Aaron Burr holds the distinction of not only being the first of two Vice Presidents to shoot a man while in office, but he is also the man most responsible for the Senate filibuster.
When the nation was still in it's infancy the House and Senate adopted the first sets of rules for each chamber. The Senate Rules included a right to move to the previous question, which would cut off debate and move the body to a vote should the motion be carried. In the first 17 years of the Senate this motion was only used 4 times; however, even such an infrequent use was too much. The second version of the Senate Rules, adopted in 1806, "took the suggestion of former Vice-President Aaron Burr and eliminated the previous question motion altogether."
While the prospect of a Senate filibuster was therefore opened in 1806, no one invoked it for another 31 years. Thereafter the filibuster was used to permanently quash legislation until the adoption of (now) Rule XXII closed 111-years of unchallenged filibusters by introducing cloture. Initially cloture required two-thirds of those voting. For a decade, 1949-1959, a cloture vote was increased to two-thirds of seated Senators, but the Senate restored the Rule to 2/3rds of voting Senators in 1959. Cloture was amended in 1975 to the current 3/5ths of seated Senators or 60-votes (but only 59-votes when there are two empty seats).
Yet a discussion of the filibuster cannot be considered complete without also talking about tracking. In the early 1970s then Majority Whip Robert Byrd devised the tracking system, which permits more than one bill to be pending on the floor of the Senate at one time. What this does is to allow a bill to be filibustered without Senate business grinding to a halt. Senator Byrd called this a "casual, gentlemanly, good-guy filibuster. ... Everybody goes home and gets a good night's sleep, and everybody protects everybody else." This may have been important to Senator Byrd who was still fresh off his failed 1964 filibuster of the Civil Rights Act.
The problem with the tracking system is that there is no longer a political cost to filibustering a bill. Before tracking, no Congress saw more than 20 filibusters. Since tracking, every Congress has had at least 20 filibusters, every Congress in the 21st Century has seen at least 48 filibusters, and the 110th Congress (2007-08) had 112 cloture motions filed. The burden has therefore shifted from the lone Senator standing before the Chamber reading from a telephone book for 20+ hours to the leadership attempting to garner 60 votes for a near-mandatory cloture vote. This must change.
The filibuster is an important tool, but it is one that needs to have some political cost. If you invoke the filibuster you must bring the business of the United States Government to a halt. Then the press and ordinary Americans may judge whether your filibuster is worthwhile.
The good news is this change can be immediately invoked by Majority Leader Harry Reid without a change to the Rules. Tracking requires consent of the majority and minority leaders. Therefore Majority Leader Reid may simply not give consent to tracking.
The result would be that a filibuster would require a Senator (or Senators) speaking non-stop. A filibuster of a strong public option, for example, may last days or weeks but it will eventually come to an end. In my opinion, Majority Reid ought to immediately withdraw consent for tracking of the health care reform bill and let the GOP + Senator Lieberman stay in DC through Christmas, the New Year, and President's Day filibustering health care. Eventually they will tire of not going home at night nor returning to their district to campaign. Until then the GOP will look even more like obstructionists, their numbers will continue to erode, they will be responsible for shutting down government (again), and they will say many stupid things on TV.
This is what I think should be done about the current filibuster, but what do you think?
***UPDATE***
I have been wanting to write this diary for awhile, and had not seen a similar history/tracking presented during a cursory overview. Apparently, I waited too long as a far superior history can be found here from earlier this week. My apologies to FightingRegistrar for not doing a search prior to posting!