Trimming the Filibuster

It was one of the most intricate struggles in the history of the Senate's many battles over the filibuster. Finally, the urgencies of practical politics prevailed. The liberal Senate majority, determined not to be blocked by endless argument over legislation in a period of economic crisis, last week approved a compromise that achieved the first new limitation on debate since 1959. A filibuster will be choked off if 60 Senators (three-fifths of the total membership) vote to do so. That is seven less than the number (two-thirds) that had been required under the Senate's celebrated Rule 22, assuming the entire Senate was present and voting.

The change does not appear large and may not prove lasting. Yet the filibuster is such an emotionally charged Senate tradition, and the defense resisting any change was so craftily mounted, that the modification amounted to a significant victory for the more liberal factions of both parties. The fight was led by Democratic Senators Walter Mondale of Minnesota and James Pearson of Kansas, with an invaluable assist from Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, whose partisanship as presiding officer enraged his conservative critics.

Although he lost under the sheer weight of his opponents' voting power, Alabama's Democratic Senator James Allen, 62, played the most adroit role in the three weeks of parliamentary maneuvering. Tall and paunchy, his langorous drawl camouflaging his Mach 4 mind, Allen used every trick, rule, ruse and gambit in the book to bedazzle his foes. At one point it seemed as if Allen had the Senate voting on the following snarled procedure: a motion to table a motion to reconsider a vote to table an appeal of a ruling that a point of order was not in order against a motion to table another point of order against a motion to bring to a vote the motion to call up the resolution that would institute the rules change.

Dilatory Tactic. Such tactics kept the issue in doubt for days; but the liberals patiently persisted. They got a boost from Rockefeller's ruling that each new Senate draws up its own rules and that until Rule 22 was readopted, only a simple majority was required to change past practices. Rockefeller was even more helpful when he deliberately refused to recognize Allen on three successive occasions when Allen sought futilely to make "a parliamentary inquiry." Although conservative Senators angrily assailed Rockefeller for this high-handed tactic, Rocky was technically right. The Senate rules specifically permit the presiding officer to ignore a parliamentary inquiry when he believes it is being used as a dilatory tactic. Allen's whole aim was to stall; he outsmarted himself by saying precisely why he sought recognition. Nor was Rockefeller's ruling that the Senate is a noncontinuing body all that extraordinary. Vice Presidents Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon had taken the same stand in previous filibuster fights.

Because Rockefeller's ruling was upheld by a majority of the Senate, however, it prevented Allen from blocking preliminary votes on the rules change and permitted Senate sentiment for modification to be registered. Clearly worried about public reaction to a tediously quarrelsome Congress as President Ford demands movement on economic and energy programs, Democratic Leaders Mike Mansfield and Robert Byrd joined Republican Whip Robert Griffin in seeking a middle ground.

The result was a proposal to permit debate to be cut off on any motion when three-fifths of the entire Senate membership agrees. Mondale's original motion would have allowed three-fifths of those present and voting to invoke cloture. Given the frequent absenteeism in the Senate, the difference was significant. If 90 Senators voted under Mondale's rule, for example, 54 Senators could shut off debate.

Willful Men. The compromise was supported by some previous opponents of any dilution of the filibuster, notably Democrat Russell Long. Such conservative Republicans as Roman Hruska and Robert Dole also turned around. They apparently felt that if they refused to compromise, the liberals might muster enough votes to gain a complete victory. On the first critical vote testing support of the compromise, it prevailed, 73 to 21. The holdouts included Republicans William Brock, Howard Baker, Barry Goldwater, Strom Thurmond and John Tower, as well as Democrats John Stennis and Herman Talmadge. The final vote to approve the compromise was 56-27.

The new rule will make it easier for the Senate to vote on such issues as national health insurance and extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as resolve impasses over tax and energy proposals. Although the dispute could arise again in 1977, the precedent toward easier cloture has now been set. Sentiment seems to be running against the defenders of the filibuster, including the late Walter Lippmann who once praised it as "a precious usage, invaluable to the preservation of freedom." On the ascendancy is the judgment expressed by Woodrow Wilson, who as President argued that the filibuster allowed "a little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own," to make the Senate "the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action."

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