On the recordJanuary 25, 2011
The reason I am rising to talk about rules is because we are at the start of a new 2-year period for Congress. This is the appropriate time to be considering how well the Senate is working and whether we should amend the rules by which the Senate functions. The last major debate over many of the rules was in 1975. The reason there was a debate that particular year is that in 1973 and 1974, the Congress preceding, there were 44 filibusters, each eating up about a week of the Senate's time. There was a tremendous amount of frustration over the dysfunction of the Senate. So at the start of the Congress that began in 1975, there was an enormous amount of debate, debate that went on for weeks, with all kinds of motions. In the end, what this body, the Senate, decided to do was to change the rule that requires 67 Senators to terminate debate and have a final vote on a bill and replace it with the decision to have 60 Senators required to end debate and have a final vote on a bill. Now we are in a period immediately preceded by the 2009-2010 Congress. In 2009 and in 2010, we didn't have 44 filibusters, we had 135 filibusters. In other words, the Senate has been three times as dysfunctional as it was preceding the last major debate in this Chamber over rules.
