congressional directory, go there to order a copy of the congressional directary, this compound spiral-bound book is your guide to federal government with information on every member of congress, including bios and committee assignments, contact information for state governors and the biden administration cabinet. preorder your copy today at c-span shop.org or scan the code with your smart phone. every purchase helps support c-span's nonprofit operation. >> cq roll call hosted a conversation on the senate filibuster, its origins and how it evolved over the years to recent efforts to eliminate and limit its use. >> i'd now like to invite our panel to introduce themselves. joining us today, neils, cq senior writer and molly reynolds, senior fellow government studies, brookings,

so could you take a few minute to see introduce yourselves? molly? >> absolutely. thank you for having me, my name is molly reynolds, a senior fellow in the government studies program at the brookings institution where i study congressional rules and procedure including the filibuster and policy outcomes. >> i'm neils, chief correspondent for cq roll call covering the white house and congress, before switching primarily to the white house beat, i spent more than a decade covering the senate on a daily basis for cq roll call and spent a lot of my time covering all of the changes to the legislative procedures and the efforts to change the filibuster rules over the last more than a decade. >> thank you. we've got a great panel of

experts so let's get started. so we heard a wlaut about filibuster lately, after not hearing about it a lot before then. so why exactly do filibuster rules matter, and why are they in place today? molly, can you sort of start off a little bit with a background on filibuster and where it started and why it mattered and still matters? >> absolutely. so at the highest level, to filibuster something in the senate means to use any number 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 and i'm sure we'll talk about them, but generally, the senate's rules don't put any restrictions on how long the senate can debate a particular measure. there's also generally nothing on the senate rules that allows for only a simple majority of senator to see stop debating something and take a vote on it.

so one way the filibuster measure is for an individual senator to go to the floor, get recognized, talk about a bill, just keep talking, we don't usually see that anymore. that's quite rare more often what we see is today in contemporary filibusters is one or more senators just threatening to drag out debate indefinitely because they oppose a bill or want something else in exchange. this forces colleagues to file a closure merger, a tool in the senate to cut off debate and take a vote on something but that requires 60 votes to pass so when we talk about the filibuster creating a 60 vote requirement in the senate this is generally what we mean. a history of the filibuster, the filibuster was made possible in the senate by a little bit of an accident of history. so in the early 19th century, the senate removed from its rulebook a motion that

eventually the house would determine was a way to cut off debate with a simple majority. it's important to note that's not how the motion is being used in either the house or senate at the time, in the sort of intervening decades the house started using it that way, but at that point the senate didn't have it anymore so in the run-up to the civil war, we got to this point where we had senators sort of using the absence of any motion to cut off debate with a simple majority to force extended debate. throughout the 19th century, senate majorities often tried to end the filibuster end obstruction and were met with more obstruction. in 1917, we got the document of the rule, the ability to cut off debate with a super majority and that's dominated the 20th and 21st century senates with some change to see exactly how many votes are needed to invoke closure, what the threshold s that sort of thing.

so that brings us to today where most things in the sent do require 60 votes to support a cloture motion to end debate on a find passage. there are some important exceptions, some were in the headlines so we have the budget reconciliation process which i think we'll talk about. we have nominations which thanks to changes to the sent's procedures both in 2013 and 2017 now only require a simple majority to cut off debate and move to confirmation vote, but for many important things in the legislative process, we do still have this effective 60 vote threshold in place. >> thank you, molly. and i know, neils, in covering all this, you are now 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 things done by reforming the filibuster so can

you talk a little bit about some of the things that have been proposed to combat this partisan gridlock? for example, carve outs for certain issue and see restoring the talking filibuster that molly talked about. can you talk a little about whats going on now? >> right. so to begin with, the budget reconciliation process molly was talking about previously has become the sort of primary venue by which the majority party seeks to enact its major fiscal or economic policy, basically, every congress now. so we saw, obviously, during the time when donald trump was the president and republicans controlled both house and senate, there was an overhaul of the tax code that was pushed

through, the trump tax cuts so to speak using the reconciliation process to get around 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 that is still underway on what they're calling build back better, the sort of broadly, broad legislative package from everything from child tax credits to an assortment of social and economic policy measures that have sort of been stalled out because there is opposition or skepticism from particularly senator sinema and senator manchin within the democratic caucus and obviously when you have a 50-50 senate you need

