海角大神

The filibuster sounds fun, as if Mary Poppins might sing about it, or Alice chat about it in Wonderland. What it denotes is anything but enjoyable, however: all the ways progress can be delayed or obstructed in a legislative body. Sometimes this involves arcane parliamentary motions or adding extraneous amendments to a bill under consideration. Famously, a filibuster can be a long speech, 鈥渁n attempt to talk something to death,鈥� as The New York Times described it in 1964.

In the U.S. Senate, filibusters rely on the rule of cloture (a French parliamentary term for 鈥渃losure鈥�). Most legislation needs only a simple majority of votes (51) to pass. To bring a bill to a vote, however, a supermajority (60) must agree to invoke cloture, which ends debate and allows the bill to proceed. If the minority party has 41 members who would vote 鈥渘o鈥� on cloture, they can block a piece of legislation indefinitely. When politicians discuss 鈥渆nding the filibuster,鈥� as Democrats did in January, they are really talking about eliminating this 60-vote threshold to allow bills to move forward.

Proponents of the filibuster, such as Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, argue that it forces legislators toward 鈥渂uilding stable consensus,鈥� since the majority must work with the minority to pass bills. The Brennan Center for Justice, in contrast, claims that it has the opposite effect: 鈥渢he ability of a small group to derail legislative action has prevented senators from working across party lines to engage in bipartisan deliberation and policymaking.鈥�

Etymologically, filibuster has more to do with conflict than with consensus. It comes from the Dutch vrijbuiter, a 16th-century term for 鈥減lunderer.鈥� The word bounced around several European languages and appeared in English as freebooter (鈥減irate鈥�) and flibustier (an 18th-century pirate focused on attacking the Spanish in the West Indies) before settling down as filibuster. By the mid-19th century, filibusters were 鈥淎merican adventurers who ... participated in private military forces鈥� that invaded countries 鈥渨ith which the United States was formally at peace.鈥� The most famous filibuster of this sort, according to historian Robert May, was William Walker, a Tennessean who conquered and ruled Nicaragua for a few months in 1856.

The word was first used in a legislative sense in the mid-19th century. Filibustering senators were metaphorical pirates, stealing time and hijacking the priorities of the majority. Or they were mercenary interventionists, attempting to overthrow the plans of a duly elected legislative body.

The filibuster might sound inconsequential, but its effects on American democracy are profound.