Results

CWA’s :LPAT Filibuster Action - Bring Back the Talking Filibuster

CWA Members and Coalition partners generated 6388 calls nationwide to Senators across the country.  1,090 calls were made in NYS alone.  In the 914 & 845 area codes, CWA locals and coalition partners logged in 413 calls demanding Senator Schumer co-sponsor a talking Filibuster. 

Sadly it wasn’t enough. 

On Thursday, January 24th, Senators Reid and McConnell announced that they reached an agreement on a package of changes to the Senate rules. The bi-partisan package of predominately weak reforms was approved by the Senate in two huge votes of 78-16 and 86-9.

While the package did eliminate a lot of wasted time spent between votes and consideration of bills and allows for quicker consideration of executive nominations and confirmation of some judges, it did not fulfill our prime objective; Bring Back the Talking Filibuster.

The truth is, in over 200 years, the U.S. Senate has only made changes to the way it does business a handful of times.  The fact remains that if not for our grassroots effort and strong coalition partners on this obscure issue the changes we did win likely would have never occurred.

What rules did change:

• Once cloture (the votes needed to beat a filibuster) is met, the next step - The Motion to Proceed can no longer be filibuster for a second time.
• Amount of delay time once cloture is reach on a bill has been reduced from 30 hours to 2 hours
• Post cloture debate time on executive nominations has been reduced from 30 hours to 8 hours.  For district court nominations from 30 hours to 2 hours.
• Lastly, a gentlemen's agreement - The two Leaders have also agreed Senators who wish to object or threaten a filibuster must actually come to the floor to do so. And second, the two Leaders will seek to see that post-cloture time is actually used in debate.  If Senators are seeking to slow down business by simply requesting a quorum call to delay action, the Senate will go live, force votes to produce a quorum, and otherwise work to make sure Senators actually show up and debate.

Yes, we did not accomplish our main goal; yet, we did accomplish much, in our 2 year fight to Fix the Senate.  We built a bigger and stronger coalition and had unprecedented grassroots involvement on this obscure issue. The changes we did win are due to the important grassroots mobilizations in the states and the work of great champions like Senators Jeff Merkley (OR), Tom Udall (NM) and Tom Harkin (IA). This change is also a result of work of CWA members to elect new Senators like Tammy Baldwin (WI), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Martin Heinrich (NM) and Chris Murphy (CT) who stood by their promises for reform.

We do need to take a lesson from this action, while 1103 was a leader based on the number of calls made in our jurisdiction, the fact remains many members did not take part in the action.  Simply put, we were not able to create enough pressure on a very popular and secure Senator to move him to fight for a Talking Filibuster.   CWA 1103 has 850 Verizon members, yet we only had 413 calls in the area codes where most of our members live (remembering 1101, 1107 & 1120 members also live here).   As “Right to Work” states are on the rise, voter suppression continues to exist, and jobs are shipped overseas due to bad trade agreements, if we do not step up, stand out and get involved in massive numbers, we may lose our ability to shape policy and one day protect our own jobs.