every single democratic vote. so that's sort of been around for a while but has been basically used every single congress now. the other thing always available in this realm particularly when there's change of administration and i am reluctant to be the first to bring it up because molly is the other panelist here, but the congressional review act can be used to nullify regulations that are put into effect the end of a presidential term, effectively. it can be used at other times but as a practical matter is used when there's a switch of party in control. but to your point, mary, about what is 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, majority leader attempts would have sort of used the tool available under senate rule 19 which says 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 try to sort of trunkate that process so you could get to a final vote on the voting rights

measure but that didn't get the support of the sort of holed out senators in the democratic caucus either so right now nothing afoot although there will be more creative attempts in the coming months i'm sure. >> thank you, now what are some of the challenges to filibuster reform, neils just given us some examples of things that haven't been quite so successful at breaking the log jam. molly, can you offer us thoughts on that? >> absolutely. so the sort of, to my mind, the biggest challenge to filibuster reform is getting the support of sufficient number of senators to achieve that reform and when we look back over the course of history of changes to the filibuster, generally we've seen successful reform when you have a determined majority party who

has a goal they want to achieve. they are being met with consistent and strong opposition to that goal from the minority party and then you will eventually, we have seen a majority come together in pursuit of a particular goal, be willing to change the way the senate works to achieve that goal. so i think if we look, for example, at the 2013 and 2017 changes to that procedures for ending debate on nominations, so first, in 2013, to nomination s to the lower court and executive branch deployments and 2017, to lower supreme court. in both those cases, first democrats then republicans had an objective they were trying to meet, that they were faced with strong opposition from the other party, but there were enough senators, a majority who cared

enough about getting that thing done, that they were willing to change the way the senate works to make that happen and i think to the recent episode that neils was describing, that is simply not what was true last week in the senate. there were not 50 democratic senators willing to vote for this change to the senate's rules in order to accomplish a particular legislative goal, despite the fact that at least publicly reported, they are supportive of the underlying policy matter but they're not willing to sort of make this change the way the senate works. so i think as we look toward the future and ask questions about filibuster reform whether it is questions about the full abolition of the filibuster or neils highlighted a couple of possible reforms, there are

others that folks have passed in the past, such as requiring sort of 3/5 of the membership to be in cloture to end debate, maybe 3/5 of the senators in closing sort of thing, any of those changes to be under considering. for me the real question is how do you get to a majority especially in the current environment when the democrats have the slimmest of majorities, it is a 50-50 senate, tie breaking available from vice-president harris so in the future, a slightly larger senate majority of either party under unified party control which i think we'll be most likely to see significant changes to the filibuster, a larger majority might be more successful than the current one. >> thank you, now molly, is this the time to introduce another piece of the procedure and policy which is reconciliation

because that has come up as well. do you think to talk about that? >> absolutely. so neils mentioned this earlier, and obviously, the budget reconciliation process is in the news and has been in the news for the better part of a year, so the reconciliation process is an optional component of the overall congressional budget process. it was created as neils suggested several decades ago as part of the congressional budget act of 1974 and basically, allows for certain types of legislation, mainly legislation that addresses tax code, addresses certain types of federal spending and addresses for that kind of legislation to move through the process without the filibuster, how that work as in the act, stipulated that the budget bills can only be debated for a number of hours. once that time has elapsed, rather than needing to file

cloture and get 60 to cut off debate and find final passage, debate simply ends so you don't need to overcome that 60 vote threshold to end debate. as neils indicated, over the course of the 80s, 90s, 2000s and 2010s, now into 20 '20s we've seen an evolution of the reconciliation process where it has really been used more expansively and more importantly, used as the principle way for majority parties especially under unified party control like we have now to achieve the party's major policy objectives. it has consistently been used going back to the 80s for policy that is would benefit the senate majority party but only recently seen as the sort of one neat trick if you will, the one way that a majority party will accomplish as much of its important agenda as it can.

