This week’s episode shouldn’t get too heavy. But there’s a chance you may have strong feelings about our topic.  What are we talking about this week, you ask?  The Filibuster! I know, I know - how much more exciting can we get?! There’s an impeachment trial going on, cabinet members are being confirmed, and we decided to tackle… the filibuster. But the fact of the matter is that this is actually a really timely topic.  There is much discussion as to the fate of this legislative checkmate maneuver, and there’s a chance we could see significant decisions made concerning its use. Plus, it’s one of the few times we get to talk about full grown Senators peeing in trash cans on the Senate floor.

 

What IS a Filibuster?  

In the simplest possible terms, a filibuster is a tactic by which US Senators can delay or even prevent a vote on a particular piece of legislation by talking for a really, really long time. 

The term actually comes from a Dutch word meaning "pirate”, and refers to mercenaries who launched unauthorized campaigns in Central and South America in an effort to help set up or overthrow governments.  The term became the nomenclature for this political maneuver in the 1850s. (Senate)

The tactic takes advantage of a Senate rule which says that once a senator is  recognized on the floor he or she may speak on an issue without being impeded by anyone. (History)

 

Defenders of the filibuster argue that it protects the rights of the minority party by ensuring that they will have enough time to present their position on a piece of legislation, and that it encourages consensus. Opponents of the process say that it subverts majority rule and creates gridlock. Both sides in the argument claim to have history—and the U.S. Constitution—on their side, and honestly we don’t have enough historical insight to say who’s right. (National Geographic)

How did we get here?

The concept we know as a filibuster has been around since ancient Roman senators were debating the policies of Julius Caesar. The Roman senate didn’t limit how long its members could speak, and historians believe that was first exploited in 60 B.C. by Cato the Younger in a debate over contracts with private tax collectors. (Nat Geo)

As for the tactic’s application in US politics, it’s emergence was much less structured. Like we mentioned earlier, the U.S. Constitution makes no mention of the process we call a filibuster. On its face, it appears to assume that legislative decisions would be made by majority vote. Gregory Kroger, author of A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate, argues that evidence suggests that the filibuster arose not out of any founding principles but instead out of “tenuous precedents and informal practices.”

 

In the early years of Congress, representatives as well as senators had the option of this lengthy exposition. However, each body did also have a rule to allow for the END of a lengthy debate. It’s called the “previous question” motion and allowed a majority to vote to end discussion. By 1806, the Senate had only rarely invoked its “previous question” motion. So, when Aaron Burr suggested that the Senate’s rule book could use a clean up, it was deleted to make things a bit tidier.  In the House, things took a different turn. In 1811, Barent Gardenier, a representative from New York, tried to filibuster a proposed trade embargo against Great Britain and his colleagues weren’t having it. They invoked the “previous question” rule—which they had only ever used to pause debate—to end his remarks. And, that precedent now prevents filibusters in the House. (Nat Geo)

 

Moving a little further down the timeline:  Even though the rule that limited the length of debate had been fully and completely removed from the senate rulebook in 1806, the first filibuster in the Senate did not occur until 1837, more than 30 years later. And then from there, well, things got testy enough that President Wilson - after a group of 12 anti-war senators managed to kill a bill that would have allowed Wilson to arm merchant vessels in the face of unrestricted German submarine warfare -  “strongly encouraged” the legislators to adopt a rule that could rectify the situation. In 1917, senators adopted Rule 22 which allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote, a device known as " cloture.” (Senate) And the rule was first  successfully invoked in November 1919,  to end a filibuster on the Treaty of Versailles.

The longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate was delivered in 1957 by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (you know, the guy who left the senate at 100 years old?). And, can you guess what he was so adamantly against that he would speak for more than 24 hours?  Well, if you said The Civil Rights Bill of 1957 you’d be right!  Thurmond used steam baths to dehydrate himself, and refused most food and water in preparation for his planned filibuster. However, he still ended falling prey to the call of nature. A procedural trick was used to yield the floor to another senator for just a few moments so Thurmond could wee, but everyone knew that couldn’t happen again. So, instead his staff had an intern hold a bucket inside a nearby cloakroom so Thurmond could pee, if necessary, while keeping one foot on the Senate floor. I mean, peeing during a filibuster is kind of a tricky thing. One Texas senator even wore a catheter for her 11 hour filibuster in the state Senate.  (Mental Floss)

 

After Thurmond’s performance, it became evident that filibusters could be particularly useful to southern senators who sought to block civil rights legislation. There was a 60-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 before cloture was finally invoked. But this ultimately led to some changes in the process. 

