“C-SPAN, the official network for wide shots of empty chairs…every time I tune into C-SPAN it looks like they just had a fire drill…C-SPAN is one unpaid electric bill from being a radio station…people think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush but did you know every day from 4-5 he hosts a show on C-SPAN?” Seth Myers remarked at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, saying how C-SPAN is nothing but people walking around aimlessly and long shots of old, rusty desks. I’m going to discuss how one of the most advanced forms of government in the world is televised and to the average viewer, it is a channel filled with empty rooms and no progress. I’m going to discuss how time operates inside the Senate because it is very different from other chambers of government, especially the House. Compared to the House, where the gavel is the pulse of the chamber and sometimes House representatives have to take their conversations to the cloakroom because too much is happening inside, the Senate has a much different rhythm. Time does not matter in the Senate. Quorum calls, or a call of the roll, is used as a delay to work out some difficulty or wait for a senator to speak. Time stands still until a senator comes to the floor to speak or while the majority leader reaches an agreement with the other party who’s arguing a piece of legislation.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4510865/quorum-call

In this video nothing happens. One of the most powerful groups of leaders in the world sometimes has sessions where virtually nothing occurs in the chamber. Again, to the average viewer that might seem strange and odd but senators are working outside the chamber too. Nonetheless, these quorum calls are the biggest example that time does not matter in the Senate. The Speaker in the House has authority over the rest of the House members but the majority leader in the Senate does not preside. The majority leader’s desk faces the front of the chamber towards the Vice President’s desk whereas the desk of the Speaker is at the front and faces the hundreds of desks of representatives. It is the job of the majority leader to keep the tempo of the Senate compared to the Speaker’s gavel in the House.

The Senate is essentially filled with one hundred equal members. The reigning principle in the Senate is unanimous consent which means any member can object to any motion. Once an action passed unanimous consent and makes it to the floor, debate starts and most of the time there is no time limit to debate. After the speeches are made defending the character of the bill by the bill sponsor or committee chair, amendments can be offered and once again there is no time limit. There are no limits on the number of amendments, who can offer amendments, or the length of time for debate. It’s fascinating how a body of representatives with few time constraints is equal to the House of Representatives where there are designated times to discuss just about everything.

One of the few structures where the majority and minority leader have time each day to speak is during the opening procedures. After the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, the majority leader is given leader time to speak about the events happening that day or something the White House said or any remark he chooses and whatever time he does not use he can use it later. The same follows for the minority leader, he may speak as long as he chooses and he has the right to reserve the time he doesn’t use. My next clip is from the Senate Session on May 16, 2012. Senate Majority Leader Reid starts off his majority leader time with cyber insecurity, a new farm bill that saves the country twenty-three million dollars, and fixing the gender wage gap. He also used his time to discuss how the Republican Party has no interest in fixing the problems needing the most work in Washington. Senate Minority Leader McConnell used his time to discuss complaints about campaign finance and the federal budget. He said the Democrats don’t have a budget of their own and yet they vote against every budget the Republicans have thwarted to the chamber. The two leaders stand next to each other and talk directly about each other but they do not face each other when they speak. During this time, the Senate is rarely filled with Senators so it is mainly used to show how each of the leaders care about the body and what points they feel the most passionate about each day.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4510936/senate-session