sometimes this works, neils mentioned the 2017 tax bill, and 2021 american rescue plan and sometimes it doesn't so in addition to the on going debate of build back better and whether some version of that will be adopted via reconciliation process, the 2017 failed attempt to be used by republicans to repeal the affordable care act, in that situation, they failed to achieve a major policy goal not because of the filibuster but because they simply didn't have agreement among enough republican senators to vote for a piece of legislation even in the absence of the filibuster simple majority threshold so as we talk about build back better, talk about future possible uses of the reconciliation process it's important to remember that while it is a significant way

that majority parties, especially under unified government can get around the filibuster, it's just not magic. the rules aren't magic. they can't force agreement where agreement doesn't exist. >> well neils, isn't there always going to be a bit of a disconnect in how these and the reconciliation process is used because there's a divide between the issues each party prioritizes, tax and budget bills versus voting rights reform, social safety net and other issues so that's always going to be a problem, isn't it? >> it is, and one of the pieces of the potential build back better reconciliation puzzle that is 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 durban, senator from illinois would have been more than happy to have one of his long-standing legislative priorities, the dream act or other measures put into the reconciliation package but it was determined by the senate parliamentarian, the advice of the senate parliamentarian would be that such measures were not primarily related to the budget, that 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. bird of west virginia who was the long time democratic leader and chairman of the appropriations committee. the the reality is 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 that 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 or whether it's immigration, something that doesn't fit as neatly into the box of affecting the deficit in this straight forward way as a tax cut may. and so this is the challenge for

the democrats and always the question will be not just whether or not to change the filibuster rules but whether you get to a point -- they don't have it right now -- but whether you ever see a scenario where the democrats in the senate get a large enough majority in the senate even if it is sort of 60 to be able to overrule the parliamentarian. basically, the parliamentarian, this is always tricky, the parliamentarian actually gives advice and is the presiding officer who is a member of the senate or the vice-president who is the one that's actually making the rulings but they are very particular about adhering to the parliamentarian's guidance and wisdom, particularly when it comes to reconciliation because it is, as molly mentioned, it is in

statute, and so because there's a long, sort of underlying what the process is supposed to be, senators tend to be particularly skittish about changing the rules, even if the constitution would tell us each chamber determines the rules of its proceedings. >> the one thing i would add to what neils said about one of the limitations of the process is that in addition to there being restraints imposed by the bird rule that leave some things outside of the bounds of reconciliation, the bird rule also imposes restrictions on the long-term budgetary consequences of policy change adopted through the reconciliation process and this can often require folks who are drafting a reconciliation bill to make the policies they are achieving through the bill

temporary. sometimes for the, last for the entire window of the bill. sometimes they last for only part of that period. and so that itself can also introduce some uncertainty into the policy landscape. we think about reconciliation becoming more and more important in a way to achieve legislative change. so we use reconciliation more to accomplish legislative change and that brings with it a concordent increase in certain monetary policy and i think the current experience with the expansion of the child tax credit is a really great example of this. so the child tax credit was expanded as part of the american rescue plan, adopted in early 2021, part of that expansion involved curting it from a benefit one would receive at tax time into a monthly payment and that, based on sort of the

timing of when the bill was passed and then also, the timing of what the democrats could get support for expired at the end of 2021. and so now we have this question, is there political support for extending that suspension if you will, and again, i think this is just a specific example of a general challenge that using the reconciliation process to make major legislative change introduces that can also make the durablity and future of programs and provisions less certain. >> yes, uncertainty, right, let's look ahead. the filibuster, for now still around as we've seen and reconciliation is around as its loophole, sort of, so what do these rules mean for the issues of congress and our audience may be wondering with about getting through for their own

organization? both of you, each of you, can weigh in on that. neils, want to start? >> i'll start with the obvious new development this week that will throw a bit of a wrench into the senate's schedules, because justice breyer's announced retirement will once again lead to the senate having front and center a supreme court confirmation process and we look at the calendar and see coming up in the middle of february, february 18th the current expiration of continuing resolution so one of the things congress will have to deal with is funding the government but when you have funding the government and you have, then, 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 the white house changes 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 more complicated because there is a tie both in the senate and as rumt of there 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. and so there are -- you can go far down into the weeds and find ways the republicans could attempt to trip this up and things senator schumer and democrats will need to do and senator durban and judiciary would need to get around some of these potential obstacles but all told, what that means is the senator will be spending a lot of his time, maybe we thought they would be trying to revive the voting rights 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 another round of reconciliation, i just don't know, you know, the timing is such they want to move quickly