 

With only one bill under consideration at a time, a filibuster could stop all other matters in the Senate—as long as a senator kept talking. But in the early 1970s, Senate leaders adopted processes that allowed more than one bill or matter to be pending on the floor at once. Then, 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, making it easier to achieve cloture in the case of a filibuster. (NPR, History)

 

This has led us to what is called the “modern or stealth filibuster”, which accounts for the appearance of complete and utter stagnation in the Senate. Wait, did I just say that? (NPR)

Today, senators can delay or block a bill simply by signaling that they intend to filibuster. Legal scholars Catherine Fisk and Erwin Chemerinsky note: “A credible threat that 41 senators will refuse to vote for cloture on a bill is enough to keep that bill off the floor.” Instead of risking a protracted debate, the Senate majority often waits to introduce legislation until it has enough support for cloture. (Nat Geo)

 

Important side note on the uses of a filibuster:  A filibuster can no longer be used to block executive and judicial branch nominees. In 2013, Democrats held a majority in the Senate but had grown frustrated by stalled nominations by President Barack Obama for cabinet posts and federal judgeships. So, they used a procedural tactic called The Nuclear Option (which we’ll talk about more in just a bit), that allowed all executive-branch Cabinet appointments and judicial nominations below the Supreme Court to proceed with a simple majority of 51 votes. Although Republicans decried it at the time, four years later they went nuclear too by reducing the confirmation threshold for Supreme Court nominees (Nat Geo, History)

 

Why are people mad about it?

So, why are people mad about the filibuster? Why is it a topic we need to break down? That’s because most modern presidents and senators have struggled to pass legislation, and filibusters have held up political appointments.  It’s a controversial tactic! Some argue it’s an important tactic empowering a minority party that otherwise would have little sway in the Senate. Others contend it plays too much of a role and is undemocratic in the way it can paralyze the ability of the majority to act. (History)

 

However you view it, we’ve seen a rapid increase in the use of the filibuster since Obama was president, as an increasingly divided country makes it politically beneficial for the minority party to obstruct whatever the opposition’s agenda is. And, while one would think that this would even out - each party would blockade the other, thereby ensuring nobody got their way - the reality of the situation is that the filibuster has historically been more damaging to progressive agendas, which generally translates to being more harmful to modern day Democrats. This is due to the fact that Democrats tend to run on larger, more sweeping agendas than Republicans, advocating for social change and policy solutions to societal problems. The filibuster holding back Civil Rights legislation is a prime example of this. (Thomson-DeVeaux, 2019)

What changes are folks proposing?

Calls for reform have grown alongside the “stealth” filibuster. Some suggest rewriting the Senate’s rules to lower the cloture threshold; others suggest requiring lawmakers to conduct old-school “talking” filibusters instead of merely threatening them. Then, there is what is likely the most hotly contested choice: the nuclear option.

Lowering the Cloture Threshold

Before we get into the real red meat of this discussion, the nuclear option, let's hit on the other two options real quick. The first is reducing the cloture threshold. Instead of needing 3/5ths of the voting members present to pass something, I only need… 11/20ths or something (that would be 55 senators if all were accounted for). This is a pretty straightforward solution: If fewer senators are required to pass a measure, then the power of the filibuster will be much weaker. I don’t need to pull ten senators from the opposing side, I only need 5. Much more achievable. 

