Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Senate's current cloture and filibuster rules are contrary to the constitutional design of two co-equal majoritarian legislative bodies, are non-deliberative in practice, disenfranchise Members of the House of Representatives and their constituents, and disrupt the proper balance of powers between the two chambers of Congress, and for other purposes.

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1439 Introduced in House (IH)]

<DOC>

119th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. RES. 1439

 Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United
 States Senate's current cloture and filibuster rules are contrary to
  the constitutional design of two co-equal majoritarian legislative
bodies, are non-deliberative in practice, disenfranchise Members of the
House of Representatives and their constituents, and disrupt the proper
 balance of powers between the two chambers of Congress, and for other
                               purposes.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             July 20, 2026

Mr. Cloud submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the
                           Committee on Rules

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION

 Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United
 States Senate's current cloture and filibuster rules are contrary to
  the constitutional design of two co-equal majoritarian legislative
bodies, are non-deliberative in practice, disenfranchise Members of the
House of Representatives and their constituents, and disrupt the proper
 balance of powers between the two chambers of Congress, and for other
                               purposes.

    Resolved,

SECTION 1. FINDINGS WITH RESPECT TO THE SENATE FILIBUSTER.

    (a) Founders' Intent Regarding Two Majoritarian Deliberative Bodies
of Equal Weight.--The House of Representatives finds the following:
            (1) The Framers of the Constitution deliberately designed
        the United States Congress as a bicameral legislature composed
        of two co-equal chambers, each intended to operate on the
        principle of majority rule. As James Madison wrote in
        Federalist No. 58: ``In all cases where justice or the general
        good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to
        be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would
        be reversed'' if a minority faction could defeat the wishes of
        the majority.
            (2) Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 22, explicitly
        condemned supermajority requirements as fundamentally anti-
        republican in nature, writing: ``Its real operation is to
        embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the
        government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or
        artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to
        the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable
        majority.''. Hamilton warned that requiring more than a
        majority to act tends ``to subject the sense of the greater
        number to that of the lesser.''.
            (3) The Constitutional Convention of 1787 specifically and
        deliberately rejected supermajority requirements as the default
        rule for ordinary legislation. The Constitution enumerates only
        six circumstances in which a supermajority is required (and
        ordinary legislation is conspicuously absent from this list of
        enumerated circumstances), as follows:
                    (A) Conviction on Impeachment (Article I, Section
                3).
                    (B) Expelling a Member of Congress (Article I,
                Section 5).
                    (C) Overriding a Presidential Veto (Article I,
                Section 7).
                    (D) Ratifying treaties (Article II, Section 2).
                    (E) Proposing Constitutional Amendments (Article
                V).
                    (F) Ratification of the Constitution by the States
                (Article VII).
    (b) The Current Senate Filibuster Is Not Deliberative.--The House
finds the following:
            (1) The original Senate filibuster, whatever its historical
        justification, required Senators to maintain continuous floor
        debate as a mechanism to delay rather than permanently defeat
        legislation, thereby preserving at least a nominal form of
        deliberation. The modern filibuster, as reformed in 1975 and
        subsequently, requires only that forty-one Senators signal
        their intent to object--without requiring any Senator to be
        present on the floor, to speak, or to engage in debate of any
        kind.
            (2) The Senate's ``two-track system'' implemented in the
        1970s, transformed the filibuster from an act of extended
        deliberation into a procedural veto exercisable by a minority
        without any requirement for sustained engagement with the
        legislation at issue. Under current Senate practice, a minority
        of Senators may prevent a bill passed by the House from
        receiving a vote by simply refusing to invoke cloture--without
        ever setting foot on the Senate floor to debate the merits of
        the legislation.
            (3) The Supreme Court of the United States, in INS v.
        Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983), reaffirmed that the Constitution's
        explicit procedural requirements for legislation reflect
        careful and deliberate choices by the Framers. Justice Burger,
        writing for the Court, emphasized that the procedures of
        bicameralism and presentment ``are integral parts of the
        constitutional design for the separation of powers''.
            (4) A procedure that permits forty-one Senators,
        potentially representing as little as eleven percent of the
        American population, to prevent the Senate from voting on
        legislation passed by a majority of the House of
        Representatives and supported by a majority of the Senate
        cannot be characterized as deliberation; it is, rather, a
        procedural mechanism for the exercise of minority veto power
        antithetical to the republican form of government guaranteed to
        the states by Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution.
    (c) The Current Senate Filibuster Is Counter to the Intent of Two
Co-Equal Majoritarian Bodies.--The House finds the following:
            (1) The Constitution vests all legislative powers in a
        Congress composed of two chambers, each of which was designed
        to reflect, through different mechanisms, the will of the
        American people. Article I, Section 1 states plainly: ``All
        legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress
