The US Senate makes and remakes its own rules each term. In 2013, Democrats changed a rule so that confirmation votes for most presidential appointees could no longer be filibustered: instead of a 60-vote supermajority, it now requires just a 51-vote majority to move a confirmation forward. Four years later, Republicans extended this rule to Supreme Court nominees.
We don’t yet know who will control the Senate next year. But the first thing they should do is end the filibuster for legislation, too.
The filibuster goes back to an 1806 rule allowing unlimited debate time—and thus the power for a senator to halt progress simply by talking. Filibusters were rare until the 20th century, when the Senate made a series of additional rule changes. It empowered senators to end debate by cloture—requiring a supermajority vote, not the usual simple majority. It created a way for unrelated business to continue on a separate track instead of grinding to a halt. Eventually it even allowed filibusters to skip the talk-till-you-drop part.