 

Here’s the problem: The most straightforward way to lower that threshold would be to change Senate Rule 22, the cloture rule that requires 60 votes to end debate on legislation. However, ending debate on a resolution to change the Senate’s standing rules requires, you guessed it, two-thirds of the members present and voting. Therefore, without a bipartisan Senate majority that favors curtailing the right to debate, a formal change in Rule 22 is extremely unlikely, which is the problem to begin with. This solution simply won’t happen so long as the minority party is required to agree to it to make it happen. (Reynolds, 2020)

Dispose of the “Stealth” Filibuster

As we discussed earlier, the modern day filibuster isn’t something that really happens actively. So long as the Senate majority leader knows that they don’t have 60 votes to pass a bill, they won’t bring that bill to the Senate floor to vote on. A Senator can filibuster a bill simply by refusing to say they will vote for it, and will filibuster it when it comes to the floor. A… pre-filibuster, filibuster.

 

However, if the Senate rules change to say you have to actively be on the floor speaking, suddenly a filibuster becomes a much more daunting task. I don’t know if you’ve ever stood for an extended period of time, but on inauguration day 2017, I worked a 23 hour shift with the Secret Service. Believe me when I say, by the end of that shift, the mere act of standing was an effort akin to running a 10k. Doing that on the Senate floor to kill a bill is no mean feat. And realistically, this would limit the amount of time a senator, or group of senators, could filibuster a bill. Unless they decide the best use of their time is actively filibustering something all day, every day, eventually they will give up and a vote will be taken. 

 

However, as with lowering the cloture threshold, altering the Senate rules requires 3/5ths of the voting members present to vote in favor of the change, and at this time there is simply no incentive for the minority party to support that change.

 

Which basically leaves us with… The nuclear option.

The Nuclear Option: Completely eradicating the filibuster

What is the “nuclear option?” You’ve probably heard about it before. Maybe in 2012/2013, or more recently in 2017. Some may think that the nuclear option is making it so that a simple majority would be the only thing needed to reach a decision on any given measure in the Senate. But the nuclear option itself isn’t making things happen via simple majority.

It’s how you make that change happen. And it’s a pretty convoluted path. And yet, this is the most likely path forward should the Democrats wish to carry through with eliminating the filibuster altogether.

Fair warning, we’re about to get a little… wonky. As in, we’re donning our Senate procedure wonk hat. The nuclear option is essentially what we call creating a new Senate precedent by taking advantage of the way the Senate works. Kinda like beating a game by playing it in a way it wasn’t meant to be played, but still technically following the roles.

 

“Precedent” isn’t a formal rule. It’s basically a formalized tradition. “The Senate did things this way before, so we’ll do it again.” It helps guide the interpretation of the rules. Using the nuclear option takes advantage of the fact that a new precedent can be established by a senator raising a “point of order.” In this case, the senator would claim that the filibuster is violating a rule of the Senate. (Reynolds, 2020)

 

This point of order is raised to the presiding officer, who is usually a member of the Senate. If the presiding officer agrees that, yes, a rule has indeed been broken, then a new precedent is established, and you can no longer do whatever raised the point of order. In this case, one could no longer filibuster. (Reynolds, 2020)

 

If the presiding officer disagrees, another senator can appeal that decision. If a simple majority of the Senate then votes to overrule the decision of the chair - another term for the presiding officer - then the opposite of the chair’s ruling becomes precedent. So in this scenario the chair says, “No, the filibuster doesn’t break the rules of the Senate.” Another senator stands up and says, “Ohohoho but it does, let’s vote on it.” Then a vote is held, 51 senators agree that the chair is wrong, and so the filibuster is ruled to have broken the rules of the Senate, despite the chair’s disagreement. (Reynolds, 2020)

 

The presiding officer - formal title “President pro tempore of the United States,” which is sometimes shortened to “president pro tem” is Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who is a Democrat, meaning it is likely that any such point of order would likely be agreed to such that no vote would be needed at all to end the filibuster.

