I think this explains the present issues fairly well.
Explainer: Why does Joe Biden want to scrap the U.S. Senate's 'filibuster' rule?
https://www.reuters.com/legal/governmen ... 022-01-11/
[snip]
Once a rarity, the filibuster is now routinely invoked. In recent months, Republicans have used it to block voting-rights bills and bring the United States perilously close to a crippling debt default.
[snip]
Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate was set up to allow for unlimited debate. In the 19th century, lawmakers developed the filibuster - a word derived from Dutch and Spanish terms for Caribbean pirates - as a way to talk a bill to death.
Then-Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond set the record in 1957, when spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to block a major civil rights bill. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy spoke for nearly 15 hours in 2016 to press for gun-control legislation and Republican Senator Ted Cruz spoke for more than 21 hours in 2013 to protest President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act. None of those efforts were successful.
Senators agreed in 1917 that a vote by a two-thirds majority could end debate on a given bill. That majority was reduced in 1975 to three-fifths of the Senate, currently 60 senators.
Under current rules, senators don't need to talk to gum up the works -- they merely need to register their objection to initiate a filibuster.
Over the past 50 years, the number of filibusters has skyrocketed as Democrats and Republicans have become more politically polarized. From 1969 to 1970 there were six votes to overcome a filibuster, the nearest reliable proxy. There were 298 such votes in the 2019-2020 legislative session.
[snip]
CAN THE FILIBUSTER BE CHANGED?
There have already been changes.
In 2013, Democrats removed the 60-vote threshold for voting on most nominees for administration jobs, apart from the Supreme Court, allowing them to advance on a simple majority vote.
In 2017, Republicans did the same thing for Supreme Court nominees. Both the 2013 and 2017 Senate rule changes were made by simple majority votes.
Some Democrats have called for eliminating the filibuster entirely, but they lack the 50 votes needed to take that step.
Democrats plan to vote sometime over the next week to scale back the filibuster so it would not apply to voting-related legislation. But it's not clear whether they have the votes for this either; Manchin said last week that he would prefer to get some Republican buy-in for that change.
On Sunday he said he might support making the tactic more "painful" by requiring senators to keep talking on the Senate floor.
[snip][end]
Here's MHO:
1. Time to stop arguing whether or not there should be carve-outs. There have already been carve-outs. That horse has left the barn. Thus, the only arguments remaining over where the carve-outs should be. Personally, I support a carve-out for voting rights.
2. It seems like almost all the Senate moderates, including Manchin, favor a return to the "original way" - call it the "stand and talk till you drop" filibuster - I think this is the way it should work. But no, I don't favor its elimination. If only and mostly because someday a future Dem Senate legislative minority might need it to stop some really bad GOP legislation.
3. We probably won't agree on what should be filibustered, but this much I hope we could agree: it should be used less, and one way to insure that is not to make it so ridiculously easy. Basically just flap your finger, and now everything requires 60 votes, not majority rule, and that is (small d) undemocratic. Legislative minorities might have rights, just not one to unlimited obstructionism.
since when must anyone take political advice from a person who cries communismsocialism as often as possible to slur the Democratic Party?
