nani coletti to be deputy director. watch full coverage on c-span now, our new video app . >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government funded by these television companies and more including mediacom. >> the world changed in an instant but mediacom was ready. internet traffic soaredand we never slowed down . schools and businesses went virtual and we powered a new reality because at media, we're built to keep you ahead . >> mediacom support c-span along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. next, cq roll call hosts a discussion on the senate filibuster . cq roll call colonist and host of the equal time podcast moderates the talk with senior writer and molly reynolds from the brookings institute. this runs an hour.

>> i've never liked it now like to invite our panel to introduce themselves . joining us our neil slezinski and molly redding. neil and molly, would you take a fewminutes to introduce yourself . >> thank you for having me. my name is molly reynolds, senior follow mcgovern studies program at the brookings institution where i study congressional rules and procedures on the filibuster and their effect on domestic policy. >> and i'm neil brezinski, chief correspondent for cq and rollcall covering the white house and congress. before switching primarily to the white house, i spent more than a decade covering this

on a daily basis for rollcall . and orspend a lot of my time covering all of the changes to the legislative procedures and efforts to change the filibuster rules over the last more than a decade. >> we've got a great panel of experts so let's get started. we heard a lot about filibuster lately after not hearing about it a lot. so why exactly do dofilibuster rules matter and why are they in place today? can you start us off with a bit of background on the filibuster and where it started and why itmatters and still matters ? >> absolutely. at the highest level the filibuster allows the senate to use any nynumber of tactics to prevent that measure or matter from coming to a vote. the ability of senators to do this comes from the fact that the senate's rules generally,

there are some exceptions but generally the senate's rules don't put any restrictions on how long the senate can debate a particular subject. there's also generally nothing in the senate rules that allow a simple majority of senators not to debate something. so one way to filibuster a measure is for an individual center to go to the floor, get recognized and talk and keep talking. we don't usually see that anymore. it's quite rare. more often what we see in contemporary filibusters is one or more senators threatening to drag out debate and typically if they because they opposed the bill . this forces their colleagues to file what we call cloture motions which are available in the senate to take a vote on something but that requires 60 votes to pass. when we talk about the

filibuster creating a 60 vote requirement in the senate this is generally what we mean. a on the history, the wfilibuster was made possible in the senate by a little bit of an accident in the judiciary. in the early 19th century the senate removed its rulebook of motion that eventually the house when determining was a way to cooperate with a majority. it's worth noting that's not how the motion was intended to use at the time in the intervening decades the house to take it that way but at that point the senate didn't have any more so in kind of the run-up to the civil war, we got to this point where we had senators using the absence of any motion to cut off debate with a simple majority. throughout the 19th century senate majorities often tried to end a filibuster and obstruction and were met with more obstruction. in 1917 we had the adoption

of the cloture rule to cut off states with a super majority and then fax dominated the 20th and 21st century senate with some changes to exactly how many votes are needed to invoke cloture, what the absolute threshold is. that brings us to today. where most things in the senate do require 60 votes to support a cloture motion and end debate and move to a vote on final passage. there are certain exceptions some of them are in the s headlines so we have a budget reconciliation process, we have nomination which thanks to changes to the senate's procedures both nlin 2013 and 2017 now only require a simple majority to move to a confirmation vote but for many important things in the legislative process we do still have this effective

people threshold. >> thank you molly and i know niels and covering all this you now are covering a lot of what is known as partisan gridlock and there's been a lot of pushback on trying to find ways to get some things done by reforming the filibuster. so can you talk about some of the things that have been proposed to combat this partisan gridlock. for example there are carveouts for certain issues eand restoring the talking filibuster that molly talk about. can you talk about what's going on now?s >> so to begin with, the budget reconciliation process which molly was talking about previously has become one of the primary venue by which the majority party seeks to an act its major fiscal and

economic policy legislation every congress now.ca we saw during the time when donald trump was the president in and the republicans controlled both the house and senate that there was an overhaul of tax code that was pushed through. the trunk tax cuts so to speak that were pushed through using the reconciliation process in order to get around a filibuster in the senate. we saw obviously the democratic majority under president biden looking and using the reconciliation process for a covid relief package and this effort still underway on what they're calling build backbetter . the sort of broadly broad legislative package on everything from child tax

