What is the filibuster?

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is now calling for Senate Republicans to do away with the filibuster, a congressional rule meant to keep the balance of power in the upper chamber, because it is one of the main obstacles in the way of passing a budget bill and ending the federal shutdown. 

Trump said in a post on his social media site Thursday that “THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER.”

But despite Trump’s insistent tone, most Republicans would prefer to keep the filibuster. Ending the rule is colloquially known as the “nuclear option” in Congress because it would have massive ramifications for the future of governance in the country. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and most members of his Republican conference have strongly opposed changing the filibuster, arguing that it is vital to the institution of the Senate and has allowed them to halt Democratic policies when they are in the minority.

Thune has repeatedly said he is not considering changing the rules to end the shutdown and his spokesman, Ryan Wrasse, said in a statement Friday that the leader’s “position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged.”

Removing the filibuster is often seen as a temporary patch to pass legislation that would leave the party that removes it vulnerable. 

Republicans fear if they remove the filibuster to pass the budget, Democrats won’t bring it back when they have control of Congress, removing a main lever of the opposition party for maintaining some control in governance. 

In it’s purest form, the filibuster is simply a speech by a senator. 

Unlike the House, the Senate places few constraints on lawmakers’ right to speak. When a senator begins to make a speech, the rules of the chamber prevents leadership from moving forward with a vote until they’re done, unless a supermajority of the chamber (60 votes) votes to end the speech and vote instead. 

Senators regularly use this move to hinder or block votes. Collectively these procedural delays are called filibusters.

But with a deeply divided senate where Republicans only have a 53-seat majority, seven Democrats would need to side with Republicans (who would also have to be uniformly united) to end a filibuster. 

Senate records say the term began appearing in the mid-19th century. The word comes from a Dutch term for “freebooter” and the Spanish “filibusteros” that were used to describe pirates.

Filibusters were emblazoned in the public’s mind in part by the 1939 film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which Jimmy Stewart portrayed a senator who spoke on the chamber’s floor until exhaustion. In a real-life version of that, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., stood continuously by his desk for 24 hours and 18 minutes speaking against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the longest Senate speech by a single senator for which there are records of speaking length.

Those days are mostly gone. Senators usually tell Senate leaders or announce publicly that they will filibuster a bill, with no lengthy speeches required. Just by invoking a filibuster, senators are now able to fulfill the same effect as if they spoke during one. 

 Their impact usually flows not from delaying Senate business but from the need to get a supermajority of votes to end them.

Records from the first Congress in 1789 show senators complaining about long speeches blocking legislation. Frustration grew and in 1917, the Senate voted to let senators end filibusters with a two-thirds majority vote.

In 1975, the Senate lowered that margin to the current three-fifths majority, which in the 100-member chamber is 60 votes. That margin is needed to end filibusters against nearly all types of legislation, but no longer applies to nominations, like judges nominated by Trump to federal courts.

Democrats controlling the Senate in 2013, angered by GOP delays on then-President Barack Obama’s picks, reduced the margin for ending filibusters against most appointees to a simple majority, exempting Supreme Court nominees. In 2017, Republicans running the chamber, eager to add conservative justices under then-President Donald Trump, lowered the threshold to a simple majority for Supreme Court picks as well.

Trump’s sudden decision to assert himself into the shutdown debate — bringing the highly charged demand to end the filibuster — could spur senators toward their own compromise or send the chamber spiraling toward a new sense of crisis.

Trump has long called for Republicans to get rid of the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to overcome objections, dating all the way back to his first term in office. The rule gives Democrats a check on the 53-seat Republican majority and enough votes to keep the government closed while they demand an extension of health care subsidies.

Debate has swirled around the legislative filibuster for years. Many Democrats pushed to eliminate it when they had full power in Washington, as the Republicans do now, four years ago. But they ultimately didn’t have the votes after enough Democratic senators opposed the move.

Trump’s call comes as the two parties have made little progress toward resolving the shutdown standoff while he was away for a week in Asia. He said in his post that he gave a “great deal” of thought to his choice on his flight home and that one question that kept coming up during his trip was why “powerful Republicans allow” the Democrats to shut down parts of the government.

While quiet talks are underway, particularly among bipartisan senators, the shutdown is not expected to end before next week, as both the House and Senate are out of session. Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension to the health care subsidies while Republicans say they won’t negotiate until the government is reopened.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.