If we're to believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, there's a chance that both sides of the Senate are coming together as they strike a small deal on filibuster reform. It's not much, as critics are pointing out, but it's something. The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, explains.

With the election behind us and several new Democrats on their way to Washington, Senate majority leader Harry Reid intends to push controversial filibuster reform through Congress. But in order to do that, he’ll have to convince some fellow Democrats who are currently on the fence. Takeaway Washington Correspondent Todd Zwillich explains. 

The American political system was constructed and remains a machine designed to slow down - not expedite - policy.

The founding fathers designed the filibuster as a last resort to be used rarely to block legislation seen as likely to pass but deemed dangerous by one member of the Senate.

It’s hard to imagine the Senate without the filibuster, but now the non-profit group Common Cause is filing a lawsuit against the Supreme Court claiming that the notorious senate procedure is, in fact, unconstitutional. The Takeaway talks with the plaintiff’s attorney Emmet Bondurant and filibuster scholar Gregory Koger to find out where the filibuster came from, what good it’s done us, and whether it’s going to stick around.        

After the Senate last week defeated President Obama's American Jobs Act through filibuster, the Congressional tactic has come under a lot of criticism. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin said Tuesday that he favors a return to earlier (and tougher) rules, which required dissenting lawmakers hold ...

Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator from Vermont (I), and author of The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, talks about current budget battles, and his filibuster.

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The U.S. Senate is poised to vote today on a number of rules changes, from making it harder for individual senators to hold up legislation to potentially limiting the filibuster.Susan Liss, Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Mimi Marziani, counsel for the Democracy Program, explain the potential change to the filibuster. They are both authors of a new study released by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Filibuster Abuse.”

There are national debates we need to conduct, yet the Senate is held captive by a measure that, under the pretense of extending debate, actually prevents debates from ever taking place. Furthermore, there are times when a broad consensus exists across party aisles, yet secret steps allow individual Senators to scuttle this unity.

I think many of the rule changes being floated by Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado make a whole heck of a lot of sense. I think it's insane that you need 60 votes to even bring a debate to the floor in the Senate, and why we haven't barred secret holds on legislation already is entirely beyond me.

But the wisdom of pushing for these common sense rule changes might be derailed by the overkill path the Democrats are using to get there.

Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich caught up with Vice President Joe Biden yesterday. Biden, who was traveling his old stomping grounds on Capitol Hill to swear in Senator Scott Brown, had some interesting things to say about the filibuster rule in the Senate.

This week in Washington has been all about the F word you can say on the air: 'Filibuster.'

The election of Republican Scott Brown as Massachusetts' new junior senator on Tuesday night sent shock waves through Washington. Politicians of on both sides of the aisle flocked to microphones to give their takes on the future of health care reform now that the Democrats no longer have the Senate 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster. But how did we come to expect a 59-vote majority as a bad thing? We look at the history of the supermajority.