credit to an assortment of social and economic policy measures that has been stalled out because there is opposition or skepticism from particularly center cinema and mansion in the democratic caucus and when you have a 50-50 senate you need every single democratic vote. that's been around for a while but has been sort of basically use every single congress now. the other thing that is always available in this realm particularly when there's a change in administration and i will i'm reluctant to be the first one to bring it up because molly is the other panelists but the congressional review act can be used to nullify regulations that are put into effect at the end of a presidential term,

effectively. it can be used at other times but as a practical matter use when there's a switching party whcontrol but to your point, mary about what's going on now. there was an effort recently to try and sort of revive the talking filibuster and to do it in order to advance voting rights legislation. the john lewis voting rights act and a package of election law measures. the effort that schumer, senator schumer attempted would have sort of used the tool available under senate rule 19 which says that you're only allowed if you're a senator only allowed two speeches on any particular topic on a given legislative day. a legislative day can go on indefinitely. you could be on the same

legislative day from now until halloween if senator schumer wanted to be. so it's not necessarily a day , but they tried to sort of truncate that process in order to make it so that you could get to a final vote on the voting rights measure, but that didn't get the support of the sum of all that senators in the democratic caucus either so right now there's nothing for although certainly there will be more creative attempts in the coming months, i'm sure's thank you. what are some of the challenges to filibuster reform and as niels have given us examples of things that haven't been. >> so example so successful at breaking thelogjam . >> the biggest challenge is

getting the support of a sufficient number of senators to achieve that reform and when we look back over the course of history ofchanges to the filibuster , generally we have seen successful reforms when you have a determined majority party that has a goal that they want to achieve. they are being met with consistent and strong opposition to that goal from the minority party. and then eventually we have a majority comes together in pursuit of n a particular goal willing to change the way the senate works. so i think as we look for an example of the 2013 and 2017 changes to the procedures for ending debate on nominations first in 2013 to nominations

to the lower courts and executive branch appointments and then in 2017 for nominations to the supreme court and in both those cases, democrats and republicans have an objective they were trying to meet. that they were faced with strong opposition on the other party but there were enough centers, a majority cared enough about getting back then done that they were willing to change the way the senate worked. and i think to the recent episode that niels is deciding that it's simply not what was true last week. there were not 50 democratic senators who were willing to vote for this change to the senate's rules in order to a particular legislative goal despite the fact that as publicly reported they are supportive of the underlying policy matter, they're not willing to make this change

in the way that the senate needed. as we look towards the future and make asked questions about filibuster reform whether efit's questions about abolition of the filibuster or niels highlighted a couple of possible reforms, there are other ones that folks have discussed in the past such as instead of requiring the 3/5 of the senate's membership to be voting in favor of cloture to end debate you might make it 3/5 of the senators present and voting . any number of those changes th that could be under ch consideration so to me the real question is how you get to a majority, especially in the current environment when the democrats have the slimmestof majorities . a 50-50 senate was a tie-breaking vote available so in the future, a slightly larger senate majority of either party under unified party control which is most

likely to seesignificant changes to the filibuster . a significantly larger majority might be more successful . >> now molly, is this the time to introduce another piece of the procedure and policy which is reconciliation? because that has come upas well. could you talk about that ? >> niels mentioned this earlier and the reconciliation process is in the news and has been in the news or the better part of the year budget reconciliation is an optional component of the overall congressional t budget process. it's created as niels suggested several decades ago the congressional budget act of 1974 and it allows for certain types of legislation, namely legislation that addresses the tax code, addresses types of federal spending and addresses the

deficit. that kind of legislation can move through the process. how that works is even the congressional budget act can only be debated for acertain number of hours . once that time has elapsed, rather than needing to file cloture and get 60 to call the date and move the final passage basically and so you don't have to overcome that 60 vote threshold on a cloture motion to suspend debate. as niels indicated over the course of 80s, 90s, 2020 10 till now into the 2020s we see an evolution of the reconciliation process where it really has been used more and more extensively in re importantly and used as the principal way for majority parties especially under unified party control to achieve their party's major policy objectives.