Arguments Against

From a strictly political standpoint, individual senators may find the filibuster useful to their own personal power and policy goals, as it allows them to hold up the passing of some measures in order to secure support for their own measures. Basically, one Senator can say, “I’m not giving you my much needed vote to pass unless you give me your much needed votes to pass my thing.” Incidentally, this was one of the arguments for eradicating the filibuster. (Reynolds, 2020)

 

Majority party leaders, on the other hand, can use the fact that they need 60 votes to end debate on any given measure against the minority. “Well, constituents, we would have passed this bill, but Senator so-and-so of the minority party over here just wouldn’t give us their vote, and held things up by filibustering. Don’t blame us; we tried. It’s all their fault.” This is particularly effective on measures for which  the majority leader may not actually have support for all of their own party. Never mind the fact that three Democrats weren’t so sure about this bill, it was the REPUBLICANS that filibustered, so it’s their fault it didn’t pass. (Reynolds, 2020)

 

Further, senators may be concerned about the future; changes that a legislature makes now may come back to bite them in the future. (Reynolds, 2020) We saw this recently with Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Due to the Republicans refusing to seat any of Obama’s cabinet appointments, Democrats made it a simple majority vote to confirm everything but a Supreme Court Justice. (Hartsoe, 2013) But, as literally everybody predicted except the Democrats in the Senate, as soon as the Republicans were in control again, they used this precedent to expand only needing a simple majority  This allowed them to shove whatever Justice they wanted through the confirmation process, and thus we got Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, not to mention 231 federal court justices and many, many political appointments. (Debating the future of the filibuster, 2021)

 

Other arguments include that getting rid of the filibuster means that there would be no way for the minority party to make their voices heard in the Senate anymore. The majority party would set the rules and control everything in the Senate, relegating the minority members to a position slightly more elevated than “piece of furniture” in the chamber. But America was never meant to be a “one party rule” nation. The whole purpose of the construction of the government was to force people with diverse opinions to come together to make legislation together.

This would be a particularly onerous burden when the Democrats are the minority party, as they typically represent more Americans than the Republicans do. Case in point, in 2020, the Republicans that voted to acquit Trump of his first impeachment represented roughly 15 million fewer Americans than the Democrats voting to convict Trump. (Berman, 2020) When - not if - when the Democrats are in the minority again (likely after the 2022 elections...  but that’s an episode for another time), they will be likely to represent more Americans than the Republicans. To be clear, this isn’t a flaw of the Senate. It was the way it was designed since every state gets two senators regardless of population. However, by removing the filibuster, Democrats in that situation would be giving up a lot of power to represent the majority of Americans.

 

Proponents of the filibuster argue that it forces political parties to compromise to pass legislation. When any single member of the other party could keep a critical bill from becoming a law, you have a lot more incentive to ensure that the other party doesn’t want to filibuster your upcoming bill. The thought is that, naturally, you will try to craft something that either includes them in the making of the bill, or takes them into consideration to the point where they can support the bill, even if it may not be perfect. (Klein, 2020)

 

Arguments For

 

That leads us nicely into why some people want to end the filibuster. Currently, 50 Republican Senators only represent 43% of the US population, the majority of which are white, rural citizens. (Debating the future of the filibuster, 2021). Those representatives have the power to kill any legislation that comes to the Senate that doesn’t represent their relatively monolithic range of constituents. And this is the core of the argument against it. It is, practically speaking, the most inherently undemocratic legislative chamber in any advanced democracy. (Klein, 2020)

 

Those who oppose the filibuster argue that it essentially gives the minority an unfair veto over the majority’s agenda. If you don’t like the way a certain bill looks, well, you just filibuster it indefinitely. Especially with the rise of the “stealth filibuster,” any single Senator in a closely divided Senate, say, 50/50 or something crazy like that, can keep any piece of legislation they don’t agree with from becoming a law. (Thomson-DeVeaux, 2019) Compounding that, the majority of uses of the filibuster have been against progressive ideas, like the Civil Rights act, or Medicare for All, meaning that, though they represent the minority in terms of population, the people filibustering representation are doing so as a representative of the greater majority of the American population. Or, in reductive terms, the filibuster has been used more frequently to keep actual minority populations in the US (people of color, people with medical conditions, LGBTQ+ populations) from passing their legislative plan, and instead has maintained the actual majority’s (i.e. White) position in society and politics. The filibuster hurts equity, rather than fostering it. (Klein, 2020)

 

Further arguments for abolishing the filibuster lean on the Founding Fathers themselves. They were expressly against the idea of needing more than a majority to pass a measure within the Senate. The 3/5ths majority to pass a measure is not actually written into the Constitution, but was decided upon by the Senate itself. However, both Alexander Hamilton and James Madison expressed how such super majorities would cripple government and actually have the opposite of the intended effect. They did this in Federalist 22 and 58, respectively. (Klein, 2020)

 

On the point of the filibuster forcing Senators to work together and compromise on the bill… Well, how much compromise have you seen happening in the last 10 years? I know, I know, not a great argument; that’s only anecdotal. But the assumption that Senators will work to reach compromise relies on an underlying assumption: the minority party will work in good faith with the majority party.

