How a bill becomes a law 411has been much greater stability in the rules of the Senate than in those of the House.
Whereas the House adopts its rules anew at the start of each new session (sometimes
with major changes, sometimes with only minor modifications), the Senate has not
had a general reaffirmation of its rules since 1789. However, the Senate rules can be
changed at the beginning of a session to meet the needs of the new members.
The floor process is much simpler and less structured in the Senate than in the House.
In part, this is due to the relative size of the two chambers: the House with its 435 members
needs to have more rules than the Senate with its 100 members. Ironically, however, the
floor process is actually much easier to navigate in the House because of its structure.
Since the adoption of Reed’s Rules in 1890, the House has been a very majoritarian
body—that is, a majority of House members can almost always have their way. Named
after Speaker Thomas Reed, the rules were an implementation of his view that “the best
system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.”^46 In contrast, the Senate
has always been a much more individualistic body. Former Majority Leader Howard
Baker compared leading the Senate to “herding cats,” saying it was difficult “trying to
make ninety-nine independent souls act in concert under rules that encourage polite
anarchy and embolden people who find majority rule a dubious proposition at best.”^47The Filibuster Part of the challenge in getting the Senate to act collectively is rooted
in the Senate’s unlimited debate and very open amendment process. Unless restricted
by a unanimous consent agreement, senators can speak as long as they want and offer
any amendment to a bill, even if it isn’t directly related to the underlying bill. Debate
may be cut off only if a supermajority of 60 senators agree in a process known as
invoking cloture. Therefore, one senator can stop any bill by threatening to talk the bill
to death if 40 of his or her colleagues agree. This practice is known as a filibuster. The
filibuster strengthens the hand of the minority party in the Senate, giving it veto power
over legislation unless the majority party has 60 senators who support a bill.
Before the 1960s, senators really did hold the floor for hours by reading from the phone
book or reciting recipes. The late senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina holds the
record of 24 hours and 18 minutes of continuous talking. Today it is rare for a filibuster
to tie up Senate business, since a senator’s threat to filibuster a bill is usually enough
to take the bill off the legislative agenda. If the bill is actually filibustered, it goes on
a separate legislative track so that it does not bring the rest of the business of the Senate
to a halt. Alternatively, if supporters of the bill think they have enough votes, they can
invoke cloture to stop the filibuster and bring the bill to the floor for a vote. Frustrated over
repeated Republican filibusters on President Obama’s nominations to federal courts and
agencies, Senate Democrats in November 2013 removed the filibuster for all presidential
nominations, except those to the Supreme Court.^48 When Democrats filibustered Trump’s
nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in April 2017, the Senate changed the
rules again to allow Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed by a simple majority vote.^49
Because of the practice of unlimited debate in the Senate, much of its business is
conducted under unanimous consent agreements by which senators agree to adhere to
time limits on debate and amendments. However, because these are literally unanimous
agreements, a single senator can obstruct the business of the chamber by issuing a hold
on the bill or presidential nomination. This practice is often a bargaining tool to extract
concessions from the bill’s supporters, but sometimes, especially late in a session when
time gets tight, a hold can actually kill a bill by removing it from the active agenda.
One way that the Senate has circumvented the filibuster is through the
reconciliation process, which was established in 1974 to make the budget process
more efficient. If reconciliation legislation is related to budget matters and does not
increase the deficit outside the specified time period (and satisfies several other rules),
it may be passed with a simple majority vote in the House and Senate. The process
was initially used for budget items, but in recent years it has been used to pass othercloture
A procedure through which the
Senate can limit the amount of time
spent debating a bill (cutting off a
filibuster) if a supermajority of 60
senators agree.filibuster
A tactic used by senators to block a
bill by continuing to hold the floor
and speak—under the Senate rule
of unlimited debate—until the bill’s
supporters back down.hold
An objection to considering a
measure on the Senate floor.
reconciliation
Reconciliation allows for expedited
consideration of certain tax,
spending, and debt limit legislation.
The main advantage of the procedure
is that reconciliation legislation is not
subject to filibusters in the Senate,
and therefore may be passed with
simple majorities in the House and
Senate.Full_12_APT_64431_ch11_374-417.indd 411 16/11/18 10:30 AM