on the supreme court resignation when received but will consume a lot of the oxygen as we move toward the spring. >> molly, want to weigh in on that? >> yeah, i want to underline a an important point niels is making in laying out the agenda of significant size before the senate which is that we talk a lot about the constraints on the senate placed by the filibuster, but the constraints placed by the calendar are often as significant, even in situations as niels was indicating, where a simple majority is sufficient to end debate, whether that's on odd nominations or on reconciliation bills, there is only so much time in the day, only so many weeks in the year. we are in an election year so we know in election year, the

senate and house feel particularly constrained in the time that they have so i do think, i don't want to say entirely surprising announcement from justice breyer because he's certainly been under a fair amount of pressure from advocates on the democratic side to announce retirement while there's a democratic president and democratic controlled senate, there is a lot that sits before the senate. so i think for folks who are thinking about their policy priorities, i think watching what comes of the reconciliation negotiations around build back better is there, does some form of that legislation get resurrected and what part of that is one element and niels, hope family, share the evolution

of the continuing resolution in february, whether that gets another continuing resolution for some period of time, whether it gets full appropriations bill, we know the appropriations bills carry not only the discretionary federal budget but often other vehicles, other traincars, if you will, that get attached on to them so watching for folks to pay attention to that. that, obviously, because it is a regular, a piece of regular legislation, can, considered under the regular order, would need to overcome the filibuster and senate but as we've seen in recent years, that is, while those coalitions can sometimes look a little bit interesting, we do generally see the two parties and two chambers be able to build some sort of coalition to get an omnibust out so those

are two pieces of legislation i'll be keeping an eye on and would be keeping an eye on if i was someone trying to achieve some particular policy priorities this year. >> thank you, before i move to next question, i want to remind our audience, if you have any questions, feel free to put them in q&a and we'll try to get to them, have time by the end of this chat. let's talk about the midterms. they're coming up, fast approaching so how might election day 2022 impact the filibuster and current filibuster rules impact election day, would be an issue, yes? >> so i can start and niels can pick up the answer. on the second part of the question, how might the filibuster affect the election,

so one thing we know -- we don't have a ton of public opinion data how voters feel about the filibuster but what we have shows us generally, if you are a democrat, and democrats are in majority you're not a fan of filibuster but if you're when democrats in minority you tend to change your tune and are supportive of the filibuster and same thing with republicans. so we generally see to the extent voter advise any attitude toward the filibuster aligned usually with whether their party holds majority in a senate or not. if there is kind of any consequence of the filibuster i think it will be around the question that is the current democratic majority able to wrap up any additional legislative accomplishments, even with the filibuster in place? whether that's through

reconciliation process or achieving things on a bipartisan basis, you know, we did em 2021 in addition to american rescue plan, see the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed on a bipartisan basis so i think that could have an affect on the midterms in the sense that, you know, sometimes legislative achievements have consequences for the election. on the other side of what could the election mean for filibuster reform, i think if as is possible, likely expected depending who you ask, republicans assume the majority at least in the house after the midturns and many decades of american history tell us that the president's party tends to lose seats in the midterms so if that were to happen, i think that would take a lot of the

wind out of the filibuster reform sales because it's simply, if the house is controlled by republicans, even if the senate is still controlled by democrats and we have a democrat president in the white house, you don't get really any bang for your buck in eliminating the filibuster for any kind of legislation because, you know, you're not going to see it move through a republican-controlled house anyway and as we've talked about, the biggest thing the senate has specific responsibility for, which is nominations, we've already changed the precedents for, on ending debate for nominations to court and lower supreme court decisions. >> if you look back at what happened during the trump administration, we saw this exact scenario play out in reverse, because you had the

first two years of trump administration with republican control, advancing legislative priorities, but when speaker pelosi became the speaker of the house again, there was not a whole lot of legislating to be done other than trying to keep the government open and the like, so senator mcconnell as the majority leader in the senate spent 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 conveyer belt of nominations ruining through the senate and really no incentive, the other thing is that in the event that the republicans regain the you

jort, the majority in the senate and in the house, there's no need to reform the filibuster there either because joe biden is going to veet ah whatever is a majority republican item in the house and senate to get back to, i mentioned earlier, the congressional review act process which uses a simple majority to negate regulations from departments and agencies. that, if you were to see a republican majority in the senate, they could still advance those bills with a simple majority so they can attempt to send messages about upending president biden's epa regulations, various covid regulations from hss, treasury

