Biden Supports Changes To Filibuster, Returning It To 'What It Used To Be'

President Biden on Tuesday told ABC News he supports reforming the filibuster, calling on the chamber to readapt its old standard of requiring dissenting members to verbally speak on the floor to delay action on a bill.

"I don't think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days," Biden said in an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking."

Filibustering is the controversial Senate practice designed to block action on a bill, first coming into existence as a means to preserve slavery in the United States.

Republicans in recent years have effectively weaponized the practice, and some Democrats, newly and narrowly empowered in the Senate, have called to reform the procedure or do away with it altogether.

"It's getting to the point where, you know, democracy is having a hard time functioning," Biden said in the ABC interview.

President Biden on Tuesday told ABC News he supports reforming the filibuster, calling on the chamber to readapt its old standard of requiring dissenting members to verbally speak on the floor to delay action on a bill.

"I don't think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days," Biden said in an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking."

Filibustering is the controversial Senate practice designed to block action on a bill, first coming into existence as a means to preserve slavery in the United States.