Yes. It is true.
There is no Filibuster rule.
The word Filibuster is simply unlimited debate. Which no one in the US Senate has actually done in many, many years.
The rule which people continue to (mistakenly) call "the Filibuster rule", is actually Senate Rule #22, and it is called the Cloture Rule
If kossacks can learn and understand the complex concepts involved in deep-water petroleum exploration, drilling and production (which I am happy to relate has happened, here in Orange Territory, over the past four months or so, with much credit given to Fishgrease) - then I am determined that kossacks can also learn about Cloture and Filibuster and the difference between the two.
A moderately short history of Senate Rule #22 (Cloture), right from the horse's mouth, the US Senate Virtual Reference Desk:
Filibuster and Cloture
19th Century Filibuster
Using the filibuster to delay or block legislative action has a long history. The term filibuster -- from a Dutch word meaning "pirate" -- became popular in the 1850s, when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill.
In the early years of Congress, representatives as well as senators could filibuster. As the House of Representatives grew in numbers, however, revisions to the House rules limited debate. In the smaller Senate, unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue.
In 1841, when the Democratic minority hoped to block a bank bill promoted by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, he threatened to change Senate rules to allow the majority to close debate. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton rebuked Clay for trying to stifle the Senate's right to unlimited debate.
Three quarters of a century later, in 1917, senators adopted a rule (Rule 22), at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote, a device known as "cloture." The new Senate rule was first put to the test in 1919, when the Senate invoked cloture to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. Even with the new cloture rule, filibusters remained an effective means to block legislation, since a two-thirds vote is difficult to obtain. Over the next five decades, the Senate occasionally tried to invoke cloture, but usually failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote. Filibusters were particularly useful to Southern senators who sought to block civil rights legislation, including anti-lynching legislation, until cloture was invoked after a 57 day filibuster against the Civil Right Act of 1964. In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 of the current one hundred senators.(see bottom of this section for futher details on 1975 change of Rule #22)
Many Americans are familiar with the filibuster conducted by Jimmy Stewart, playing Senator Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but there have been some famous filibusters in the real-life Senate as well. During the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor. The Louisiana senator frustrated his colleagues while entertaining spectators with his recitations of Shakespeare and his reading of recipes for "pot-likkers." Long once held the Senate floor for 15 hours. The record for the longest individual speech goes to South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Prior to 1975: Cloture required 2/3 "Yea" votes of Senators present in the chamber
After 1975: Cloture required 3/5 "Yea" votes of Senators duly chosen and sworn
The difference can be significant.
2/3 is only a higher number of Senators required if the full Senate is sitting in chambers.
If only 40 Senators were present, then a 2/3 "Yea" vote (under pre-1975 rules) would only require 27 Senators vote "Yea".
Today, no matter how many Senators are present for a vote, it requires 3/5 of all current "duly chosen and sworn" Senators to vote "Aye" - and today, that number (as always) is 60 Senators, because 100 x 3/5 = 60.
So, no matter what the reason for the change in 1975, it made getting a Cloture Vote passed that much more difficult.
An interesting short history (yes, I know, they are all really long histories, but you're here to read, right? so, read on...) of how and why the Cloture rule was finally added to the Standing Rules of the US Senate:
President Woodrow Wilson and the Cloture Rule
Woodrow Wilson considered himself an expert on Congress—the subject of his 1884 doctoral dissertation. When he became president in 1913, he announced his plans to be a legislator-in-chief and requested that the President’s Room in the Capitol be made ready for his weekly consultations with committee chairmen. For a few months, Wilson kept to that plan. Soon, however, traditional legislative-executive branch antagonisms began to tarnish his optimism. After passing major tariff, trade, and banking legislation in the first two years of his administration, Congress slowed its pace.
By 1915, the Senate had become a breeding ground for filibusters. In the final weeks of the Congress that ended on March 4, one administration measure related to the war in Europe tied the Senate up for 33 days and blocked passage of three major appropriations bills. Two years later, as pressure increased for American entry into that war, a 23-day, end-of-session filibuster against the president’s proposal to arm merchant ships also failed, taking with it much other essential legislation. For the previous 40 years, efforts in the Senate to pass a debate-limiting rule had come to nothing. Now, in the wartime crisis environment, President Wilson lost his patience.
