Obstructionism and the Filibuster

During the Bush administration, Democrats were frequently accused of being "obstructionist".

Fox News published are article just before the start of Bush's second term headlined "Dems Plan to Obstruct Bush Agenda." Six month later, President Bush accused them of obstructionism himself:

"President Bush spent Tuesday ... accusing Democrats of standing for nothing but obstructionism."

All this despite the fact that until January 2007, the Republicans had firm control over the White House and both Houses of Congress.

One of the tools that the minority in the Senate can use to block the will of the majority is through the use of the filibuster. In the "olden days", that was romanticized as a lone Senator standing on the floor and arguing his position, and refusing to yield the floor until he or she either wore and and gave up , or until the majority gave in. These days, it's much easier; the minority just signals that they're going to filibuster the bill and don't actually have to say anything.

Overcoming a filibuster requires a vote of cloture. In order to pass the vote and end the filibuster, a three-fifths vote of the Senate is required. In the modern Senate, that's 60 votes.

The filibuster - not so romantic any more

There are no direct counts of the number of filibusters conducted. The Senate does, however, publish the number of cloture votes held, which under-represents the actual number of filibusters, because there are some filibusters that don't go to a cloture vote because the majority concedes that they don't have enough votes to overcome it.

So we're forced to use the number of cloture votes instead of actual filibusters.

Here are the number of cloture votes by Congressional session, with the minority party noted. As can be clearly seen, the number of filibuster roughly doubled when the GOP became the minority party in 2007.

Source: US Senate

Clearly, the GOP has been more obstructionist than the Democrats were. The number of cloture votes in the last six years since the Democrats took majority control of the Senate has doubled.