patrick.net

Reading from the list, the President said yesterday, “Here’s some of the things we’d pass if we terminated the filibuster: Voter ID, No Mail-In Voting, No Cash Bail, No Men in Women’s Sports, No Welfare for Illegals. You can go on and on.”

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/lunch-money-saturday-november-8-2025

Reading from the list, the President said yesterday, “Here’s some of the things we’d pass if we terminated the filibuster: Voter ID, No Mail-In Voting, No Cash Bail, No Men in Women’s Sports, No Welfare for Illegals. You can go on and on.”

Those all sound good to me.

We’re breaking through! Whether someone in Mike Lee’s office was influenced by C&C or we just helped the idea percolate through the collective consciousness, at least one U.S. Senator has begun loudly and publicly calling for the same proposed solution to what we’ve called the “silent filibuster,” which Mr. Lee more colorfully calls the “zombie filibuster.” The Deseret News ran a hit piece on the story, headlined, “Mike Lee wants to change how the Senate filibuster works.”




... In general usage, ‘filibuster’ refers to commandeering parliamentary debate by refusing to stop arguing until everyone else hoists the white flag in surrender, to stop the pain and achieve blessed silence. In the U.S. Senate, filibustering specifically refers to the tactic of taking advantage of a rule of collegiality that lets Senators finish speaking— without any time limits. ...

‘Filibustering’ is found nowhere in the Senate rulebook. Instead, the operative rule is called ‘a cloture vote.’ (The word ‘cloture’ derives, unsurprisingly, from a French word for ‘closing.’) The cloture vote allows the Senate to end debate and override a filibuster. But it takes 60 votes, which only becomes possible when enough members of the minority party become so tired of sitting around hearing someone read phone book entries or the collected works of William Shakespeare that they cross the aisle and agree to stop the madness.

That system worked fine, although irritating in spots. But in 1972, an enterprising Democrat Majority leader, Mike Mansfield (D-Montana), changed the rules. Under the Mansfield amendment, Senators could just threaten to filibuster, and the bill at issue would be ‘parked’ as though it were being actively filibustered, and a cloture vote of 60 Senators would be required to ‘close debate.’ Meanwhile, the Senate business of personal enrichment could continue within sane office hours, and nobody would have to mindlessly sit around listening to pure nonsense and jibber-jabber.

In other words, since 1972, Senators were not required to actually take the podium and talk for hours, which, even for blowhards in the Senate, required a certain amount of effort. No, now they can silently filibuster, without even being there, without uttering a syllable of debate, and without the Senate building even being open. Just by saying so.

Democrats have used the silent filibuster to effortlessly freeze nearly all lawmaking in the Senate. Only a handful of bill types, like budget-based ‘continuing resolutions,’ are exempt. As long as the Senators keep the Democrats’ 1972 cloture amendment, Trump’s agenda will be relegated to a passing phenomenon, a neat collection of nifty executive orders waiting to be broomed the very next time a Democrat infests the White House.

Only a bare majority —51 votes— is needed to return to the pre-1972 cloture rule. And that is probably all it would take to get the Senate moving. They needn’t actually end the filibuster — only the silent filibuster. And that is exactly what Senator Lee is advocating for, except he calls it the zombie filibuster. “You enforce the rules by requiring them to debate,” Lee said. “If we enforce the cloture rule, we could end cloture abuse. And we could end this perpetual tail-chasing model even when Republicans control the Senate and the House and the White House, as we currently do.”