[diarist note: this is the interesting part, right here]
Decades earlier, he had written in his doctoral dissertation, "It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees." On March 4, 1917, as the 64th Congress expired without completing its work, Wilson held a decidedly different view. Calling the situation unparalleled, he stormed that the "Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible." [emphasis added] The Senate, he demanded, must adopt a cloture rule.
On March 8, 1917, in a specially called session of the 65th Congress, the Senate agreed to a rule that essentially preserved its tradition of unlimited debate. The rule required a two-thirds majority to end debate and permitted each member to speak for an additional hour after that before voting on final passage. Over the next 46 years, the Senate managed to invoke cloture on only five occasions.
Reference Items:
U.S. Congress. Senate. The Senate, 1789-1989, Vol. 2, by Robert C. Byrd. 100th Cong., 1st sess., 1991. S. Doc.100-20.
Even shorter history:
The US Senate allowed unlimited debate (Filibuster) by any Senator on any subject, right up until 1917. That's 141 years.
At that point, President Woodrow Wilson decided that there needed to be a way to stop Filibusters and move to a vote on the Bill under consideration, because even a century ago, there were Obstructionists in the US Senate.
Thus, Senate Rule #22 was born.
So, how does Cloture actually work and why the hell isn't it working today to stop Republican Obstructionists?
Procedure:
Regardless of the provisions of Rule II or Rule IV or any other rule of the Senate, at any time a motion signed by 16 Senators, to bring to a close the debate upon any measure, motion, other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, is presented to the Senate.
The Presiding Officer, or Clerk at the direction of the Presiding Officer, shall immediately state the motion to the Senate body, and one hour after the Senate meets on the following calendar day but one, he shall lay the motion before the Senate and direct that the clerk call the roll, and upon the ascertainment that a quorum is present.
Without debate, the Presiding Officer shall then submit to the Senate by a yea-and-nay vote the question: "Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?"
If that question is decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn—except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting—then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.
Plainer English:
If (at least) 16 Senators are ready to stop debate on a Bill
They sign a motion to enact Cloture and submit it to the Presiding Officer/Clerk
The motion is immediately stated to the Senate Body
Day 2 (or later), afterwards, 1 hour into the day's business
The motion is laid before the Senate
The Clerk calls the Roll to be sure a Quorum is present
Without debate, a Yea or Nay vote is taken on the question "should debate end (on the underlying Bill)?"
To sum up:
The US Senate has been home to generations of Obstructionists.
For 141 years, US Senators managed to get "the people's work" done, Filibuster's notwithstanding.
From 1917 to 1963, the Cloture Rule was only successful five times, in stopping debate and moving to a vote.
Moving to current day, the Cloture Rule has, to all extents and purposes, become the only important Senate Rule.
Whether or not a Cloture Vote will be successful drives nearly all legislation in the US Senate.
A Rule created to defeat obstructionism in the US Senate, has all but made sure that obstructionism is the only purpose of US Senators.
Instead of making laws for the betterment of the nation, US Senators engage in pissing matches in public, instead of negotiating with each other to arrive at useful and needed Legislation.
What has driven the august body of the US Senate to such lows?
Partisanship. Pure and simple.
Putting the good of the Party above the good of the nation.
24-7 TV news cycles, aggressively searching for "sound bites" to drive their nielson ratings ever higher, and Senators more than happy to oblige them.
No matter what the driving factors that induce our duly chosen and sworn US Senators to abrogate their duty to do The People's business in favor of blatant partisan hackery; the end result has been to tarnish the reputation of this Body in the minds of everyone.
US Senators were once respected and honorable men and women.
Today, they are seen as a bunch of whining, corrupt fools, for the most part. A Body of politicians whose only purpose is to secure themselves another term in office.
Senate Rule #22 has a lot to do with that, in my opinion. It was a rule conceived and created in another era, one in which it often took not days, but weeks, for information to move across our country. An era in which the doings of the US Senate was the stuff of mysteries and enigmas.
An era in which US Senators actually wrote the Laws that they proposed and voted on; instead of being written (for the most part) by staffers who oftentimes were previously employed by the industry which the proposed law is meant to regulate, or who go to work in those industries right after the legislation that they just wrote goes into effect.
That is, most certainly, not the era in which we live today.
It is time, no, it is past time to end the stranglehold that Senate Rule #22 has over our US Senate.