and wherever and get those bills to the president's desk but then again, president biden would veto them and they go back through the senate and house and have failed override votes. so there's sort of a lot of this show votes of political divided government can happen without having to actually change the filibuster rule if all you're sort of looking for is a veto bait vehicles, anyway. >> last thing i'll say, because people are talking about the failed attempts last week to change the senate's procedures in order to pass a voting rights election administration piece of legislation is i suppose it's possible if there was renewed interest in a change to the filibuster to accomplish that

piece of legislation, we know now, at least, at this moment in time, that's not likely, but something were to change the coming months i suppose we could see some piece of that legislation affect the down duct of it in the fall. i think most of it scheduled beyond the election day 2022 behind we know a lot of election administration changes, they can take time to put in place, but again, because to go back to something i said earlier about how we often see procedural change and policy issues linked together. that is one of the things on the table in this overall conversation right now. >> since you brought that up, you know, let's talk about that issue of voting rights. that's the one that really brought the filibuster to the public's eye, so i'd have to ask since we have the experts on,

what's next for voting reform? >> i can get us started there. there are bipartisan discussions now in the senate that really couldn't, i think, get going in ernest until after the senate went through the exercise and attempting and not succeeding in changing the filibuster rules, on a much narrower question about reforming the electoral count act which is a law from the 19th century that, frankly, i don't know how many of us have ever read it until january of 2021 when all of a sudden we were faced with, initially, the question of whether or not there would be ejection to the electoral votes, a cast by the electors in the 2020 presidential election and then

obviously, particularly for those of us who were, cover this -- >> we seem to have lost niels. i can pick up where he was -- >> where he left off, in talking about potential reforms to electorate account act, he's absolutely right there are emerging discussions in the senate on a bipartisan basis about ways that congress might make changes to the actual process for counting the electoral college votes. the process that was underway when there was the instruction at the capitol on january 6th. i will note, since this is a

conversation about the filibuster and just to put in a historical fact about the electoral count act, it is one of the first times that a statutory law actually made an exception to the filibuster so that is where, we've come full circle here. but niels is right, that's one of the kind of continuing lines of possibility in the electoral reform voting rights phase. i do think that even if the senate does not try to take unthe electoral voting rights act or other legislation this year, we'll continue to talk a lot about it. when we think of priorities among the sort of democrats both inside and outside of washington, it's certainly quite high on that list and i think many people rightly see protecting the fundamental right

to see vote, especially for americans of color is something that is very important that democrats and republicans should be paying great attention to so even if we don't see a return to legislative effort on that, i think there will be continuing a lot of conversation on it. >> i appreciate you bringing us that historical perspective that we are in a cycle, we always are. i think we have you back with us, niels. >> yes, i think i'm back here. i apologize, but this is always the way of the world with these webinars and the technology we've been using for the last couple of years. >> yes, we're doing the best we can. did you want to complete any thoughts about that? or anything else? >> i would just sort of say to

reiterate that 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 what democrats and what has already passed in the house of representatives. but it -- it clearly is not going to be what it was going to be desired by the democratic caucus or at least the majority of the democratic caucus. >> and even, to bring back the news of the supreme court vacancy, even with the shift in filibuster rules, it does require are a simple majority. i can see that fight being something both parties will use to talk about the importance of majorities, filibuster, and so on. what would you say? >> yeah.

i think that is knowing to obviously come into the play. the question with the nomination, when president announces the nominee is going to be how quickly do the democrats decide to move? it sounds like the democrats, chuck schumer and the other senate democrats are using the confirmation of justice amy conan barrett as a precedent here. look right before the election the senate republicans confirmed a justice in what is probably far shorter in a time than many of us thought you could get a supreme court justice here confirmation and maybe that is the new normal and the question is there will be plenty of

people who want at that 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 they want to ex-pound on at length even if it won't ultimately change the outcome of the coming nomination battle. >> go on -- >> i would just add that as we think of, to niels is absolutely right, but of all of 2020, we still had an extremely quick confirmation of justice cohen amy barrett but there are still steps to the process and particularly in the senate, a lapse between certain steps of that process, and so i too expect democrats to move quickly

