public support.

On June 6, Senate Republicans used the threat of filibuster to block the Climate Security Act, which would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases. Days later they used the same tactic to kill a Democratic measure that would have imposed a 25 percent tax on "windfall" profits of the five largest U.S. oil companies, which together made $36 billion during the first three months of the year.

And last Thursday, June 12, the minority filibustered a bill to delay pay cuts to Medicare physicians, which the bill's sponsor, Max Baucus, D-Mont., said will adversely affect the quality of senior health care.

Nearly as old as the Senate itself, the filibuster is a procedure whereby a disaffected minority can stall or even preempt passage of legislation by engaging in extended debate. Until 1917, it was virtually impossible to disrupt a filibuster once it got started. In that year, the Senate adopted Rule 22 -- the cloture rule -- which is currently the only formal procedure for breaking a Senate filibuster. Under cloture, the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours of debate, essentially forcing a vote. In 1975 then-Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., spearheaded an effort to lower the threshold needed to invoke cloture to 60 votes from the previously required 2/3 majority.

"We cannot allow a minority to grab the Senate by the throat and hold it there," he said at the time. Yet more than three decades later, Democrats and their supporters say that's exactly what's happening.

"I think they've made a concerted effort to obstruct and block and impede any progress on basic issues," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., commenting on Republican obstructionism. "So, they've made a concerted effort after losing the majority to say well, if we've lost the majority we're going to assert ourselves by blocking the Democrats from getting anything done."

It's not a tactic Republicans have tried to hide. Just over one year ago, in April 2007, then-Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., outlined the nature of the policy. "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail ... and so far it's working for us," said Lott, in an oft-quoted comment in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.