it has orconsistently been used going back to the 80s for policies that would benefit the senate majority party and it's really only more recently been seen as one neat trick if you will. the one way that majority parties might try and accomplish as much of their agenda o. sometimes this works asneil mentioned . the tax bill, also the 2021 bill. sometimes it's done in ba addition to the ongoing g debate over build back better and whether that or some version of that will ofbe successfully adopted via the reconciliation process. you also look at the 2017 failed attempt to use reconciliation i republicans to repeal the affordable care act and in that situation , they fail to achieve a major partisan policy goal not because of the filibuster but because they simply did not

have agreement among enough republican senators to vote for a piece of legislation even in the absence of the filibuster so as we talk about the back better in the future possible uses of the reconciliation process it is important to remember that while it is a significant way that majority parties especially under unified government can get around the filibuster is not magic. the rules?. you can't force agreements whereagreement doesn't exist . >> isn't always going to be a bit of a disconnect and how these carveouts and the reconciliation process is used? because there is a divide between issues each party prioritizes. we seen the tax and budget bills versus voting rights reform and social safety net go back better issues but that's always going to be a problem, isn't it ? >> one of the pieces of the

potential build back better reconciliation puzzle that sort of had to be left by the wayside despite the fact that activists and supporters and a lot of even democratic senators would have liked is the example of immigration because in that case, the chair of the senate judiciary committee dick durbin was also the majority with right now, senator from illinois would have been more than happy to have one of his long-standing legislative priorities, the dream act or other immigration related measures put into the reconciliation package, but it was determined by the senate parliamentarian the advice of the senate parliamentarian would be such

measures were not primarily related to the budget. they would be sort of extraneous to the budget reconciliation bill and this is where we inevitably get into the limitation of the budget reconciliation process often referred to as the bird rule named for the late senator robert c byrd of west virginia who was the longtime democratic leader and chairman of theappropriations committee . the reality is that if something is not sufficiently budget focused, it's not allowed to be in a reconciliation bill which sort of gets to the point of the problem here for the democrats which is the republicans are often interested in fiscal policy or in some sort of economic matter while the democrats may be interested in whether

it's voting rights for whether it's immigration, something that doesn't fit as neatly into the box of affecting the deficit in sort of as straightforwarda way as a tax cut may . so this is the challenge for the democrats and always the question will be not just whether or not to change the filibuster rule but whether you get to a point. they don't have it right now where you ever see a scenario where the democrats in the senate get a large enough majority in the senate even if it is short of 60 to be able to overrule the parliamentarians. basically, the parliamentarians it's always tricky.

the parliamentarian gets advice and is the presiding officer twho is a member of the senate or the vice president is the one who is actually making the rulings, but they are very particular about adhering to the parliamentarian guidance and with them particularly when it comes to reconciliation because it is as molly mentioned in statute. because there's a law underlying what the process is supposed to be, senators tend to be particularly skittish about changing the rules even if as the constitution wouldtell us each chamber may determine the rules of its proceedings . >> one thing i would add to what niels said about one of the limitations of the process is that in addition to their being s,constraints imposed by the ddbird rule that leaves some things outside of the bounds ofreconciliation ,

it imposes restrictions on the long-term budgetary consequences of policy change adopted through the reconciliation process and this often requires folks who are drafting a reconciliation bill to make the policies that they are achieving through the bill temporary. sometimes for, sometimes they lack the entire window of the bill, sometimes they last for only part of that period. that itself can also introduce some uncertainty into the policy landscape and when we think about reconciliation becoming more and more important as a way to achieve legislative change , we use reconciliation more to accomplish change and that brings with it a concordant increase in policy uncertainty. i think the current experience with the expansion of the child tax credit is a great example of this.

the child tax credit was expanded as part of the american rescue plan adopted in early 2021. part of that expansion involved converting it from a ne benefit one would receive at tax time into a monthly payment. that is based on the timing of when the bill was passed and also the timing of what the democrats could get support for expired. at the end of 2021 so now we have this question of is their political support for extending that if you will? and again i think this is just a specific example of a general challenge that reconciliation, that using reconciliation to make major legislative change introduces that can also make kind of the durability in the future provisions less certain. >> yes, uncertainty.

