It would appear that, in general, this is not the case. As evidence, consider the current discussion over ‘changing the filibuster’.
President* (and former Senator) Biden’s new take on this mirrors that of Senator Manchin: the rules should be changed so that, to engage in a filibuster, some Senator should have to be up there actually talking. But that’s already the rule.
If you check the Rules of the Senate, the word ‘filibuster’ doesn’t appear anywhere. What does appear is a discussion of how many votes it takes to force cloture, i.e., to end to debate on a particular topic.
That is, what happens now is that you count how many votes you could get to force an end to debate, and if you don’t have enough, you don’t bother to start the debate. The minority doesn’t have to actually hold the floor, as long as it has a credible threat of being able to do that.
That is, the filibuster has the same importance, and the same use, to a minority in the Senate that nuclear weapons have to a small country: The point isn’t to use those weapons, but to be able to threaten to use them.
(‘It was Senator Lyndon Johnson who said that the filibuster is ‘the last defense of reason, the sole defense of minorities’.)
As with gun laws, politicians often propose what they think are new laws without actually understanding that those are already in place. Proposing a ‘talking filibuster’ is like proposing a law to require background checks for sales by dealers at gun shows. The existing law already requires it.
Senators who want to change the filibuster want to free the Senate to move as quickly as the House in implementing what it sees as a ‘mandate‘ for the Democratic Party.
But the whole point of the Senate is to act as a brake on the House. It was expected that the House would act in haste, while the Senate would reflect in leisure. The ability of a minority to hold the floor for an indefinite amount of time — forever, if necessary — during debate is central to that function.
Without it, the Senate is just a second House of Representatives with fewer members, longer terms, more expensive campaigns, and bigger egos… and there’s really no reason for it to exist at all.
While it’s true that a change is needed for the rules governing cloture, the change should be to raise the number of votes needed to cease debate from three-fifths to one hundred percent.
Again, as with gun laws, politicians often propose changes without really thinking through what consequences would follow from them. The reason the Senate has moved away from the ‘talking filibusters’ of the past is that while one is going on, no other Senate business can be conducted.
The threat of a filibuster removes a specific car from the legislative train. An actual filibuster stops the whole train.
As the saying goes, Democrats should be careful what they ask for, because they just might get it… good and hard.
