It's a filibuster world. Senators just live in it.

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( Get Jonathan Bernstein’s newsletter every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe]( I’m a moderate on the question of what should happen to the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. I’d like to see some sort of compromise that keeps it around, although I’ve given up hope of that happening. I don’t believe that it’s inherently undemocratic for some things to fail despite having a simple majority of votes in that chamber. On the subject of defining filibusters, however, I’m not a moderate at all. And so when I see people [claim]( that there haven’t been any filibusters so far this year, I get cranky (and I’m only linking to one, but I’ve seen several such claims over the last month). Because it couldn’t be farther from the truth, which is that everything is being filibustered in the Senate. Gregory Koger, the political scientist who wrote the book on [filibustering](, notes that in the modern Senate, “A typical ‘filibuster’ occurs when a senator refuses to agree to a time to hold a vote on a measure and, implicitly, threatens to drag out the debate indefinitely.” This kind of filibuster is invisible, especially when it’s successful. Because floor time is valuable, the majority won’t try to begin debate on most bills unless its leaders either know that no objections will be made to rapid consideration up through the final vote — or, more typically, when the majority has the votes to defeat the filibuster. Since that takes 60 votes for most bills and amendments, those measures which have narrow majorities never get to the full Senate. They don’t get a cloture vote. They don’t get extended speeches. They just die, unless the majority chooses to force a vote. But it’s not just bills with narrow majorities that have been filibustered. Bipartisan bills that have the support of 70 or 80 or 90 senators are facing filibusters, too; it’s just that these filibusters are being defeated. In those cases, there’s also no real need to have a cloture vote as long as everyone knows that 60 senators support moving ahead. There might be a cloture vote anyway, perhaps because the majority wants to demonstrate that the votes are there, or perhaps because those who oppose the bill force it (by refusing to agree to a time for a vote and therefore implicitly threatening extended debate). This kind of filibuster didn’t exist 75 years ago, and was still rare 50 years ago, but from 1993 on it applied to every major bill, and since 2009 it has applied to absolutely everything. Indeed, it’s been so thoroughly institutionalized that actual Senate practice just assumes that everything is filibustered — the most obvious example being the once unheard of but now standard agreement that amendments to bills must reach a 60-vote threshold to be adopted. Technically, nominations are also still being filibustered, although since 2013 they only need a simple majority rather than 60 votes to defeat the filibuster. Yes, some nominations have been approved during this session of Congress without a cloture vote, and there are a handful of cases where the nomination was approved through either a voice vote or by unanimous consent. Even those, however, properly should be counted as having overcome filibusters. Again, the key once universal filibusters become the norm is that the majority needs the votes for cloture, not whether a cloture vote is actually taken or whether the minority maximizes whatever delay it can accomplish. Though the filibuster has become institutionalized, it’s also reversible. Republicans could pick a bill and simply say that while some of them support it and some oppose it, none of them will delay a vote on it. They could reserve the filibuster, if they wanted to, for only the handful of bills they most strongly oppose. They won’t, just as Democrats didn’t in 2017-2018 and Republicans didn’t in 2009-2010. At any rate, the universal filibuster — the 60-vote Senate — is the overwhelming fact of legislative process in that chamber right now. So, no, I don’t think “[the filibuster has been on hiatus](” so far this year, as a an article in Politico put it. A likely Republican filibuster this week to block the formation of a congressional commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol would not be the first of this Congress. The first filibuster has come and gone. So has the 10th. And the 100th. 1. Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson on [public opinion]( a year after the death of George Floyd. 2. Molly E. Reynolds, Kennedy Teel and Jackson Gode on [proxy voting in the House of Representatives](. 3. Yuval Weber at the Monkey Cage on [the forced landing of a Ryanair flight by Belarus to arrest an opposition journalist](. 4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Michael R. Strain on [productivity after the pandemic](. 5. And John Harwood on [the threat to U.S. democracy]( posed by the Republican Party. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](. Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. Paid Post The power of PayPal online, now in person. Give your small business an easy way to accept touch-free, in-person payments. 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