let's look ahead of it. the filibuster for now is still around as we've seen and reconciliation is around as its loophole, sort of. what do these rules mean for the issues in front of congress and that our audience might be wondering about getting through four their ownorganizations ? maybe each of you can weighin on that . >> i'll start with the obvious new developments of this week that is sort of going to throw a bit of a wrench into the senate schedule in the coming months because justice briars announced retirement is going to once again lead to the senate having front and center a supreme court confirmation process and we look at the calendar and we see that coming up in the

middle of february, february 18 is the current expiration of a continuing resolution. so one of the things that congress is going to have to g deal with is funding the government when you have funding the government and you have been a likely supreme court confirmation process remains to be seen how much of a battle that will be. and certainly as molly was indicating earlier, the republicans the last time they had the control of the senate and white house enchanged the precedent so that there is only a simple majority required in order to limit debate and to confirm supreme court justices so the democrats could at least in theory do it without the republicans, although this is

a little bit more complicated because there is a typo in the senate waand as a result of their being a tie in the senate there is a tie in the composition of the judiciary committee. it's 11 members from the democratic caucus and 11 members from the republican conference. so there are, you could go far down into the weeds and find ways that the republicans could attempt to trick this up and things that senator schumer and the democrats will need to do to sort of at senator durbin sharing the judiciary would need to do to get around some of these potential obstacles, but all told what that means is the senate is going to be spending a lot of it's time tothat maybe we thought they were going to be spending trying to revive the voting vorights measure or trying to

deal with the build back better proposal or another round of reconciliation or dare i say another budget resolution so they can set up er another round of reconciliation. the timing is such that want to move quickly on the supreme court nomination once it's received but it will consume a lot of the oxygen as we head towards the spring . >> would you like to weigh in on that? >> i underline an important point neil is making in laying out the agenda of significant size or the senate which is we talk a lot about the constraints on the senate placed by the filibuster. the constraints placed by the calendar are often as significant, even in situations as niels indicated where a simple majority is sufficient to end debate

whether that's on nomination or on reconciliation bills. there is only so much time in the day l. there are only so many weeks in the year. we are in an election year so we know in an election year the senate and house feel particularly constrained in the times that they have. so i do think to niels's observation. i don't want to say it's entirely surprising from justice breyer because he bid under a fair amount of pressure from advocates on the democratic side to announce his retirement while there is a democratic president. there is a lot that sits before the senate so i think for folks who are thinking about their policy

priorities, watching what comes of the reconciliation negotiationsaround build back better . does that form of legislation get resurrected and what is part of that is one element and neil also mentioned the expiration of the continuing resolution infebruary . whether that begets another continuing resolution or some amount of time. whether begets a full on the omnibus appropriations bill. in the current congressional and environment omnibus appropriations bills carry not only the discretionary federal budget but also often other vehicles, other train cars if you will that get attached on to them so watching for folds to pay attention to that. that obviously because it is a piece of regular legislation can be considered under the regular order would need to overcome the filibuster in the senate but

as we've seen in recentyears , while that coalitions can sometimes look a little bit interesting we do generally see the two parties and the two chambers be able to build some sort of coalition to get in on the best on. those are two big pieces of legislation that i would be keeping my on if i was with someone trying to achieve a particular policy priority this year before i move on i want to remind the audience if you have any questions please feel free to put them in the q and a and we willtry to get to them with enough time at the end of the chat . molly, you run up the midterms and let's talk about these midterms. they're coming up very quickly, fast approaching so i like election day 2022 impact the filibuster and how

might the current filibuster rules impact election day? it could be an issue. >> i can start and then niels can pick up the answer. i'll see in the second part of the question how might the filibuster affect the election n. one thing we know from, we don't have a ton of public opinion data on how voters feel about the filibuster but what we have tells us generally if you are a democrat, and the democrats are in the majority are not a fan of the filibuster but if you're a democrat where democrats are in the minority you tend to take issue and are supportive of the filibuster. we generally see that voters have any attitude towards the filibuster itself they generally align with whether or not their party holds the majority in the senate or not . if there is kind of any consequence for the of the filibuster for the midterm, i