Voting is also much different in the Senate than in the House. In the House, voting is done by machine but in the Senate the clerk calls the roll of all the senators to hear their vote. However, senators don’t have to wait for their name to be called, they can vote at any time. Voting does take a lot of time though, for example, “in the 110th Congress, there were 657 votes taking 225 hours or nine percent of the entire time the Senate was in session that year.” (Robert Browning, The Televised Congress) Also, the motion to end discussion of a bill occurs through unanimous consent. Any member can object to the Senate moving to a vote. These are called filibusters, or unlimited debate that any representative can start and sustain. Filibusters are extreme but there have been some examples showing time is of no meaning in the Senate.
The longest filibusters in recorded history have been the following: February 23, 1988, when Republican Senators debated the Campaign Finance Bill for fifty-three hours; October 5, 1992, when Senators D’Amato and Moynihan debated an amendment to a tax bill for fifteen hours; November 12, 2003, when Senator Reid debated judicial nominations for nine hours, July 17, 2007, when Republican Senators debated an objection to a defense bill for thirty hours; March 6, 2013, when Senator Paul debated the drone policy and the nomination of John Brennan as CIA Director for thirteen hours; and finally, when Senator Cruz debated the Affordable Care Act on September 24, 2013 for twenty-one hours. Some might praise these senators for standing up and debating over something they feel passionate about while others might look at it as a way to get attention by the media, but regardless, this goes back to the idea that time does not matter in the Senate and it is puzzling how bills are passed when there is no inherent/complex structure (like in the House) on how to do business.

Because there is no written structure on how to handle time in the Senate, there have been several debates on how to better this dilemma. In 2005, there was a nuclear option – which is a parliamentary procedure that allows the Senate to override a rule or precedent by majority vote – proposed by the Republicans. Senator Biden said the option undermined the protection of the minority point of view and that it broke the fundamental rules and structure of the Senate. He said the Republican Party was trying to “hijack the federal courts” and that in no form is it fair because it alters the uniqueness of the United States Senate. Senator Biden said it was his single most important vote that he would cast in his three decades in the Senate. I ended the clip with the rhetorical question he asks the body: “Why for the first time since 1789 is the Republican-controlled Senate attempting to change the rule of unlimited debate?” Problems like these cause great disagreements in the Senate; there is no idea of time or efficiency in the Senate to some that is a time to shine in the spotlight of filibusters while others see that as an opportunity to change and make it time-oriented through nuclear options.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4510931/senator-biden

The opening of the 113th Congress is the most recent example of rule changes on unlimited debate. In January 2013, the Senate reached a three-part compromise. First, was on filibustering the motion to proceed. This shortened the time senators had to take up a bill during post-cloture time, it meant the vote would take place one day after rather than two and there would no longer be any post-cloture debate. Also, there was a provision to move to a debate if and only if each side agreed to submit one amendment. The second part of the compromise applied to quorum calls. As you’ve seen above, quorum calls are long and boring and this agreement said quorum calls should be limited in post-cloture debate. The argument was senators should be allowed to speak during this time and not be drained with quorum calls.

The final agreement was over filibustering federal nominees. They said post cloture debate on judicial nominations are now limited to two hours and all other nomination are limited to eight hours. As well as these revisions in 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and fellow Democrats invoked nuclear option on filibusters. This meant federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments only need a simple majority to advance rather than the sixty vote supermajority that had been the rule for nearly a half century. When a body like the Senate where every member has the power to object to any motion, it prides itself on the rights given to the minority party. This nuclear option allows the president to have his nominees approved with little political obstruction if his party holds the majority.

The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution very carefully, and most would agree they were vague when they needed to be vague and they were specific otherwise. Regarding the Senate, there are seven short paragraphs in Article 1, Section 3 discussing the roles of the Senate in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is a living, breathing document because it has so much room for change but the Senate has such a unique manner of unlimited debate and virtually no real sense of time. It was the first body of government that was set up in such a way; the structure of time in the Senate is puzzling as it is fascinating.

In conclusion, I have shown you how meaningless the concept of time is in the Senate. This lack of an awareness of time is so unique and starkly different from that of the House of Representatives that it allows for unlimited debate, or filibusters. When Seth Myers jokingly commented on how C-SPAN is nothing more than empty shots of empty desks, he wasn’t that far off from reality. Yes the Senate uses quorum calls for nearly one-third of their sessions but that does not mean nothing is getting done. The simplicity of the Senate is so interesting and unique that I chose to dive in more and examine how a group of people can operate without a sense of time. Time is what moves all of us around and yet U.S. Senators almost stand still when inside the Senate chamber.