Joe Biden told ABC News that he is in favor of changing the filibuster rules, but he doesn’t want to get rid of it completely. Rather, he claims he wants to return the Senate to the ‘talking’ filibuster like was there when he first got to the Senate:
I’m not sure what Teleprompter Joe is talking about here. I know he’s old and his memory isn’t what it used to be, but there hasn’t been significant reform of the filibuster since 1917 when they first implemented cloture to limit debate. Just how long does he think he’s been in the Senate???
In 1917, with frustration mounting and at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, senators adopted a rule (Senate Rule 22) that allowed the Senate to invoke cloture and limit debate with a two-thirds majority vote. This rule was first put to the test in 1919, when the Senate invoked cloture to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. Even with the new cloture rule, however, filibusters remained an effective means to block legislation, since a two-thirds vote was difficult to obtain. Over the next four decades, the Senate managed to invoke cloture only five times. Filibusters proved to be particularly useful to southern senators who sought to block civil rights legislation, including anti-lynching bills. Not until 1964 did the Senate successfully overcome a filibuster to pass a major civil rights bill. Nevertheless, a growing group of senators continued to be frustrated with the filibuster and pushed to change the cloture threshold.
In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 of the current 100 senators. Today, filibusters remain a part of Senate practice, although only on legislation. The Senate adopted new precedents in the 2010s to allow a simple majority to end debate on nominations.
The change in 1975 was only to go from needing 67 votes to invoke cloture to 60 votes. It wasn’t a significant change so honestly, I have no idea what Teleprompter Joe is talking about.
The reason the Senate created the rule to invoke cloture in the first place was because the ‘talking’ filibuster blocked the Senate from getting anything done and there needed to be a way to end debate:
The earliest filibusters also led to the first demands for what we now call “cloture,” a method for ending debate and bringing a question to a vote. In 1841 the Democratic minority attempted to run out the clock on a bill to establish a national bank. Frustrated, Whig senator Henry Clay threatened to change Senate rules to limit debate. Clay’s proposal prompted others to warn of even longer filibusters to prevent any change to the rules. “I tell the Senator,” proclaimed a defiant William King of Alabama, “he may make his arrangements at his boarding house for the [entire] winter.” While some senators found filibusters to be objectionable, others exalted the right of unlimited debate as a key tradition of the Senate, vital to tempering the power of political majorities.
Filibusters became more frequent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to serious debate about changing Senate rules to curtail the practice. At that point the Senate had grown larger and busier, and the sheer amount of work to be done in each session meant that a filibustering senator could disrupt the progress of the body and gain concessions from senators who wanted to get their bills passed.
So is this what Joe Biden is proposing? Because it sounds a lot worse than the current filibuster.
Right now, Senators debate a bill and then they vote on ending debate. If they get the 60 votes needed, they can end debate and move on to voting for final passage. If they don’t, debate never ends and the bill dies.
If the Senate does what Teleprompter Joe is asking, then they’d have to get rid of cloture altogether and someone could debate endlessly until they chose to stop or until they exacted the concessions they wanted. And we’d be right back to where we were in 1917, when they decided to invoke cloture.