Amending Senate Rules

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first, let me thank the Senator from New York for his very distinguished leadership of the Rules Committee and for the very open and thorough way in which he engaged that committee on these issues of addressing the filibuster and problems that have been caused by its current abuse on the Senate floor. Let me also thank Senators UDALL and MERKLEY, who worked so hard to organize this and who have put together what I think is a very good proposal.

At the outset of my remarks, I ask unanimous consent that I be added as a cosponsor to the rules resolution that is here, at this point.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The distinguished Senator from Oregon, Mr. Merkley, showed a photograph a little while ago of Jimmy Stewart in ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'' That has become the sort of emblematic, signature demonstration of the American Senate filibuster.

There is a scene in that movie that I am sure the Senator is familiar with where a reporter is up in the galleries and is describing the action down here on the Senate floor, is describing Jimmy Stewart--the Senator he represents engaging in the filibuster. The reporter describes the filibuster as ``democracy's finest show ..... the right to talk your head off ..... the American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form ..... one lone and single American holding the greatest floor in the land ..... bleary-eyed, voice gone.'' That is what we think of when we think of the traditional Senate filibuster. In those days, you stood up and you filibustered against a bill because you were opposed to it, because you hated it, because on principle you wanted to stand and fight against it. That was the old filibuster.

Now when this Chamber is engaged in a filibuster, how does the American public know? When they are watching this floor on C-SPAN and they are looking for a filibuster, they don't see democracy's finest show, they don't see anybody talking their head off, they don't see the American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form. What they see is a droning, tedious quorum call as the parliamentary staff read off, one by one, the names of Senators who are not present, and this Chamber stands useless during that period. Why is that? Partly it is because when Jimmy Stewart was undertaking his filibuster, he was exercising the right of an individual Senator to take this floor and to hold it and to speak. What is different is that when it is filibuster by party rather than filibuster by one individual Senator, then there is a whole array of procedural mechanisms the minority party has to provoke the majority leader to file for cloture.

Cloture is the filing that allows the majority leader to bring debate to a conclusion and to limit amendments. When cloture is filed, then there is 30 hours mandatory for debate. What has happened here is that the 30 hours mandatory for debate has become the prize, has become the goal of the modern filibuster. That explains why we are no longer filibustering bills we are opposed to when we are in the minority. The minority actually filibusters bills their Members support. They filibuster nominees who get voted through unanimously when the vote is finally held.

What is the filibuster about? It is about forcing cloture and forcing those 30-hour increments of time to be burned up. If you are filibustering the bill itself and you are filibustering the motion to proceed, you have a dual filibuster, and if you are filibustering amendments, you can load on an awful lot of 30-hour periods to the Senate floor and you can prevent anything from being done in those 30-hour periods just by sitting back and doing nothing and objecting when the majority party tries to move to the vote. All it takes is one person waiting in the cloakroom for the minority to force that 30-hour period to run. If you stacked up dozens and dozens of 30-hour periods, what you do is you take up the entire time available to the Senate and you impede this institution in its ability to get its work done.

That is what we are doing right now. That is why I think it is so important that the changes we are recommending restore the Senate to the traditional filibuster. We do it in two ways. First of all, if these rule changes pass, you will not get to filibuster the motion to proceed to the bill and then get to filibuster all over again on the bill and double the filibuster. If you really care about the bill, if you are really opposed to the bill, if you really hate the bill, you can come and talk your head off, but you don't get to do it twice--once on a pure parliamentary measure. That will cut down some of the wasted time, some of these droning hours that you watch on C-SPAN with nothing happening in the Senate and the time being wasted, locked in the filibuster.

There is another rules change that I believe is important. The 30-hour period is called the period for debate. What this rule change would do is, when the debate stops, the 30-hour period stops. Whoever is presiding would simply note that there is no longer debate and would call the vote. You can still debate the whole 30 hours if you want to come here and debate, but when the talking stops, you vote. You are not in a position where you can commandeer 30 hours of Senate time, force the Senate into quorum calls, and defend against going to the vote with one lone Senator back in the cloakroom, able to come out and object whenever the majority tries to move the Senate to a vote and get the Senate back in its business again.

These are two simple repairs to the cloture rule that will make it less of a prize for the minority, that will prevent us from spending all these 30-hour increments droning away in 30-hour filibuster quorum calls, and put the Senate back to where it should be--the great chamber of debate where people actually have to come to the floor, say their piece, and when they are done, we go on to the next piece of work.

I commend everybody who has worked on this. I think it is a very valuable step we are taking. I don't think it is a change away from the traditions of the Senate; I see it as returning to the real traditions of the Senate, of real debate, not just wasting time for wasting time's sake but allowing the Senate to be productive while also allowing Members who have opposition to a bill to state it as forthrightly as they wish, to engage in, as the reporter said in ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' democracy's finest show, the right to talk your head off, the American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form.

I thank all Senators present for entertaining my thoughts.

I yield the floor.

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