Filibuster

A filibuster is a legislative tactic, usually used by the minority party, to block or delay the majority party from voting on a desired piece of legislation; the minority party does so by prolonging debate, “talking the bill to death.” As Encyclopaedia Britannica explains, a filibuster is “used in the U.S. Senate by a minority of the senators—sometimes even a single senator—to delay or prevent parliamentary action by talking so long that the majority either grants concessions or withdraws the bill.” The strategy is only used in the U.S. Senate because “unlike the U.S. House of Representatives, in which rules limit speaking time, the Senate allows unlimited debate on a bill. Speeches can be completely irrelevant to the issue.” [1] 

There are several tactics for ending filibusters or making them more difficult. First, three-fifths of U.S. senators (meaning 60 of the 100 senators) could vote to “invoke cloture,” a parliamentarian procedure that would limit debate and allow for a vote on the issue at hand. Second, the Senate can stay in session late at night, or round-the-clock, to tire those using the filibuster. Perhaps the most famous depiction of a marathon filibuster, and the various tactics used to fight it, is the climactic scene in the classic 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, when the star of the film, an idealistic freshman senator played by Jimmy Stewart, collapses on the Senate floor from exhaustion after speaking for 24 hours. A third method is the so-called “nuclear option,” used in 2013 and 2017 to eliminate the use of the filibuster for presidential executive and judicial appointments and U.S. Supreme Court nominees. The “nuclear option” allows senators to change Senate rules with a simple majority vote (just 51 senators) instead of a supermajority (60 senators). Following this option, senators can kill the filibuster for specific key party platform legislation. But using this option runs the risk of the minority party doing the same thing once it regains the majority, creating a cycle of tit-for-tat actions that undermine Senate rules and traditions and lead to greater dysfunction and partisanship in the chamber.[14][15] [1][2]

Interestingly, the word “filibuster” comes from the world of piracy. Derived from Dutch and Spanish, the term first appeared in English in 1591 as “flee-booters,” referring to people who raided the Caribbean Spanish colonies. The word gained a syllable along the way, and by the 1850s “filibusters” were Americans who traveled to the Spanish West Indies and Central America to encourage revolution. Senate filibusters, then, were “hijacking debate” like pirates hijacking boats. As NPR host Melissa Block explained, “filibustering senators were, by extension, pirates raiding the Congress for their own political gain.”[3][14]

The first instance of “talking a bill to death” actually happened during the very first session of Congress, on September 22, 1789. As Anti-Administration Party Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania wrote in his journal, the “design of the Virginians and the Carolina gentleman was to talk away the time, so that we could not get the bill passed.” Despite the proto-filibustering, the bill was passed 31-17.[4][5] 

In 1789, both the U.S. House and Senate had a rule allowing for a simple majority to end debate: the “previous question motion.” The House rulebook still has that motion. The Senate eliminated it in 1805 when Vice President Aaron Burr (who had just been indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton) told the Senate to clean up their rulebook, specifically to get rid of this tactic. The Senate did so in 1806, eliminating the Senate’s ability to end debate with a simple majority, thereby enabling the filibuster. [6]

According to the Senate, the term “filibuster” first came into congressional use when Mississippi Democrat Senator Albert Brown noted his “friend standing on the other side of the House filibustering” on January 3, 1853, and when North Carolina Whig Senator George Badger bemoaned “filibustering speeches” in February of the same year. Other sources state “filibuster” didn’t take on its Senate meaning until 1889 or 1890.[3][4]

The debate over eliminating the filibuster is almost as old as its appearance in the Senate. As early as 1841, Kentucky Whig Senator Henry Clay, frustrated with filibustering Democrats, threatened to limit debate. Alabama Democrat Senator William King countered that Clay might as well “make his arrangements at his boarding house for the [entire] winter” in preparation for even longer debates to maintain the filibuster. [4]

But as the U.S. Senate grew in members, so did the amount of work it had to do, and so too did frustrations with the filibuster, as long speeches could derail work for days. President Woodrow Wilson made his displeasure known when, at the end of the 64th Congress on March 4, 1917, the Senate’s work remained undone:

