Esquire
The Filibuster Is Made-Up and Stupid, and So Is the Made-Up, Stupid History to Justify It
The filibuster was created when Cain and Abel were locked in those fraternal spats about who’d made a better sacrifice to God. The filibuster dates back to Sumerian debates over how to regulate the trade of obsidian and lapis lazuli in the Fertile Crescent. The filibuster can be traced to the ancient Roman custom of filibusta, wherein the tribune of the plebs could block a Senate initiative he feared would add to inflation. The filibuster emerged during the Hundred Years’ War as England and France each demanded any peace treaty receive the backing of a supermajority of noblemen in both countries. There are cave drawings at Lascaux that depict the very first use of the filibuster.
These backstories are only marginally less true than the one Senator Joe Manchin offered on Monday: The filibuster has been “the tradition of the Senate here in 232 years now,” he told Chad Pergram of Fox News. “We need to be very cautious what we do…That’s what we’ve always had for 232 years. That’s what makes us different than any place else in the world.”
No, the filibuster is not 232 years old. It is not as old as American democracy because the Founders did not write it into the Constitution. It emerged, essentially by accident, because they failed to outline a constitutional procedure for ending debate on a bill. They had no interest in governance by supermajority. Its first use was 50 years after the founding. Many of its uses after that were very bad. The Senate was already an undemocratic body that is now supercharged to enshrine the tyranny of a minority. And the filibuster has been changed many, many times. Recently, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell changed the filibuster to make it easier for them to get their Supreme Court nominees through. Even more recently—like, last month—the Senate made an exception to the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling.
Yet somehow, people routinely get away with casting the filibuster as an essential building block of American democracy that verges on an essential virtue in human nature. All of this is completely made up, along with all of the ridiculous procedural workarounds that have sprung up around the filibuster: reconciliation, the Parliamentarian, the Byrd rule. All of it is made up and stupid. It’s a tool of obstruction, but it’s also cover that allows lawmakers to avoid actually voting on policy proposals. If the bill never comes up for a vote because it’s been blocked using the filibuster, you don’t have a record of voting against shoring up voting rights. It’s not unlike the eagerness that members of Congress have shown to fork over the legislature’s war powers to the Executive Branch in order to avoid having to own any of our endless military interventions abroad. It is a device abused by cowards to avoid accountability in office. If you’re against the voting-rights bill, or the Build Back Better act, then vote against those bills. Don’t prevent the bills ever getting a vote.