But therein lies the rub. Because the majority party takes all of the risk while they are in power. When bill get passed, they get credit. When bills fail, they take the blame. Think about how often you heard criticism of Obama’s government not being able to do anything while he was in office. That inability to pass legislation is part of why the pendulum of public favor swung towards the Republicans in the 2016 election. And that was completely intentional. But don’t take my word for it, here’s what Mitch Mcconell had to say about it in 2011: 

 

“We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals. Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”

(Klein, 2020)

 

Mitch wanted to send the message that the Democrats were ineffective. And he knew that, if they couldn’t get their legislation passed, they would take the blame. So… they didn’t let any legislation get passed if they could help it. Which is why we saw so many Executive Orders get passed under the Obama administration; Obama had very few options available to him to make any change. 

When will we know its fate?

So when will we know if the filibuster is here to stay, or gone like yesterday’s dishwater?

Well, realistically we have no idea. I mean we aren’t psychic here. But we can make some educated guesses.

First, we know that the Democrats did not have to agree to drop their pursuit of eliminating the filibuster. A funny thing happens when the Senate is split 50/50. The two parties have to come to a power sharing agreement. For a while, Mitch Mcconell was saying he would not agree to anything if the Democrats wouldn’t promise to not pursue eliminating the filibuster. However, he dropped that requirement, meaning that the Dems could still pursue it without breaking a promise, for whatever that is worth. (Woodruff & Desjardins, 2021)

 

However, Democrats do not currently have the votes to completely eliminate the filibuster via the nuclear option. This is because Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona both currently oppose the complete elimination of the filibuster. (Woodruff & Desjardins, 2021)

 

We also know that there is intense pressure from the progressive wing of the party to do away with the filibuster (obviously, or we wouldn’t be doing this podcast). That’s compounded by the fact that there is incredible pressure on the Democrats to actually pass legislation this time around. Nobody has forgotten what happened in 2016, and a lack of follow through on the promises the Democrats made on the campaign trail (lookin’ at Georgia real hard right now) would certainly cost them the majority in the already difficult 2022 midterms. With such a narrow majority and the Republicans having no political incentive to compromise, it is likely that they will consider blowing the filibuster up the only way to proceed with any of the business of government they hope to accomplish.

Taking this into consideration, I think it’s likely that we will at least see some sort of reform in 2021. However, if the Republicans pull the same playbook out that they had under Obama, which, again, I see no reason for them to not do that, I see a future where the filibuster is removed entirely. If Senators Manchin and Sinema cannot deliver legislative victories to their states, neither of which are sure victories for either of them, they may change their minds and push to get rid of the filibuster so they have legislative victories to campaign on for reelection.

Unfortunately, this is one of those questions where the best answer is simply, “We don’t know.”

 

However, there is an option for reform that I don’t hate, if it could be accomplished. It is very middle of the road, so I could see the more moderate members of the Repbulican party getting on board: a ratcheting, or adjusting, cloture limit. Under this system, each cloture vote would reduce the majority needed on the next cloture vote by three, until the bill could pass with 51 votes. So if you can’t reach cloture at 60, you call for another vote, which would only require 57. Then another one at 54, and then a final one at 51. This would allow up to eight days of debate on any bill. The argument that filibustering allows for debates and compromise, if it is being made in good faith, should be satisfied with such a resolution. (Klein, 2020)

Unfortunately, like all other non-nuclear solutions, it requires 60 votes to pass.

If you feel strongly about this, I’d recommend you start writing your senators, people.

