So if a majority of US Senators agree on something they should be able to pass a
bill right? Well luckily for people who like political gridlock
they can't. Why? Because of the filibuster. But before we talk about the filibuster
first when you talk about what the US Senate does. Their main job is to debate
and vote on changes, which are generally but not always
improvements, to government policy. But in the extremely partisan climate of
contemporary US politics, the filibuster makes this job extremely difficult. Let
me explain. Basically the filibuster is a process to
delay or block the passage of a bill by standing up and speaking on the Senate
floor for as long as you can without sitting down or leaving the Senate. And
this can theoretically go on forever unless three-fifths of the Senators vote
to stop the filibuster through a process known as cloture. So if you're just one
guy like say Rand Paul, who in 2013 staged a filibuster to protest the use of
drone strikes against American citizens, you can only do a filibuster for like 13
hours because you have to, you know, sleep and stuff. But if you and 40 of your
Senate buddies wanted to stage a filibuster, you can technically do it
forever just by taking turns talking. And the threat of this kind of filibuster is
why ruling parties with less than a three-fifths majority of the vote can't
pass any legislation that the other party doesn't like. And the funny thing
about the Senate filibuster is that it was kind of created by accident. In fact
the founding fathers of America were completely opposed to anything that
would require more than a 51% majority to pass bills. But in 1806 Vice President
Aaron Burr removed the only mechanism the Senate had for forcibly ending debate on a
bill. Thereby opening the door for the infinite filibuster. As a side note since
these filibusters can last a long time, the longest being Strom Thurmond 24-hour
asshat filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, you can easily run out of
things to talk about that are directly related to the bill you're filibustering.
And this has led to things like Senators discussing family recipes, reading green
eggs and ham, and even impersonating Darth Vader. Now this being government,
there are a couple of loopholes to the filibuster. First both Democrats and
Republicans have made changes in recent years to eliminate the use of the filibuster
on judicial and executive nominees. And basically this was done so that the Senate
could appoint, you know, judges and stuff. The second loophole is reconciliation,
which is a process Senators can use to vote on budgetary issues. But since like
every bill no matter what it's about includes
government funding or tax breaks, it can be labeled as a budgetary issue and
voted on using this process. And today this makes it pretty much the only way
legislation is passed, or at least voted on, in the Senate. So in general the
filibuster... sucks. It's just one more thing that makes it extremely difficult
for the Senate to do pretty much anything. Getting rid of it wouldn't fix
the Senate overnight, but with the current state of things, you know,
anything helps. But can the Senate get rid of the filibuster? Yes it can! It has
the power to do so! But since getting rid of the filibuster
would require a two-thirds majority vote, and no single party has held a
two-thirds majority votes for more than 50 years in the Senate, and there's no
way that a Senator in the minority would cross party lines to vote to get
rid of the filibuster, we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future. Sorry if I
got your hopes up... Hey I'm Nick thanks for watching the very first episode of
Politics That Doesn't Suck. If you liked it please like and subscribe or leave a
comment down below to let me know what you think. I'll see you next time!
For more infomation >> BREAKING: Obama Under PRESSURE After Senator Drops "DEEP STATE" Bombshell… IT'S HAPPENING - Duration: 2:31. 
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