        of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House
        of Representatives.'' The use of the conjunctive reflects the
        Framers' design that both chambers act--not that one chamber's
        minority may indefinitely prevent the other chamber's majority-
        passed legislation from receiving a vote.
            (2) The Senate was never designed to be a chamber in which
        forty-one members could permanently and without deliberation
        defeat legislation desired by a majority of both chambers. The
        Framers' intent, as reflected in the constitutional text and in
        the Federalist Papers, was that legislation supported by a
        majority of each chamber, and signed by the President, would
        become law--with the check on majority excess supplied not by
        minority veto but by the structural features of bicameralism,
        the presidential veto, and judicial review.
            (3) In United States v. Ballin, 144 U.S. 1 (1892), the
        Supreme Court held that each House of Congress has broad
        authority to establish its own rules of proceeding, but that
        such rules must not ``ignore constitutional restraints or
        violate fundamental rights''. A Senate rule that effectively
        nullifies the deliberative and majoritarian function of the
        House of Representatives, as an institution co-equal under
        Article I, raises serious questions about whether such a rule
        operates within constitutional limits.
            (4) The Senate filibuster, as currently practiced, produces
        a structural asymmetry between the two chambers wholly foreign
        to the constitutional design: the House of Representatives,
        which must pass legislation by majority vote, has its
        deliberative output systematically negated not by a Senate
        majority's considered rejection, but by a Senate minority's
        procedural objection--leaving the House majority without any
        meaningful legislative recourse and rendering House passage of
        legislation an exercise without practical consequence whenever
        Senate minority opposition exists.
    (d) The Senate Filibuster Prevents Legislation Passed by the House
From Receiving Proper Consideration in the Senate.--The House finds the
following:
            (1) The Constitution's bicameral design contemplates that
        legislation passed by one chamber will be considered by the
        other chamber on its merits and ultimately accepted, rejected,
        or amended by majority action in that chamber. The current
        Senate filibuster permits legislation passed by the House of
        Representatives to be tabled indefinitely without a floor vote,
        without committee action, and without any substantive
        consideration of its merits by the Senate as a body.
            (2) The Supreme Court in Chadha noted that the procedures
        of Article I, Section 7, requiring passage by both Houses, were
        designed to ensure that legislation reflects considered
        deliberation by both chambers. When one chamber's output is
        systematically blocked from consideration by the other
        chamber's procedural rules, the bicameral design is subverted:
        one of the two constitutionally required steps in the
        legislative process is made effectively optional by minority
        fiat.
            (3) The constitutional design of the Senate as a
        deliberative body capable of amending, improving, and checking
        legislation passed by the House is not served, but rather
        undermined, by procedural rules that prevent the Senate as a
        body from ever deliberating on House-passed legislation.
        Deliberation requires engagement with the substance of
        legislation; a procedural block imposed before Senate floor
        consideration begins forecloses rather than fulfills the
        deliberative function.
    (e) The Senate Filibuster Unconstitutionally Disenfranchises the
House, Its Members, and the People They Represent.--The House finds the
following:
            (1) The House of Representatives was designed by the
        Framers as the chamber most directly accountable to the people
        of the United States. As Madison wrote in Federalist No. 52,
        the House was to have ``an immediate dependence on, and an
        intimate sympathy with, the people''--a design reflected in
        two-year terms, proportional representation, and direct popular
        election. When Senate procedural rules systemically prevent
        House-passed legislation from receiving a Senate vote, the
        political accountability that justifies the House's
        representative function is undermined.
            (2) The equal dignity and constitutional standing of the
        House of Representatives as a co-equal branch of Congress is
        impaired when Senate rules are deployed to ensure that
        legislation passed by a majority of the House is never
        considered on the merits by the Senate. The constitutional
        design places both chambers on equal footing as necessary
        participants in the legislative process; a Senate procedural
        rule that renders one chamber's majority action a nullity
        disrupts the constitutional balance between the two Houses.
            (3) The voters who elect Members of the House of
        Representatives do so with the reasonable and constitutionally
        grounded expectation that their representative, if part of a
        legislative majority, can pass legislation that will be
        considered, and accepted or rejected on the merits, by the
        Senate. When the Senate filibuster prevents that consideration,
        the votes of House members' constituents are effectively
        nullified not by a Senate majority's substantive disagreement,
        but by a Senate minority's procedural refusal to permit a vote.
            (4) The Supreme Court has consistently held that the right
        to vote includes the right to have one's vote counted and to
        have it carry its constitutionally intended weight. In Reynolds
        v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), Chief Justice Warren wrote that
        ``the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or
        dilution of the weight of a citizen's vote just as effectively
        as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise''.
        While Reynolds addressed apportionment, its core principle,
        that procedural mechanisms that systematically diminish the
        effective weight of votes are constitutionally suspect, applies
        with force to Senate rules that render the legislative output
        of popularly elected House majorities meaningless.

