Today’s filibuster not what Founders intended

A recent letter made reference to the Senate’s 175-year tradition of the filibuster. The fact is that what we call a filibuster today shares only a name with what began 175 years ago.

In 1970, a two-track system was instituted allowing other business to continue in parallel with an ongoing filibuster, drastically reducing the stamina needed to conduct a filibuster. In 1979, a rule change eliminated the need to talk at all. By a gradual process of erosion, an exercise in unlimited debate known as a filibuster has been replaced by a process completely void of debate triggering a veto over majority rule by reciting a single word, “filibuster.” They don’t even have to say it three times, like Betelgeuse in the movie, to enter this alternate reality. This is totally contrary to the intend of the authors of the Constitution as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 22:

“To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser . ... The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.”

The only veto over the simple majority vote in the Senate given in the Constitution is the presidential veto. No such power is enumerated for the majority leader or any other member of the Senate. While the Senate is permitted to make its own procedural rules, it makes no sense that this provision would allow any rule to render moot other provision of Constitution regarding the Senate whether stated or implied. Turn back the clock nearly 175 years if you wish, but today’s veto masquerading as a filibuster must be turned back at least to before 1979 and probably 1970.