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GOP eyes 'nuclear' end to filibuster (Washington Times, 5/14/2003)

Now, 60 votes are needed to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. Republicans want to change that requirement to a simple majority....

If Mr. Frist and his fellow Republicans use the option, they can thank some of the very Democrats leading today's filibusters for paving the way 25 years ago.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and influential member of the committee, were among those who voted in 1975 to force changes to Senate rules with a majority vote.

At issue in 1975 was a growing consensus in the Senate that a 67-vote requirement for breaking filibusters was too onerous. Democrats reduced that requirement to 60 using the bare-majority nuclear option.

"We cannot allow a minority, a small group of members, to grab the Senate by the throat and hold it there," Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Montana Democrat, said at the time....

By February of 1975, frustration about the filibusters had grown so intense that a majority of senators, mostly Democrats, favored using the nuclear option. They pointed to Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution, which reads, "Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings."

So in a series of votes on complex parliamentary procedures in the winter and spring of 1975, the Senate established its right to set and alter the rules of the Senate with a simple majority vote, free from the threat of filibusters.

In the end, the requirement to break filibusters was lowered to 60 votes.

In addition to Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Byrd, Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Delaware Democrat, and Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat, also supported the change.

Is there anything Democrats criticize that they haven't been guilty of themselves? Posted by Paul Jaminet at May 14, 2003 1:08 PM