but we're obviously not looking at a situation where president biden names a nominee and there's a confirmation vote the next day or something like that. >> you know, with all the efforts last week though, failed, about eliminating the filibuster, if the democrats had caught the car and the filibuster were eliminated, what would the next year in the senate potentially look like? would it be the wild west? >> so i think this is actually a really 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 in most situations needing a simple majority to end debate, and move to final passage, but i think that 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 those legislation sail through. there are, you know, some good work and political scientists that kind of look at periods of unified party control over the last several decades and find sometimes when a party enjoys unified control its parties fail because of the filibuster but often because there is division within the party itself so again, here i would point to the republican's experience with the affordable care act in 2017, trying to repeal the affordable care act in 2017 so i think the senate, absent the filibuster, whether within the next year, two years, five years, what have you, senate would look different but i don't think it would look at different as some people might expect and don't think we would necessarily see kind of we'llswings back and forth in

policy based on who is in the majority. >> yeah, thoughts on that, niels? >> i agree with molly and i think the question would be to some extent where the senators come from in each caucus, right? so the way the country is divided and the fact that there is two senators from every state means if you are 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, 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 where it's certainly unlikely that any senator who wanted to be around for very long, you know, 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 long ago, if you want to be a one-term senator there are things you might vote for , but if you intend on making a career out of it i'm not sure the wild swks quite as realistic. >> i like that reference, there, thank you niels for that as well. are there some issues we haven't

covered? i always ask in my equal times podcast i always ask what should i ask that i should have? because our audience really needs to know about, or >> so i think what i would -- one thing i would pay attention to is even though we saw the sort of filibuster reform of the kind that leader schumer was pursuing last week fail, 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. so i would keep an eye on that,

even in the aftermath of a very high profile failure on one specific possible change. >> 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 sort of renewed bipartisan talks. the electoral count act is one example. whether or not this -- something we haven't mentioned is this -- what they are calling in the house, the america competes act. the sort of broad china policy legislation that just seems like it's getting broader every time we see a new copy of it. whether there are more opportunities for advancing any

sort of bipartisan legislation before we really get into the sort of heat of election season. the one other thing is whether or not there is any chance again to have any discussions about prospective changes to the senate rules. the underlying voting rights bill, is the idea that sometimes they want to make changes in the past to occur in the next congress. when you do not necessarily know who is going to benefit from those changes. i do not know if there will be any discussion or not on that front, but we have seen in the past, there have been talks that have been taken place around election season, or during a succession for rule changes that might take place going forward.

mary: but in a country that is so polarized, is there some benefit in really, actually leading 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 are weighing that back in forth. whether it is politically expedient to lean into the fact -- fight. molly: i think it is certainly the case. sometimes there are bills in the majority in the senate, want to be able to blend the filibuster for not be able to get those through -- want to blame the filibuster for not being able to get those through.

some element of their base might be more broadly unpopular or unpopular among another segment of the parties. i think we can see plenty of examples of situations for senate leaders. who are happy to blame the rules on things that they do not want to get done in the first race. one other point that i will make about trying to legislate in the presence of around the filibuster, is that when you end up in the world where we are now, trying to put many things as possible into a few bills. one move into the reconciliation process, one weaving through the immigration process -- one moving through the immigration process. that could make it difficult for you to reform coalitions.

in a world where democrats thought that they could take one piece of a build back better and bring into the order, but only subject to a simple majority. they might actually get a couple of republicans to join them. even if they lost one or two democrats. instead, they felt like they gnashed their only option is to do all of the things, or as many of the things that they possibly can. being it is being negotiated on a bipartisan basis, you lose that opportunity to pursue different kinds of coalitions. niels: i do not know necessarily , sort of what the symptom is and what the underlying disease is, here. whether if you didn't have the filibuster in placed, how you

would operate differently. whether you would get different people elected. part of this question is, in this environment, the people who get elected to the senate, if you look back a little over the last decade, you had more partisan elected to the senate to begin with. some of that is a way government and politics have changed in the last couple of decades. there's a fair amount of academic research on what has happened, even the composition of the senate. with the speaker of the house, versus before. some of this may be actually related to the existence of the filibuster. there are also many extreme

factors when it comes to determining a why exactly the gridlock is the way it is. i do not know how much of it is actually attributable to the 60 vote threshold itself. molly: one of my colleagues, argues that one of the things that led to the rise of the filibuster in the first place, west individual senators. tons of people getting elected, wanting to exploit all of their rights. the notion that protected people, measures, were being pressed to do that beginning in the mid-70's. again, part of this w

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