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. [4][7][8][9]

At Wilson’s urging, in a special congressional session, Senate Rule 22 was adopted on March 8, 1917. The rule meant that senators could file a motion to invoke cloture, which would prompt a vote on whether to end the debate two business days after the motion was filed, allowing up to 30 additional hours of debate. Two-thirds of the Senate was required to end a filibuster with cloture until 1974 when the rule was changed to only three-fifths (meaning 60 U.S. senators). If the motion is approved during the cloture vote, then cloture has been invoked and the Senate will vote on the item in question without further delay and debate.[4][7][8][9] 

The first invocation of cloture occurred on November 15, 1919, and ended debate on the Treaty of Versailles. Between 1917 and June 17, 2025, U.S. Senators have filed 2,986 cloture motions, voted on cloture 2,421 times, and successfully invoked cloture in 1,700 cases. At first used sparingly, cloture has become a more popular tool; during the 113th Congress (2013-2014), its use jumped to 187 from 41 clotures in the 112th Congress (2011-2012). It’s use hit a high of 336 clotures in the 117th Congress (2021-2022). [10][11]

The longest individual filibuster on record occurred in 1957, when U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina talked for 24 hours and 18 minutes as part of an unsuccessful attempt by Southern senators to obstruct civil rights legislation. Speaking longer was New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who spoke for 25 hours and five minutes, delivering the longest Senate speech in U.S. history, from March 31 to April 1, 2025. His speech, however, was not a filibuster (there was no specific legislation being blocked)—Booker spoke in general protest of President Donald Trump and his policies.[1][49]

Key to the current debate over filibusters is the political parity that exists in the U.S. Congress. With the Senate almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, at a time when the parties share little ideological overlap and seldom agree on anything, the filibuster has become a prime tool for hindering the presidential and congressional agendas of the majority party, whose control over the Senate is slight, tenuous, and far from a large mandate, making legislation almost impossible to pass.[12]

Additionally, senators no longer have to actually talk for hours to filibuster. Sometimes just the threat of a filibuster (called a “virtual filibuster” or “silent filibuster”) is enough to block legislation. William Galston, Cofounder of the Congressional reform group No Labels, describes the tactic as a “sort of a ‘Look ma, no hands’ way of avoiding accountability” and the physical effort requiring senators to talk for hours.[47][48]

Another frequently discussed option is to change the threshold for invoking cloture from 60 to a higher or lower number of senators in order to strengthen or weaken the filibuster. One version is an “inverted filibuster” in which only 41 votes (instead of 60) would be needed to invoke cloture and end a filibuster, thereby shifting the burden to the dissenting senators instead of the senators promoting the legislation in question. Also suggested is to require three-fifths of “present and voting” senators to invoke cloture and end a filibuster instead of the current requirement of three-fifths of “duly chosen and sworn” senators, many of whom may not be present or voting, thereby making it easier to kill a filibuster. [14][16]

Unfamiliarity with the filibuster makes it difficult for the public to imagine how to reform the Senate procedure. According to a Navigator Research poll in March 2024, 60 percent of those surveyed believed getting rid of the filibuster would have a positive impact, 26 percent believed it would have no impact or weren’t sure, and 14 percent believed it would have a negative impact. However, most of the people polled knew little about filibusters: only 21 percent said they understood them “very well,” 40 percent said they understood them “somewhat well,” and 39 percent said “not well” at all.[50]

So, should the U.S. Senate keep the filibuster? Explore the debate below.

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Discussion Questions

1. Should the U.S. Senate eliminate the filibuster? Explain your answer.
2. If the U.S. Senate keeps the filibuster, should the rules be reformed? If yes, how and why? If no, why not?
3. Consider a cloture motion from the U.S. Senate’s history. If you were a senator, would you have filibustered the bill or nomination? Would you have submitted a cloture motion? Do you agree with the outcome of the cloture motion and the final fate of the bill or nomination? Explain your answers.