SEC. 2. ADDITIONAL FINDINGS AND SENSE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
              WITH RESPECT TO THE FILIBUSTER.

    (a) Findings.--The House of Representatives finds the following:
            (1) The Framers of the Constitution intended both the House
        of Representatives and the United States Senate to operate as
        majoritarian deliberative bodies of equal constitutional
        standing.
            (2) The current Senate filibuster, as practiced under the
        two-track system established in the 1970s, is not a
        deliberative mechanism but a procedural veto device enabling a
        minority of Senators to prevent floor votes without engaging in
        any form of substantive debate.
            (3) The current Senate filibuster is contrary to the
        Framers' intent that ordinary legislation be subject to
        majority rule in each chamber, as demonstrated by the text of
        the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the records of the
        Constitutional Convention.
            (4) The Senate filibuster prevents legislation passed by
        the House of Representatives from receiving proper deliberative
        consideration in the Senate, subverting the bicameral design of
        Article I of the Constitution.
            (5) The Senate filibuster unconstitutionally
        disenfranchises Members of the House of Representatives and the
        constituents they represent by rendering House majority action
        without meaningful legislative consequence.
            (6) The Senate filibuster, as currently practiced, disrupts
        the proper constitutional balance between the two co-equal
        chambers of Congress.
    (b) Sense of the House.--It is the sense of the House of
Representatives that--
            (1) the United States Senate should reform or abolish its
        cloture and filibuster rules to restore the principle of
        majority rule to Senate proceedings on legislation;
            (2) the Senate should establish procedures ensuring that
        legislation passed by a majority of the House of
        Representatives receives a timely floor vote in the Senate,
        with final disposition determined by a majority of Senators
        present and voting;
            (3) Senate rules should preserve the minority's right to be
        heard and to offer amendments, while ensuring that the minority
        cannot permanently prevent a majority from acting;
            (4) the constitutional design of two co-equal majoritarian
        chambers requires that both the House and the Senate operate on
        the fundamental principle that, after adequate deliberation, a
        majority determines the outcome; and
            (5) Congress as a whole is best served by procedural rules
        in both chambers that facilitate deliberation, accountability,
        and majority governance, consistent with the constitutional
        vision articulated by the Framers of the Constitution.

SEC. 3. TRANSMISSION.

    The Clerk of the House of Representatives shall transmit a copy of
this resolution to the President pro tempore of the United States
Senate, the Majority Leader of the Senate, the Minority Leader of the
Senate, and to each Member of the Senate.
                                 <all>