- [Ben] The filibuster is about one thing, endurance.

You can talk longer than anyone else.

You can bring the US Senate to a standstill.

So to honor the longest filibuster in history, 24 hours and 18 minutes, I'm pulling an all-nighter in the city that never sleeps.

Why?

Because if a senator can filibuster for a day, I can spend at least that amount of time trying to explain what it is.

Also, we forgot to book a room.

By the end of this video, you'll hopefully understand what the filibuster is, why it exists, how it works, and whether or not it should be changed.

So get ready because by the time I hit hour 24, I will either have made the filibuster make sense or completely lost my mind.

Probably both.

I'm Ben Sheen and this is "Civics Made Easy."

You probably think the filibuster is a dramatic one-man stand for democracy.

- Somebody will listen to me.

- But in reality, it's often this.

- Do you like green eggs and ham?

- Or this?

- But let me just begin by quoting a modern day poet, his name is Wiz Khalifa.

- Or most of the time this.

So what does any of this have to do with lawmaking?

If you remember from Schoolhouse Rock, which was 50 years ago, by the way, when a bill is introduced in the Senate, it's referred to committee, a small group of senators who focus on a particular issue like transportation or banking or nutrition and forestry.

The bill gets discussed, and tweaked by that committee.

When the committee members feel it's ready, they vote on the bill.

If it passes, it goes to the whole Senate, AKA, the floor to be debated and voted on.

And it just needs a majority to pass.

But here is the catch.

What if that debate part never ends?

Well, that's the filibuster.

A prolonged, sometimes unending debate to block or delay a vote on a bill.

Here is how it works today.

A senator will ask the Senate to vote on a bill, if there's unanimous consent where no senators disagree, the bill gets a vote, and just needs a majority to pass.

But if one senator objects, and announces their intent to filibuster, the debate period begins and may not end.

To stop this debate, 16 senators must sign a petition for cloture, which means to end debate.

Once there are enough signatures, the bill is tabled for two days.

After that, the senators will vote on whether to end debate.

If 60 senators vote yes, debate ends after potentially another 30 hours of debate.

So after up to 30 hours of additional debate, the bill finally gets a vote.

But if you can't get 60 senators to vote to end debate, closure fails, debate continues and the bill essentially dies.

To be honest, this all sounds pretty confusing, and arbitrary.

So I thought I would ask an expert.

Senator Alfonse D'Amato served 18 years in the United States Senate.

He holds the record for the longest filibuster by any Republican senator, the second longest filibuster ever, and the longest filibuster by any living senator, current or former.

And he happens to be sitting next to me in this booth.

Senator, how are you?

Thanks so much for being here.

- My pleasure.

- You spent more than 23 hours filibustering on the floor of the Senate in 1986, and then again, more than 15 hours filibustering in 1992.

Why did you do it, and what did you speak about during that time?

- Well, small town in New York had 872 jobs.

Getting paid back then over 40 years ago, $17 an hour.

That was fantastic.

The next thing we know, these jobs are being threatened.

And so I went to the floor, and I started a filibuster, and the filibuster lasted 15 hours and 14 minutes.

- How did you not go to the bathroom?

What did you eat?

Did you sing?

What did you read?

- I never went to the bathroom.

- [Ben] How?

- I just didn't, - If it wasn't because we didn't have a plant that was deep down in the heart of Texas.

That's right.

It's in central New York.

It's not in Texas.

- In the 1970s, there were some changes that happened.

So instead of a filibuster stopping all the senate's activity since 1972, they have the dual track so you can put it aside, and move on to something else.

- Yeah.

- And then you have the changes to cloture in 1975, right.

Where instead of two thirds of attending senators being able to vote to invoke cloture.

- Yeah.

- Ultimately stop a filibuster.

Now you need three fifths of of all senators, which is 60 senators.

So if you can't get to 60, it basically brings legislation to a standstill.

So even though the filibuster is not in the Constitution, you think that it's become an integral part of the Senate, and it does more good than it does harm?

- Absolutely.

I think it's there.

It's a protection, and it's a protection that senators of both parties can bring up.

- Would you believe the guy who shot him also created the filibuster?

Way back in March of 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr, shortly after killing Alexander Hamilton gave a farewell speech in the Senate.

He covered lots of things, including that he thought the Senate had too many rules.

He mentioned the previous question motion that let Senators end debate with the majority vote.

First said it was unnecessary.

The senators agreed.

So the next year they ditched the rule.

They didn't know it at the time, but they just opened the door to the filibuster.

30 years later, senators began realizing that endless debate could be used to delay or kill bills.

