Norm Ornstein details how more and more maneuvers are being used to block action in the Senate. It's more than just the filibusters. An individual Senator can place a hold on a bill or a nomination and thus block action.

So what is different now? For one thing, everybody is an obstructionist in today's Senate, thanks to the dramatically expanded and different role of the hold. What is a hold? It is an informal procedure--nowhere mentioned in Senate rules--where an individual senator notifies the body's leaders that he or she will hold up a bill or nomination by denying unanimous consent to allow it to move forward. The hold was originally employed simply as a courtesy--a way to delay action for a week or two if a lawmaker had a scheduling conflict or needed time to muster arguments for debate. But over the past 30 years, it has morphed into a process where any individual can block something or someone indefinitely or permanently--and often anonymously. Now, at any given time, there are dozens of holds on nominees for executive positions and judgeships, and on bills. Of course, bills can be brought up even if there is not unanimous consent, but to do so is cumbersome and often requires 60, rather than 50, votes to proceed.

Read the rest of Ornstein's article about the expanded use of the filibuster for ordinary bills and not just a tactic that the minority resorts to in rare instances.

But after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the filibuster began to change as Senate leaders tried to make their colleagues' lives easier and move the agenda along; no longer would there be days or weeks of round-the-clock sessions, but instead simple votes periodically on cloture motions to get to the number to break the log-jam, while other business carried on as usual.

As so often happens, the unintended consequences of a well-intentioned move took over; instead of expediting business, the change in practice meant an increase in filibusters because it became so much easier to raise the bar to 60 or more, with no 12- or 24-hour marathon speeches required.

Still, formal filibuster actions--meaning actual cloture motions to shut off debate--remained relatively rare. Often, Senate leaders would either find ways to accommodate objections or quietly shelve bills or nominations that would have trouble getting to 60. In the 1970s, the average number of cloture motions filed in a given month was less than two; it moved to around three a month in the 1990s. This Congress, we are on track for two or more a week. The number of cloture motions filed in 1993, the first year of the Clinton presidency, was 20. It was 21 in 1995, the first year of the newly Republican Senate. As of the end of the first session of the 110th Congress, there were 60 cloture motions, nearing an all-time record.

This is a bipartisan problem. When a party is in the minority they resort to these tactics and as each party expands their use, the other party is taking notes and getting ready for their time in the minority. The Democrats perfected these maneuvers when they were in the minority and the Republicans have picked up where they left off. If the Democrats were to return to the minority, it would be the same story.

We have gotten to the point that it takes 60 votes now to pass most bills. You could argue that this is not all bad and necessitates each party to move to the center to pick up votes from the other side.

Since the Constitution gives each House the power to make their own rules, there is no way to change these shenanigans unless the Senators themselves agreed to limit the power of the minority. And there really seems no hope that either party would vote for such limitations because they each want to be able to use those powers when they are in the minority. So don't expect this to change anytime soon.

Betsy blogs daily at Betsy's Page