Evan Bayh Quotes

This has not been a legislative process worthy of the Senate. Members of the Judiciary Committee, as I just said, were implored to save their amendments for the floor. Then, when we got here, we were told no amendments could be accepted.

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.

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

The filibuster has only been around for 2564 years.

Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

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.

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.

Woe betide a bill that is opposed! It is laid aside for further time, and that never comes.

The Senate is, in a way, the last primitive society in the world. As civilization progresses we honor all the ancient principals of seniority and respect for our elders and occupancy. Territorial imperative runs very strongly in the Senate. And our ultimate test is a trial by ordeal—which we practice in the filibuster.

Filibuster is nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority

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.

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.

As every newspaper reader, liberal activist, or parliamentary junkie knows, the overarching barrier to most of Obama's agenda is the abuse of the filibuster in the Senate. In fact, several of Obama's second term priorities are not ideas in search of a majority - they are majorities in search of an up-or-down vote.

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.

Filibusters should require 35 senators to... make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. The number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.

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.

The frustration of the Senate is that it's slow. It looks like an aquarium.

Filibuster is a harsh word. I prefer to offer amendments and let others filibuster.

The Republican senators are filibustering themselves out of their seats.

In the United States Senate we have to break the culture of procrastination.

The Senate was designed not to be efficient. If was designed to slow things down, And it does a pretty good job of it.

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