Tom Harkin: “I think our roots, again, go back to the Magna Carta, the great charter of King John, and to the parliamentary…”

“I think our roots, again, go back to the Magna Carta, the great charter of King John, and to the parliamentary procedures of Great Britain, of England. In 1604 the Parliament of Great Britain adopted what was then known as a motion for the previous question to bring to finality debate and to move to the merits of the proposition. That was in 1604. When our Constitution, and I pose this in a manner of a question to the Senator from West Virginia because this is another branch of the argument on the filibuster, sort of the branch that I had been arguing on is the basis that a filibuster ought to be used to slow down, temper legislation, alert the public, change minds, but should not be used as a measure whereby a small minority can totally keep the majority from voting on the merits of a bill. That is one branch. The other branch is the constitutional branch. The Senator from West Virginia said that we, at our peril, I believe, give up this right of unlimited debate.”