‘Filibuster’ is the most important word in the US Election.

With only a week to go until the US Election, much discussion focuses on the implications of any change at the White House. With Joe Biden’s current polling lead, and early polling which has likely already translated that into votes, the Senate is arguably far more important. Should there be a blue sweep where the White House and Senate move to the Democrats, this opens far more legislative options for Joe Biden. This includes the fiscal stimulus which markets are finally accepting won’t happen ahead of next week.

Major legislative changes however require a House majority (which the Democrats have) and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. A filibuster is effectively a political procedure, through the medium of an exceptionally long speech, designed to slow down proceedings to a halt and prevent a vote on a piece of legislation. Some of these filibusters are more blatant than others with marathon speeches on the topic at hand or senators just reading the phone book to delay proceedings. So, what can be done to prevent this? Either one party wins 60 Senate seats (highly unlikely), sufficient to pass a ‘cloture’ motion which effectively puts a time limit on any given debate or the new Senate votes to remove the filibuster for the entirely of the next session.

Joe Biden has previously favoured a bipartisan approach to legislation and therefore may be intellectually against the idea of filibuster reform which hugely strengthens the incumbent party. Yesterday’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett changes things though as should the Democrats wish to ‘pack’ the Supreme Court with liberal judges to change the new 6/3 conservative majority, they would need free run in the Senate. With mail-in ballots highly prevalent this election we may not know the true result until mid-November, but we may not see the true consequence of the vote until we see whether the filibuster is removed.