161 Carve-Outs In The Filibuster Rule

Click here for an article available at The Brennan Center by Tim Lau entitled "The Filibuster, Explained." It's a short, clear explanation. I was shocked to hear that far from being sacrosanct and inviolable, there have been 161 exceptions to the filibuster's supermajority requirement ... between 1969 and 2014.

So how about one more for voting rights? Here's an excerpt, a short piece headed "What's the history of the filibuster and its supermajority requirement?"

Under original Senate rules, cutting off debate required a motion that passed with a simple majority. But in 1806, after Vice President Aaron Burr argued that the rule was redundant, the Senate stopped using the motion.

This change inadvertently gave senators the right to unlimited debate, meaning that they could indefinitely delay a bill without supermajority support from ever getting to a vote. This tactic is what we now know as a filibuster.

In 1917, the Senate passed Rule XXII, or the cloture rule, which made it possible to break a filibuster with a two-thirds majority. In 1975, the Senate reduced the requirement to 60 votes, which has effectively become the minimum needed to pass a law.

There are, however, exceptions to the filibuster rule. Perhaps the most notable recent example pertains to presidential appointments. In 2013, Democrats changed the Senate rules to enable the confirmation of executive branch positions — including the cabinet — and of non–Supreme Court judicial nominees with a simple majority. Four years later, Senate Republicans expanded the change to include Supreme Court appointments. Both changes invoked what is known as the nuclear option, or an override of a rule to overcome obstruction by the minority.

At times, the Senate has also exempted certain types of legislation from the cloture rule. For example, Congress’s annual budget reconciliation process requires only a simple majority vote and cannot be filibustered. Likewise, trade agreements that are negotiated using fast-track rules cannot be filibustered. Other exemptions apply to measures that involve, for example, military base closures or arms sales. In total, 161 exceptions to the filibuster’s supermajority requirement have been created between 1969 and 2014, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution’s Molly Reynolds.