think it would be around this question of is the current democratic majority to wrap up any additional legislative accomplishments even with the filibuster in place whether that's through the reconciliation process or achieving things on a bipartisan basis. we did in 2021 c but bipartisan infrastructure bill passed on a bipartisan basis so i think that could have an effect on the midterms. in the sense that legislative achievements do have consequences. on the other side of what could be election mean for filibuster reform, i think if as is possible, likely,

expected, depends who you ask , republicans assume the majority in the house after the midterms, many decades of american history tell us the party tends to lose seats in the midterm that happens that take a lot of the wind out of the filibuster reform sales because if the house is controlled by republicans even if the senate is still controlled by democrats and we have a democratic president in the white house you don't get any bang for your buck by eliminating the filibuster for any kind of legislation because you're not going to see it move through a republican-controlled house anyway and as we talked about , the biggest thing the senate has considered responsibility for is nomination. we've already changed the ib precedents for ending debate on nominations to those

positions. >> if you look back at what happened during the from administration, we saw that exact scenario play out in reverse because you have the first two years of the from administration with republican control and they were advancing legislative priority but when speaker pelosi became the speaker of the house again there was not a whole lot of legislating to be done other than keeping the government, trying to keep the government and the like. so senator mcconnell as the majority leader in the senate spends most of the senate's time and dedicated the calendar to confirming as many nominations particularly lifetime appointments to the federal bench as he possibly could. and sort of had this conveyor

belt of nominations running through the senate and really there's no incentive. the other thing is in the event that ththe republicans regain the majority in the senate and have the majority in the house, there's no real incentive to sort of reform the legislative filibuster then either because joe biden is going to veto whatever is a majority republican item in the house and senate to get back to i mentioned earlier the congressional review act process which is a simple majority to negate regulations for departments and agencies. that if you were to see a republican majority in the senate they can still advance

those bills with a simple majority so they could attempt to sort of send messages about a pending president biden's epa regulations, various covid regulations from hhs and treasury. wherever, and get those bills to the president's desk but then again president biden would veto them and they would go back to the senate and house and had failed to override votes. so there's sort of a lot of the sort of show boat of political divided government can happen without needing to actually change the filibuster will if all your sort of looking for is veto the vehicle anyway. >> the last thing i'll say because we are talking about

the failed attempt last week to change the sentence procedures in order to pass the voting rights election administration. i suppose it is possible that if somehow there was renewed interest ewin a change to the filibuster to replace that piece of legislation. we know now at this moment it's not likely but if something were to change in the coming months i suppose we could see some piece of that legislation affect the conduct of the election results. i think much of it is scheduled to be implemented beyond election day 2022 and what we know is that they take time to put in place but to go back to something i said earlier about how we often see procedural change and policy issues linked together, it's important to

remember that is one of the things on the table in the filibuster conversation right now. >> since you brought that up let's talk about that issue of voting rights. that's the one that brought the filibuster to thepublic eye . i have to have asked the experts what's nextfor voting reform ? >> i can get us started their . there are some bipartisan discussions now in the senate that couldn't i think get going in earnest until after the senate went through the exercise of attempting and not succeeding inchanging the filibuster rules . that's on a much narrower question about were forming the electoral count act which is a law from the 19th century that frankly i don't know how many of us had ever

read it until january 2021 when all of a sudden we were faced with initially the question of whether or not there would be objection to the electoral votes attached by the electors in the presidential election and then obviously particularly for those of us who were, who covered this ... >> we seem to have lost niels for a second. >> let's hope we can get niels back. >> i can pick up where you left off in talking and talking about potential election reform. he's absolutely right there

are some emerging discussions in the senate on a bipartisan basis about ways that congress might make some changes to the actual process for counting the electoral college votes. the process that was underway when there was the instruction, the obstruction of the capital. i will note since this is a conversation about the filibuster and there are article fax is one of the first times that a statutory rslaw actually made an exception to the filibuster. that is where we come full circle. go here but neil is right that that's one of the continuing lines of possibility fin the electoral reform voting rights space. i do think even if the senate does not try to take up the voting rights act or other electoral forms of legislation this year we will continue to talk quite a lot

