138 Congressional politics
existence of the new procedure probably induced the Committee to grant
rules in a number of other cases. Even so, the failure of the Rules Committee
to act killed seventeen Bills in 1966, some of which had been requested by
the president and the administration, and in 1967 conservatives were able
to gain the repeal of the twenty-one-day rule. Today the Speaker and other
party leaders in the House have a much greater influence over the decisions
of the Rules Committee, although from time to time the latter will assert its
independence.
The filibuster in the Senate
The problem of determining priorities for legislation, upon which the power
of the House Rules Committee is based, gives little difficulty in the Senate.
In that more relaxed chamber the majority leader, in consultation with a
party committee, the Policy Committee, and with the cooperation of the mi-
nority leader, arranges the legislative programme. The strict control that is
exercised over debates in the House, however, does not exist in the Senate,
so that the increased power of the leadership to schedule legislation is offset
by its almost complete inability to control the actual length or relevance of
debates on the floor of the Senate. The privilege of unlimited debate has
traditionally been the pride of the Senate, conferring upon the individual
Senator the power to dramatise the importance of an issue by staging a long
performance on the floor of the Senate, during which time all other business
is held up. In 1953 Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon held the floor, without
a break, for twenty-two hours and twenty-six minutes, and in 1959 Senator
Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spoke for twenty-four hours and eight-
een minutes against the passage of a Civil Rights bill.
In defence of unlimited debate, it is argued that in a heterogeneous coun-
try like the United States, which is in a sense, ‘composed’ of minorities, no
group should be forced against its will to accept legislation that it consid-
ers destructive of its vital interests. No individual Senator can hope to block
legislation through the use of this privilege, but a relatively small group of
eight or ten Senators who are determined to prevent the passage of a Bill can
hold the floor in turn indefinitely, and so force the leadership of the Senate
to abandon a measure. This is the filibuster, and it is a technique that was
successful in preventing the passage of civil rights legislation for many years.
Even the threat of a filibuster can be enough to deter the leadership from
introducing a Bill on to the floor of the Senate if it is going to disrupt the
work of the whole session. Although the main beneficiaries of the procedure
were Southern Senators, who were prepared to fight civil rights measures in
this way, many other Senators are loath to see limits put on debate, because
in the future it might be their minority interests that would benefit from this
type of defensive action.
Until 1917 there was no means of bringing debate to a close in the Senate
so long as a single Senator wished to continue speaking. However, as a result