I’m American, when is the last time a party had 60+ in the Senate? Why isn’t 51 good enough?
I remember back in 2022 midterms people were discussing the Dems gaining control of the Senate with 51, and that at 50-50 Kamala was the tiebreaker.
The Senate allows any member to filibuster any Senate action, meaning they have the right to get up and speak as long as they want before allowing a vote.
In the past, they actually had to get up and stay up speaking, for hours or days. However, over time, everybody agreed they just had to say they were blocking it, as if they were speechifying continuously, but not having to actually do it. This came into practice many decades ago.
A filibuster can be broken with 60 votes, forcing the blocking parties to desist, and allowing the vote to go forward. So, in practice the opposition can block any bill that has less that 60% of the votes, and it takes 60 votes to get anything passed.
This is not new. In fact, many of the recent abuses have occurred when the Democrats decided to eliminate the filibuster from the Senate rules and confirmed Federal Court judges without 60 votes. This was called the nuclear option. Some still fear the filibuster will be eliminated entirely, and anything will be able to be passed with 51 votes.
That's great when you hold the majority, but can be very bad when the other side holds the majority. Most people think it is better to keep the filibuster, rather than have a situation where the other side can do anything they want next time they get the majority again.
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