about it. it is when we think of priorities among the democrats both inside and outside dewashington it's quite high on that list. i think many people rightly see protecting the fundamental rights to vote especially for americans of color is something that's important that democrats should be and republicans should be paying great attention to. even if we don't see a return to legislative efforts on that i think we will continue there will continue to be a lot of conversation about it. >> i appreciate you bringing up that historical perspective. i think that we are in a cycle, we always are . good to have you back withus . >> i think i'm back. i apologize but this is

always the way of the world with these z. there's technology we've always been using for the last couple of years. >> we're doing the best we can. you want to complete any thoughts about that? >> i would just sort of say to reiterate that if we look at, we're looking at a case of a much narrower, whatever they do related to election law is going to be far narrower than particularly with democrats and what has already passed the house of representatives. but clearly is, it is not going to be what it was going to be desired by the democratic caucus or at least the majority ofthe democratic caucus . >> to bring back to the news of the supreme court vacancy, even though with the shift in

filibuster rules it requires a simple majority. i can see that spike being something that both parties will use to talk about the importance of majorities, majority filibuster and so forth. what would you say? >> i think that that is going to obviously come into play. the question with this nomination when the president announces the nominee is going to be how quickly the democrats decide to move? it sounds like the democrats, chuck schumer and the other senate democrats are using the confirmation of justice amy coney barrett as a precedent. right before the election the senate republicans confirmed

a supreme court justice in what was probably far shorter of a time than many of us thought you could get a supreme court justice through the confirmation and so maybe that is now the new normal. i think the question will kbe obviously there will be plenty of people who will want to debate as long as they possibly can. there are certainly several senate republicans who are thinking they're running for president in 2024 who will have thoughts there will want to expound on at length even if it ultimately won't change the outcome of the coming nomination battle. >> will just add that niels is right. in all of 2020 we saw an extremely quick confirmation of justice amy coney barrett

but there are still steps to the process and particularly in the senate time that has to elapse to certain steps of that process. i do expect democrats to move quickly but we're obviously not looking at a situation where president biden needs a nominee and then there's confirmation but the next day or something like that. >> with all the efforts last week that failed about eliminating the filibuster if the democrats had called the car and the filibuster were eliminated, what with the next year in the senate essentially look like? would it be the wild west? >> i think this is an important question. because to go back to a point i made earlier, there are things that are currently being stopped by the filibuster that would pass i

think if the filibuster was eliminated and we were only looking at situations needing a simple majority to end debate. and move to final passage but there are also plenty of things on which there is disagreement within the democratic caucus where even in a world without filibuster we would not see that legislation sale through. there is some good work i scientists i kind of look at period's of unified party control over the last few decades and find sometimes when a party enjoys unified control is priorities fail because of the filibuster but often they fail because there isdivision within the party itself . i would point to the republicans experience the affordable care act in trying to repeal the affordable care act in 2017.

the senate absent the filibuster whether that's in the next year or whether it's in two years, five years, the senate will look different but i don't think it would look as different as some people might expect and i don't think we would necessarily see wild swings back and forth and policy based on who's in the majority. >> you have thoughts on that, neil? >> i agree with molly and i think the question would be to some extent where the senators come from in each caucus. so the way the country is divided and the fact that there is 2 senators from every state means if you're going to have a republican majority in the senate, you're probably going to have a couple of republicans from new england.

if you're going to have a democratic majority in the senate, you're probably going to have a democrat from west virginia and montana and maybe from the dakotas at some point like we long did. the country is sort of divided in such a way that it's really hard to get a clear majority of senators from all sort of the same states so it strikes me as not impossible on some issues but there are issues on which it's certainly unlikely that any senator who wanted to be around for very long. if you wanted to be a one term senator from massachusetts as a republican because i remember when we had a republican from massachusetts not all that long ago.