In fact, there wasn't even a way to stop a filibuster until 1917 when President Wilson told Congress to move faster.

It was World War I and America had to arm ships.

So the Senate passed Rule 22 where a filibuster ends if two thirds of senators in attendance agree.

But that was still a high bar.

And after those changes in the 1970s, filibusters increased even more.

But in the past decade, they've exploded.

There have been more filibusters in the past 12 years than there were in the hundred years before that.

Is this massive uptake in filibusters a good thing or not?

Because some people feel that the filibuster encourages compromise, while others think it stops progress.

So to answer this question, I thought I'd turn to some experts for help.

I understand that you are someone who opposes the filibuster.

Why is that?

- Well, I mean the filibuster is complicated.

It depends on what your aims are.

Overall, I think we're much better off having the Democratic moving expressed than to have minority will being expressed.

And that's ultimately what the filibuster does.

It enables the majority to be less empowered, and the minority to be more empowered.

- Professor, the filibuster is not in the Constitution.

It came about by accident.

Why do you think it's worth preserving today?

- The filibuster really is a part of the two pillars that make the United States Senate a unique body.

The right to unlimited debate, and the ability to offer amendments.

And these two things together mean that in the Senate, the minority can always have the right to speak, can always have the right to amend legislation, and that's why it's important to keep it.

- What do you think the Constitution's authors would think of the filibuster?

- Part of the purpose of the Constitution was not just to have a democracy, it was to have a Republican system of government.

And you know, part of that is to promote majoritarian power.

They could have had it across the board rule that say two thirds of senators were necessary to pass anything through the Senate, and they didn't do that.

And the fact that they obviously considered super majoritarian rules in certain instances, you could say therefore means that they did not intend it to apply generally.

- Let's say you're either the senate parliamentarian or the majority leader or there's some new constitutional amendment and they give you Professor Aaron Berg, the ability single handedly to either keep or ditch the filibuster.

Which do you do and why?

- I would keep it.

It's the recognition that the filibuster is part of the DNA of the Senate, that everyone understands, and that this has made the Senate often the cradle of compromise because the majority is forced to deal with some aspect of the opposition.

- As you can see, some people think the filibuster is the only thing encouraging compromise while others think it's hijacking the legislative process, which is probably why it was named after pirates.

- The revenge is mine.

- So if you like the filibuster, you really don't have to do anything because it's what we have.

But if you don't like it, there are really only two paths to change again.

To change or end the filibuster, you can either rewrite the rules or exploit a loophole.

Let's start with the rules.

Changing or ending the filibuster requires a two thirds vote in the Senate, that's 67 senators.

That's option one.

Option two, however, isn't to change the rules, but to reinterpret them.

This is called the nuclear option, and here is how it works.

Step one, a senator asks to vote on a bill by unanimous consent.

That means if any one senator objects the bill is filibustered.

Step two.

A group of senators tries to stop the filibuster but fails to get 60 votes.

Step three.

At that point, any senator can object and say, "Hey, to stop filibuster, you only need 51 votes."

The Senate president will overrule and say, "No.

It says in the rules you need 60."

The objecting senator then appeals that ruling to the whole Senate, which means if a majority of senators agrees to overrule the Senate president by interpreting the number 60 as 51, it gets reinterpreted making the filibuster much easier to get around.

If that sounds too dumb to be real, I have news.

In 2013, Senate Democrats did exactly this to ditch the filibuster when confirming cabinet or federal judge nominees, except to the Supreme Court.

In 2017, Senate Republicans did it for nominees to the Supreme Court.

And Senators have also made filibuster exceptions for military-base closures, armed sales trade agreements, repealing regulations, and bills around raising, spending or borrowing money, which is called budget reconciliation.

Long story short, in total, the Senate has exempted more than 160 things from being filibustered.

I'll get out there.

With a few minutes left, I wanted to share a thought.

Part of the reason our founders replaced the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution is that with the Articles it was hard to get things done.

Passing laws required a super majority.

So in the Constitution, its authors only named five things that require a super majority in the Senate.

But everything else was expected to be done with a simple majority because in the Senate they gave the Vice President the ability to break a tie.

And I'm not a mathematician, but if one person has the ability to break a tie, then the only possibility is that they're doing it with a simple majority, and not a super majority.

But the founders also wrote that each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, and the filibuster is a rule of the Senate's proceedings.

So what do you think?

Is the filibuster necessary for compromise or is it a stall tactic that does more harm than good?

Comment below with your thoughts, and I hope you look good.

I'm gonna go.