MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Im Michele Norris.
Today, on the Senate's first day back, Democrats proposed changes to the filibuster. The effort was led by Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico. When we spoke to him earlier this week, he said the intention was to move away from the modern use of the filibuster where, as he said, you file a filibuster and you go home.
Senator TOM UDALL (Democrat, New Mexico): In the simplest terms, it's bringing a filibuster back to "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." You stand up and you have to speak on the issue you really care about.
Ron Elving is the senior editor at NPR's Washington desk, and he joins us now to talk about this. Ron, what has got the Democrats, or at least some Democrats, so frustrated that they want to change the way filibusters are used?
RON ELVING: Michele, it's the failure of the majority to feel as though they can really run the Senate. When they had 60 votes for a period of time in 2009, 2010, they were able to pass that big health care overhaul that was passed last year. But they weren't able to it together in the terms they wanted to. They didnt really feel like they were running the show.
But even beyond that kind of big legislation, they feel like they can't bring up judge confirmations. They can't bring up presidential appointee confirmations because individual senators in the minority can say they're going to potentially exercise their right for extended debate, which is a kind of implied threat to filibuster, and that in effect puts a hold on a bill, sometimes without an identifying the senator who's putting the hold on, what they call secret holds.
And the Senate majority leader, whether he's a Democrat or a Republican -whoever is in the majority - can't really run the show because he's constantly dealing with lots individual operators.
NORRIS: Democrats are in the majority right now. How much support for this among the Democrats?
ELVING: It's not entirely clear and thats part of the reason that they're in negotiation. They're negotiating among the Democrats about which changes they really want to push for. Do they want to attack the secret hold, is that the biggest thing? Do they want to make it impossible to filibuster on the motion that brings a bill to the floor in the first place? Thats a big issue.
Is it possible to stop the Senate from even taking up a bill with a filibuster? Or must the filibuster take place after a debate has begun, the kind of picture that most people have of long speeches, like in the Civil Rights era?
NORRIS: So those who oppose what Udall and the Democrats are trying to do, what is the argument that they make?
ELVING: That if you start to change the rules about how filibusters are used, eventually you're weakening the essential principle of it, which is that it forces the majority to negotiate with the minority and produce consensus legislation thats ultimately more powerful and ultimately more popular.
NORRIS: We've been talking about Senate majority. But as we know and as we've seen in the House that majorities can shift. And Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell writes today in The Washington Post about this issue.
He says, quote, "Do Democrats really want to create a situation where two or four or six years from now they're suddenly powerless to prevent Republicans from overturning legislation they themselves worked so hard to enact?"
Ron, Democrats say the changes are aimed at making the filibuster more transparent and bipartisan. So would these changes actually create problems for the minority party?
ELVING: They would have the same effect on whichever party was in the minority and certainly that gives some Democrats pause, particularly if they want to operate in the same way that some of the Republicans most recently have been operating. And back in the time when the Democrats were in the minority and the Republicans were last in the majority, they did hold up a lot of judgeships during the George W. Bush period. And they did use a lot of these same tactics.
There was a time when the filibuster itself was a kind of nuclear weapon. You only used it once in a great while. In the '40s and in the '50s, there were maybe, oh, singe digit cloture motions to cutoff debate. In a given Congress two years long, single digits, fewer than 10.
Then that started to shoot up. In the '80s, kind of bounced around for a while. And in the last 10 years, its shot way up into the 100 and 100-plus.
This has become not a nuclear weapon that's only used in the most dire circumstances for the biggest issues but a kind of sidearm that every senator wears, walking into the Senate like a cowboy walking into the saloon.
NORRIS: Ron, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: That's Ron Elving. He's NPRs senior Washington editor.