It is time that the US Senate stops acting like spoiled children, and gets down to the important work that it is elected to do.
Our nation is drowning in the cost of: two Wars, pollution, recession, looming depression, unemployment, fiscal crisis, runaway immigration problems - and our US Senate either cannot or will not address these issues, and they hide behind the Cloture Rule, as though that alone restraines them from their duty.
We can no longer afford for the US Senate to remain obstructed by this arcane and non-working Rule.
Much as publicly funded campaigns and election could significantly alter the way our elected Congress approaches the People's business, so too, could elimination of this US Senate Rule.
Force obstructionist Senators to keep talking and talking and talking to stop a vote on a Bill. Let the 24/7 TradMed expose them for the whining blathers that they are. Allow the voting public some much needed insight into just whom it is that they keep sending to the US Senate, and why those people cannot seem to get anything done.
Some people will say that without a Cloture Rule, the US Senate will become even more obstructionist.
I say, that those some people are mostly ones who like the status quo and have something to lose, if things change.
Me? I'm all for change.
Because, seriously, how in the hell could the US Senate be more obstructionist than it is today?
Imagine - a US Senate with the freedom to pass Legislation under Majority Rules Votes - just as the Founding Fathers intended them to do:
US Constitution, Article I, Section 3:
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.
If that is not prima facie evidence that the US Senate is supposed to operate under Majority Rules Voting, then I'm a monkey's uncle aunt.
* * * * *
UPDATE:
h/t to
BarackStarObama
A more extensive history of the Filibuster, and changes to Cloture Rule is available here at Wikipedia. It includes information on specific times/events in history where/when those changes took place.
UPDATE II:
Senate Action on Cloture Motions
Congress| Years | Motions Filed|Votes on Cloture|Cloture Invoked
111 |2009-2010 | 111 | 66 | 53
110 |2007-2008 | 139 | 112 | 61
109 |2005-2006 | 68 | 54 | 34
108 |2003-2004 | 62 | 49 | 12
107 |2001-2002 | 72 | 61 | 34
106 |1999-2000 | 71 | 58 | 28
105 |1997-1998 | 69 | 53 | 18
104 |1995-1996 | 82 | 50 | 9
103 |1993-1994 | 80 | 46 | 14
102 |1991-1992 | 59 | 47 | 22
101 |1989-1990 | 37 | 24 | 11
100 |1987-1988 | 53 | 43 | 12
99 |1985-1986 | 40 | 23 | 10
98 |1983-1984 | 41 | 19 | 11
97 |1981-1982 | 31 | 30 | 10
96 |1979-1980 | 30 | 20 | 11
95 |1977-1978 | 23 | 13 | 3
94 |1975-1976 | 39 | 27 | 17
93 |1973-1974 | 44 | 31 | 9
92 |1971-1972 | 23 | 20 | 4
91 |1969-1970 | 7 | 6 | 0
90 |1967-1968 | 6 | 6 | 1
89 |1965-1966 | 7 | 7 | 1
88 |1963-1964 | 4 | 3 | 1
87 |1961-1962 | 4 | 4 | 1
86 |1959-1960 | 1 | 1 | 0
85 |1957-1958 | 0 | 0 | 0
84 |1955-1956 | 0 | 0 | 0
83 |1953-1954 | 1 | 1 | 0
82 |1951-1952 | 0 | 0 | 0
81 |1949-1950 | 2 | 2 | 0
80 |1947-1948 | 0 | 0 | 0
79 |1945-1946 | 6 | 4 | 0
78 |1943-1944 | 1 | 1 | 0
77 |1941-1942 | 1 | 1 | 0
76 |1939-1940 | 0 | 0 | 0
75 |1937-1938 | 2 | 2 | 0
74 |1935-1936 | 0 | 0 | 0
73 |1933-1934 | 0 | 0 | 0
72 |1931-1932 | 2 | 1 | 0
71 |1929-1930 | 1 | 0 | 0
70 |1927-1928 | 1 | 0 | 0
69 |1925-1926 | 7 | 7 | 3
68 |1923-1924 | 0 | 0 | 0
67 |1921-1922 | 1 | 1 | 0
66 |1919-1920 | 2 | 2 | 1
Total: 1228 Cloture Motions filed
894 Votes on Cloture
391 Cloture Invoked (it passed and a vote on the underlying bill was able to take place)