March 7,1975 Senate Votes Easier Cutoff Of Filibuster; Democrats change filibuster with 56 votes

Washington Post Archive ^ | March 8, 1975 | Spencer Rich

[TheEaglehasLanded]

The Senate approved a historic change in the filibuster rule last night after seven weeks of angry debate. It voted 56 to 27 to reduce the number of senators needed to cut off a filibuster from two-thirds of those present and voting to a permanent "constitutional" threefifths (60 senators).

[TheEaglehasLanded]

Can someone get this to Rush and Hannity. This is a clip off of the archives of the Washington Post, if anyone wants to buy the whole article for $3.95 have at it.

To institute a rule change it was supposed to take 67 votes at the time which was the filibuster rule. But they Democrats who were a 60 vote plus majority at the time. Also, 17 Senators didn't vote at all on such an important issue.

Can anyone get a roll call vote looked up and see who opposed, I'm sure Goldwater, Helms, and Allen from Alabama opposed. I'm sure Byrd, Kennedy, Biden, Inoway, and Leahy voted yes. Don't know who the 17 Senators who took a dive that allowed 2/3 approval.

[TheEaglehasLanded]

Senate Votes Easier Cutoff Of Filibuster; Senate Passes Compromise Easing Cutoff of Filibusters
By Spencer Rich, Washington Post Staff Writer. The Washington Post (1974-Current file). Washington, D.C.: Mar 8, 1975. pg. A1, 2 pgs

Document types: front_page
Section: GENERAL
ISSN/ISBN: 01908286
Text Word Count 1338
Document URL:

[Enterprise]

The RATS will spin this as justifying their demand that even a vote for a Federal Judicial Nomination should require 60 votes to confirm. Nevertheless, it was a good find to show how they will change the rules anytime they are inconvenienced.

[rlmorel]

BTTT

[Sun]

Good find.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper 76 that the Senate's role is to refuse nominations only for ``special and strong reasons'' having to do with ``unfit characters.''

Please note the last two words "UNFIT CHARACTERS."

[TeleStraightShooter]

To point out the obvious, 56/ 83 (56+27} = 67.5%

Apparently the abstainers were motivated from voting.

[TheEaglehasLanded]

But the rule was you needed 67 votes to change the rules of the senate, not 2/3 of those who bother to vote as long as we have more than 50 vote in favor.

[hoosiermama]

Thought you might want to read and share this.....

[Jim Robinson]

Google turned up this tid bit:


A Change in the Cloture Rule

The Democratic Party scored significant gains in the congressional elections of 1974. The large numbers of new Democrats elected to the Senate and the House of Representatives were in a reformist mood, and one of the things they wanted to reform was Congress itself.

In 1975 in the Senate, the number of votes required to cloture a filibuster was reduced from 2/3 to 3/5, from 67 votes to 60 votes if all senators were present and voting. It was believed that this lowered number of votes required for cloture would make it more difficult to sustain a filibuster in future debates, and the end result would be the Senate would have an "easier time" enacting civil rights bills.

This new cloture rule did not reduce the use of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, however. In fact, if anything, it appeared to make the filibuster a more acceptable legislative weapon, even for non-southerners. Groups of senators began to filibuster non-civil rights bills, thus requiring the Senate leadership to produce a 3/5 vote or give up on the particular bill in question. Senators found filibusters to be a particularly effective way to kill bills they opposed late in the legislative session when there was little time remaining and the leadership was anxious to enact more important bills prior to adjournment.


http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~bloevy/CivilRightsHistoryTwo/

[steenkeenbadges]

Michael Medved today: "Dingey Harry was bloviating today about Jefferson and Washington chatting over coffee. Unbelievable silly story, but the real joke is that COFFEE WASN'T SERVED IN THE CONTINENTAL US until a hundred years later." (..rough paraphrase).

[TeleStraightShooter]

Thanks for the clarification.

This fact fits in nicely with the historical filibuster time line.

I have heard of a Senator recently mention this, so you know they will.

[cookcounty]

Huge consequences.

[Verginius Rufus]

I don't know if Jefferson and Washington ever chatted over coffee, but coffee-drinking had become popular in Europe well before their time: Charles Dickens talks about Puritans in 17th-century England having their own coffee-houses, and coffee-drinking caught on in Vienna after the Turkish siege of 1683 (supposedly the Viennese found the coffee beans left behind by the Turks). I think coffee was one of the alternatives Americans turned to when they decided to boycott tea (because of the British tax on tea).

[cookcounty]

That means all that was needed was a majority of the Whole!

Funny how Sheets, the Dean of the Senate (as opposed to the lunatic Dean of Vermont), conveniently forgot this!!!

(I'm sure he was going to bring it up, but Frist hasn't allowed him enough time).

[snuffy smiff]

I would really like to know who those 17 were and do any remain there now.
Now why do I have a funny feeling that the kook mccain will be on that list?

[TeleStraightShooter]

On 2nd thought, IIRC the Chair made a ruling similar to the "Byrd option" that indeed only 83 truly constituted "all senators were present and voting."

[cookcounty]

"Dingey Harry was bloviating today about Jefferson and Washington chatting over coffee."

Some of these nominees have been sitting in the "cooling saucer?" for 4 years!!

Senator Reid, stop your contradictory posturing. You're not interested in kooling these nominations, you're interested in killing these nominations. How about a little honesty?

[cookcounty]

No, it was obviously a majority of the Whole Senate that was obviously necessary-----51 votes.. This needs to get out.

[Dolphy]

I am looking for the actual vote and so far found a few of the usual suspects on the wrong side:

In 1975 the Senators changed the filibuster requirement from 67 votes to 60, after concluding that it only takes a simple majority of Senators to change the rules governing their proceedings. As Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) said at the time: "We cannot allow a minority" of the senators "to grab the Senate by the throat and hold it there." Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Byrd, and Biden, all agreed. Nearly a decade ago, Lloyd Cutler, the former White House Counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton, concluded that the Senate Rule requiring a super-majority vote to change the rule is "plainly unconstitutional."

Link

[TeleStraightShooter]

it was obviously a majority of the Whole Senate that was obviously necessary-----51 votes

This site concurs.
"In 1975, Walter Mondale (Democrat-Minnesota) and James Pearson (Republican-Kansas) led the fight for a three-fifth's cloture rule using the "Constitutional option," meaning that they believed that debate over the Mondale-Pearson proposal could be brought to an end by a simple majority vote. Other Senators believed that debate over this cloture rule proposal could only be brought to an end by satisfying the cloture rule in effect from previous Senates: by winning the support of two-thirds of the Senate.

Senator Javits moved to "table" [defeat] Senator Mike Mansfield's point of order against the Mondale-Pearson cloture proposal because it was "self-executing" by demanding an immediate vote without satisfying the two-thirds cloture rule. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, acting as presiding officer of the Senate, issued a ruling that if a majority of the Senate voted for Senator Javits's "tabling motion," the Senate could proceed immediately to a vote on the Mondale-Pearson cloture rule proposal. The Senate upheld the Mondale-Pearson "Constitutional option" on three separate occasions during the period from February 1975 through March 1975. After more parliamentary maneuvering, the Senate enacted the three-fifths cloture rule by a vote of 56 to 27 on March 7, 1975."