I’m going to talk to you today about the King Kong in the room that is destroying our republic, and that, for some reason, nobody but me is talking about. I’ve written an article about it and given a video; I’m the only one who’s talking about it. And yet, everyone is talking about it. Everywhere on the news you’ll hear about President Trump and the Republicans trying to do what they call budget reconciliation. What that budget reconciliation is, it’s an exception to the rule, and the rule is what I’m going to talk about.

On the Filibuster Rule

The rule is an abomination. The rule is called the filibuster rule, as I show in an article; it’s completely unconstitutional. A basic feature of every republic—this is going back to Rome—and when the founders formed this country, they had very specific governmental principles in mind. They had read Aristotle, they had studied Athens, they had studied ancient history, they had read all the great government philosophers. And what they wanted for us was a republic, and the one feature that is most basic to a republic is it’s not a democracy. The people don’t get to just sit around and vote for everything that happens. They elect representatives, and the representatives—first, there’s the executive representative, that’s the president; but the most important is actually the legislative.

The Structure of Our Government

And in our system we have 2 houses of Congress so that one house can’t just vote for something and run away with it. The second house has to vote for it too—the House of Representatives originally have always been elected directly by the people; the Senate originally was not elected by the people. It was elected by the state legislatures and was supposed to represent the states. But the Constitution was amended by the progressives early in the 20th century to change that, so now the Senate is also directly elected. But both houses have to agree to anything for it to be legislation. That’s in Article One of Section 7 of the Constitution. It’s got very specific procedures of what’s required for a law to be a law, and also in the Constitution you can’t change the Constitution unless you do what’s in Article 5. Article 5 of the Constitution describes very specifically the things that have to be done legally to change the Constitution.

Changing the Constitution Through the Filibuster

And what the senators have done with the filibuster, they have changed the Constitution. The Constitution requires majority rule in each house of Congress, plain and simple. The filibuster changes that, so that in the Senate you have to get 60 votes; 59 is not enough. And what that does is that it gives a minority—the defeated minority—a veto over the majority. That’s why when senators want to put together a bill, they have to make all these deals among themselves, where they’re paying each other off with our money, buying each other off. It’s called pork; that’s how the pork gets there—the filibuster.

On Voting Power and Legislative Impasse

If it wasn’t for the filibuster, they could just have majority rule votes, and there wouldn’t be any buying of votes, or at least not in that blatant manner. It could still happen, but it wouldn’t be anywhere nearly as bad, because now people that are actually against anything that the majority wants have to be obtained to vote for what the majority wants. That’s why it gives the minority greater voting power than the majority. And one of the things in the Constitution is each senator is supposed to have one vote, and only one vote. But with the filibuster, the minority gets effectively more than a vote because they get to veto what the majority wants. And what this means is that nothing can pass in the Senate—no law can pass that is not approved by not only the majority but a minority. And we all know how impossible it is to get people that are opposed to everything that the Republicans want to vote for anything that they want. So when the people elect Republicans to represent them, they can’t get what they want.

Consequences for Our Republic

This guarantees that there is not going to be any draining of the swamp while President Trump is president, no matter how Impressive everything he does is, if they don’t get rid of the filibuster; because in addition to being unable to pass any laws without having a super majority, they can’t repeal any. And the biggest problem we have in this country is a hundred fifty years of garbage legislation that has created all of these regulatory agencies that pass unconstitutional laws—called regulations—which we all have to live under, even though none of those regulations pass as a law under Article I, Section VII, because they weren’t passed pursuant to those procedures.

Historical Context and Modern Implications

What happened was, in 1946, after the New Deal had been going on, Congress passed what’s called the Administrative Procedure to try to pretend that they could create procedures permitting these regulatory agencies to pass laws—which they call regulations because they don’t qualify as laws. But none of that would be possible without the filibuster, because the filibuster—when they had 60 votes—they went ahead and did all that stuff. When the Democrats had 60 votes, they went ahead and did all, and now that the Republicans are in the majority, the people have elected them to drain the swamp, they cannot repeal anything that was done for the last 150 years. And they can’t even get rid of all of those regulations that were just passed by unelected bureaucrats. The senators had to veto them originally in order for them to pass. That’s not the way laws are supposed to pass; they’re supposed to be approved by both houses of Congress. That’s not the way those laws pass when it’s a regulation. The regulations go up, and then the senators, or the Congress, have to veto them for them not to become a law. And then, once they’re a law—even though they’re not called a law, they’re called regulation because they don’t qualify as laws—once that happens, they can only get repealed if 60 senators will vote to repeal them, and that’s because of the filibuster rule.

Constitutional Concerns

I can show you other things in the Constitution that make very clear that it’s unconstitutional. First of all, the Constitution gives the vice president one vote in the Senate, but only when they are, quote-unquote, equally divided. So the Constitution specifically contemplates a majority rule, with the vice president able to break the even division and make a majority. That’s the only time he’s allowed to vote; he’s not allowed to vote to get the extra vote in a super majority, only in that one situation. That’s in the Constitution.

Final Call to Action

I’m Cliff Ribner, and I hope you follow me, and I hope you tell your senator to get rid of that filibuster, because only if we put pressure on them will they do it. The courts have passed all these laws, even though it’s unconstitutional, which means it affects every one of us. If any of us filed a lawsuit to try to get rid of the filibuster, any federal court would throw us out; they would say, “Oh, you don’t have standing.” That’s one of these rules they’ve created, even though the Constitution should be enforceable by everybody.

Anyway, you have to put pressure on your senator and call President Trump and ask him to put pressure on them to get rid of the filibuster, because we are not going to have a republic if they don’t. To have a republic, there has to be a majority rule vote in each house of the legislature; we don’t have that, and the Senate—and the Senate alone—has destroyed our republic by having that filibuster rule. And the way it got there originally was Aaron Burr, who was a traitor, tricked them into passing it as part of his treason.