Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Majority Rules

From Ezra Klein, this graph shows the rising importance of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Quite troubling:

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3 comments:

  1. eisJanuary 31, 2010 at 11:08 AM

    Interesting that they first started emerging after the introduction of "sunshine" clauses that new-wave Democrats introduced post-Watergate (giving rise to the peacock Senator).

    It also looks like the biggest increase was presumably by the Democrats after the Republicans took control of Congress in '94?

    (I mean these mostly as statements of fact, and only slightly as partisan observations).

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  2. eisJanuary 31, 2010 at 11:09 AM

    (I should amend that to say the "high point" was post '94. It was already on an upward trajectory of course)

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  3. eisJanuary 31, 2010 at 1:18 PM

    Third thought...I would actually be curious to know what the rate of filibusters were in past period of divided political parties. The early 20th century (FDR on) was uniquely mono-political, given how far out in the wilderness conservatives were, so it's not really surprising that there were no difficulties for Democrats/Me-too Republicans to get cloture.

    I wonder if they were more in use in, for example, during the mid 1800s?

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