Breaking the filibuster in one graph

By Ezra Klein

If you're looking for some good historical data on the filibuster, the fine folks who keep up (the surprisingly useful) Senate.gov site have you covered. They've tracked the number of cloture filings (when the majority begins the process of breaking a filibuster), cloture votes (when they vote to break the filibuster), and clotures (when the majority actually breaks the filibuster) in each Congress since 1919, when the Senate first gave itself the power to break a filibuster. Here's what it all looks like in graph form:

A few things about that graph. First, the rise in filibusters is just shocking. And this doesn't even count all of them. It only counts those filibusters that the majority actually tried to do something about. Plenty more filibusters get threatened, but cloture doesn't get filed because the issue isn't important enough or the votes aren't present.

Second, note how many filibusters get broken. It's not all, but it's a far cry from none (and it's more than you see in this graph, as filibusters that get withdrawn don't end through cloture). Some get broken by overwhelming majorities. But that doesn't mean the filibuster failed. A dedicated filibuster takes about a week to break even if you have the votes. That's a week of wasted time in the Senate. If your preference isn't merely to delay one vote but to threaten the majority with the prospect of getting less done overall, then launching a lot of fruitless filibusters makes perfect sense.