Russ Feingold Quotes

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'

We've seen filibusters of bills and nominations that ultimately passed with 90 or more votes. Why filibuster something that has that kind of support? Just to slow down the process and keep the Senate from working.

The minority in the Senate has the power to prevent the majority from acting.

We have a level of obstruction and an abuse of the Senate rules that we have never had before… We have a dysfunctional Senate. Some say it’s a broken Senate.

Anybody who get easily frustrated should not be in the United States Senate. We operate by unanimous consent …. Any Senator can stop the train.

Let the filibuster be no more. Let the people decide.

I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if the Senate doesn’t do one other piece of business this year. You’ve got to keep this bill on the floor. You can tell Mansfield [the Senate Majority Leader] … The President of the United States doesn’t care if this bill is there forever. We are not going to have anything else hit the floor until this bill is passed.

The history of Congress shows that once parliamentary tools become big enough obstacles for the majority party, they are abolished or reformed.

In theory, the filibuster helps whichever party is in the minority in the Senate. In practice, it is the Republicans who have disproportionately used it to engage in cynical and anti-democratic obstructionism whenever they find themselves in the minority.

The filibuster is an affront to commonly understood democratic norms, but then so is the Senate.

There is a limitation on debate, which is unlike other bills, for 20 hours, but there is no limitation on amendments. In other words, Republicans if they wanted to, and I suspect they do, could offer literally thousands of amendments and keep Senate in session for weeks and months.

I have this fear that one day there's going to be a fire in the Senate and there are only going to be 57 senators there and they’ll all die because they won't have 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the building.

In the first 50 years of the filibuster, it was used only 35 times. But the last Congress alone had 112 cloture motions filed, plus threats of more. This is the tyranny of the minority.

It used to be in the Senate that if you were filibustering, you stood up. There was a physical dimension to it, that you - when you became exhausted you would have to leave the floor. That was the idea of the filibuster.

Along with my colleagues Mark Warner and Sheldon Whitehouse, I have been working to end the process of secret holds, which is when senators anonymously block legislation or nominations without explanation.

Many times, the Senate talks of things and never gets anything through.

The Senate as an institution is broken. We're not doing the work of the American people and the rules are being abused. The only way to get us back to the traditions where the Senate is doing the work of the American people is to change the rules.

My viewpoint is the Senate is dysfunctional.

We've seen filibusters to block judicial nominations, jobs bills, political transparency, ending Big Oil subsidies - you name it, there's been a filibuster.

The attitudes of senators towards the institution and its processes, toward debate and toward one another, have evolved in ways that maximize the convenience of individual senators at the expense of the Senate's business.

What has the filibuster become? The filibuster has become a tool for slowing everything down…a tool by which one senator who announces that his object is to impose gridlock on the Senate, can do so.

If somebody feels strongly enough to be willing to stop the Senate, he should at least be required to be on the floor and explain why.

The filibuster is being abused to create gridlock and prevent the Senate from doing the people's business. Instead of being a deliberative body, the Senate has become a deadlocked body.

The filibuster has only been around for 2564 years.

Eliminating the filibuster would eliminate the people’s voices in the Senate.