 

Shameless Plug

Good News

We’re just going to say up front that this week’s good news is not really… unbiased. We normally try to keep the good news section relevant to the topic at hand, and something that can objectively be considered good news no matter what your political leanings are. But there’s really no way to do that with the filibuster, because it’s pretty apparently divided along party lines. You either love it or hate it depending on whether or not your team is in the minority or not. So this week’s good news is pretty biased, because it’s about the impeachment trial, and specifically the people who voted to convict.

Somewhat unexpectedly, 7 Republicans voted to convict. This was two more than predicted. Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey, and Susan Collins joined the Democrats in voting to convict former president, current record holder for the most impeachments of a president ever, Donald Trump. This fact means that this vote, though unsuccessful, is the most bi-partisan support for conviction ever in a presidential impeachment trial. Trump setting yet another record.

Now, it’s true that Trump was acquitted due to the fact that 2/3rds of the Senate is required to convict a president, meaning 10 more Republican senators would have needed to vote to convict than did, but we think this is… at least a silver lining. Hopefully, the example these Republicans set is that it is possible to listen to the evidence and arguments from the other side, vote based on your convictions, and still be Republican (or Democrat).

The news is leavened somewhat by the fact that the two Republicans were not going to seek re-election in 2022, anyway, making some wonder if the only reason Trump was acquitted was for political reasons. Certainly, McConnel’s statements after the vote about Trump being morally responsible for the riots, despite his vote to acquit, point that direction.

We feel like this demonstrates - during this time when so many are questioning whether ideals or allegiances guide our political process - that here are still some in the Republican party who are willing to keep their values the most important aspect of their political decision making, not their political ambitions. And that is certainly good news. (Reuters Staff, 2021)

 

Berman, A. (2020, January 22). GOP Senators Representing a Minority of Americans Are Preventing a Fair Impeachment Trial. Mother Jones. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/gop-senators-representing-a-minority-of-americans-are-preventing-a-fair-impeachment-trial/

Debating the future of the filibuster. (2021, January 22). Brookings. Retrieved February 21, 2021, from https://www.brookings.edu/events/debating-the-future-of-the-filibuster/

Hartsoe, S. (2013). Why the Democrats Took the Nuclear Option in Congress. Duke Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://trinity.duke.edu/node/6563

History.com Editors. (2018, August 21). Filibuster. History.com. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/history-of-the-filibuster

Klein, E. (2020, October 1). The definitive case for ending the filibuster. Vox. Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://www.vox.com/21424582/filibuster-joe-biden-2020-senate-democrats-abolish-trump

Mancini, M. (2016, June 15). 5 Weird Things Done During Filibusters. Mental Floss. Retrieved February 12, 2021, from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53827/5-weird-things-done-during-filibusters

McKeever, A. (2021, February 2). The origins of the filibuster—and how it came to exasperate the U.S. Senate. NationalGeographic.com. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/reference/united-states-history/origins-of-filibuster-united-states-senate/#close

Memmott, M. (2013, March 7). How Did Strom Thurmond Last Through His 24-Hour Filibuster? NPR.com. Retrieved February 12, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/03/07/173736882/how-did-strom-thurmond-last-through-his-24-hour-filibuster

Reuters Staff. (2021, February 13). Factbox: Seven Republicans vote to convict Trump in impeachment trial. Reuters. Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-senators-factbo/factbox-seven-republicans-vote-to-convict-trump-in-impeachment-trial-idUSKBN2AD0AO

Reynolds, M. E. (2020, September 9). What is the Senate filibuster, and what would it take to eliminate it? Policy 2020 Brookings. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/what-is-the-senate-filibuster-and-what-would-it-take-to-eliminate-it/

Tausanovitch, A. (2019, December 5). The Impact of the Filibuster on Federal Policymaking. Center for American Progress. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2019/12/05/478199/impact-filibuster-federal-policymaking/

Thomson-DeVeaux, A. (2019, September 23). Why Are So Many Democrats Considering Ending The Filibuster? FiverThirtyEight. Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-so-many-democrats-considering-ending-the-filibuster/

Woodruff, J., & Desjardins, L. (2021, January 26). Senate reaches agreement on filibuster rule, but reform is still on the table. NPR. Retrieved February 14, 2014, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/senate-reaches-agreement-on-filibuster-rule-but-reform-is-still-on-the-table