if you want to be a one term senator there are thingsyou might vote for but if you intend on making a career out of it , i'm not so sure that the wild swings are quite as realistic. >> i like that senator brown reference. are there some things or issues we haven't covered?i ask in my equals podcast what have i not asked that i should ask that our audience needs to look out for coming up particularly since we have a lot of folks interested in the judiciary. >> i think one thing i would pay attention to is even though we saw the sort of filibuster reform of a kind that leader schumer was pursuing last week, i think it's important to continue to

watch conversations between senators about what they might want to change to make the senate work better. i think there are senators who feel genuine frustration with their limited ability to contribute to the work and deliberation of the senate. i would keep an eye on that. even in the aftermath of a very high profile failure on one specific fitopic or change. >> niels? >> i would say on the substance of the various issues that are going to be on the agenda going forward, i would think about whether or not there are any chances for any renewed bipartisan talks.

there's or not something we haven't mentioned is that what they're calling the america completes act. it seems like it's getting broader every time we see a new copy. whether there are more opportunities for advancing any sort of bipartisan legislation f before we really get into the sort of heat of election season. one other thing is whether or not there is any chance again to have any discussions about prospective changes to the senate rules. one of the reasons why the republicans have been so reluctant to engage this time aside from proposing the underlying voting rights bill that was in substance is the idea that sometimes they wanted to change it in the past to occur in the next

congress. when you don't necessarily know who is going to benefit from those changes. so i don't know if there will be any discussion or not on that front but we have seen in the past that there has been talks that have taken place taround election season or during the lame-duck session or rules changes that might take place going forward. >> we talk about the name of this is breaking the logjam in a country that is so polarized, is there some benefit in really actually leaning into gridlock i wonder? is that perhaps the reason why folks have not leaned into trying to break the gridlock or do you think at a certain point that they're

waiting back back-and-forth, whether it is politically expedient to just lean into the fight? >> i think it's the case that sometimes there are bills for which the majority and senate like to be able to claim the filibuster for not being able to get them through. things that perhaps there is strong support for four from some element of their base that might more broadly unpopular or unpopular amongst another segment of the party. so i think we can see plenty of examples of iosituations where senate leaders are happy to blame the rules for things that they don't actually want to get done in the first place. but one other point that i'll make about the bigger question about trying to legislate in the presence of

and around the filibuster is that when you end up in the world where we are now trying to put as many things as possible into a few bills. one moving through the reconciliation process, one moving through the appropriations process as an omnibus , that can make it more difficult for you to form more flexible and fluid coalitions. in a world where democrats thought that maybe they could take one piece of build back better and bring it to the floor but only subject to a simple majority, they might get a couple of republicans to join them even if they lost one or two democrats but because instead they feel like their only option is to do all of the things are as many of the things as they possibly can in one big bill that is being negotiated on a partisan basis, you lose that opportunity to pursue

different kinds of votes coalitions. >> what do you think? >> i don't know necessarily what the symptom is and what the underlying disease is here. whether if you didn't have the filibuster in place, how you would operate differently . whether you would get different people elected. part of this question is that in this environment, the people who gets elected to the senate if you look back over the last decade, you had more strident partisans elected to the senate to begin with and some of that may be an outgrowth of the

way governments and politics have changed in the last couple of decades. there's a fair amount of academic research on what happens in the composition of the senate. after speaker gingrich was the speaker of the house versus the, >> .. >> certainly if we go for the back from speaker gingrich into the '70s, some research for my colleague looks, argues one of the things that is led to the

rise of the filibuster in the first place was an interest on the part of individual senators wanting to exploit all g of ther available procedural rights and the notion different kinds of people with different kinds of interest group pressures were being -- part of this whole chicken or egg story about where we were, where we are and how we got here. >> the senate budget committees holding a confirmation hearing this afternoon on the nominations for director of the office of management and budget and deputy director. you can watch it online at 2:30 p.m. eastern on c-span.org or watch full coverage on c-span now, our new video app. ♪ ♪ >> download c-span2 new mobile app and stay up-to-date with live video coverage of today's e biggest political events from live streams of the house and senate floor and key

congressional hearings, white house events in supreme court oral arguments. even our live interactive morning program washington journal where we hear your voices everyday. download the app for free today. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> next, conversation with commerce secretary gina raimondo. she