The filibuster has been a time-trusted tool of the Senate to ensure no single party ever has too much power.
But that could change soon amid growing calls from the left to ditch the procedure altogether. It would allow Democrats to quickly enact the most radical progressive agenda in generations.
“Everything’s on the table,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on MSNBC this month in what was considered a warning shot aimed at getting Senate Republicans to stop blocking legislation.
But so far, that call has gone unheard – and Democrats are now reportedly looking at two possible courses of action.
The first is the straight removal of the filibuster, which would mean a cloture vote would require a simple majority instead of the current 60.
The problem with that is Democrats would need a majority of the Senate to agree to that change – and several members of their own conference, including Sens. Joe Manchin, W.V., and Kyrsten Sinema, Az., are publicly against it.
And liberal dreams that either one might change their mind seem to be just that: dreams.
“I’m still at 60,” Manchin told CNN just this past week. “That’s where I’m at. I haven’t changed.”
Sinema is similarly unmoved.
“Retaining the legislative filibuster is not meant to impede the things we want to get done,” she said in a recent statement. “Rather, it’s meant to protect what the Senate was designed to be: a place where senators come together, find compromise and get things done for our country.”
But Democrats do have one hope there: They believe Republicans under Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ky., might overplay their hand and block something important even to those opposed to ending the filibuster.
“If Republicans block S.1, that will turn up the heat on taking away Mitch McConnell’s veto,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said of a voting rights and campaign finance reform legislation popular among Senate Democrats.
Warren went a step further and played the left’s favorite card.
“The filibuster has deep roots in racism, and it should not be permitted to serve that function, or to create a veto for the minority,” she told Axios. “In a democracy, it’s majority rules.”
But if they still can’t get enough support to kill the filibuster, they have a backup plan.
That’s restoring the old-fashioned filibuster, with senators talking for as long as they can, holding the floor for days. But when they can’t talk any longer, matters such as cloture would be settled with a simple majority.
That rule changed in 1975, but Democrats have suggested bringing it back as a compromise to keep the filibuster in some form while also breaking it.
President Joe Biden suggested that as an option during an ABC interview last week.
“You’ve got to work for the filibuster,” he said. “It is almost getting to the point where democracy is having a hard time functioning.”
But Republicans are already calling his bluff on that one.
“I would talk until I fell over,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., vowed, referring specifically to how he’d block Warren’s voting rights bill.
McConnell – who defended the filibuster when President Donald Trump urged Republicans to do away with it – warned of two unintended consequences the left would face.
First would happen almost immediately, as the Republican minority floods the floor with procedural moves and talking filibusters to bring business to a halt.
“The Senate would be like a 100-car pileup,” he predicted. “Nothing moving.”
Indeed, the Senate can’t conduct any other business – not even confirming nominations – during a filibuster.
The second would come down the road… when Republicans eventually regain control of the chambers.
“The pendulum would swing both ways,” McConnell said. “And it would swing hard.’’
Then, he offered liberals a preview.
“As soon as Republicans wound up back in the saddle, we wouldn’t just erase every liberal change that hurt the country,” he said. “We’d strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero input from the other side.”
That moment may not be as far off in the future as Democrats want to believe: Given the razor-thin margins in Congress, Republicans could conceivably win back both the House and Senate in 2022… and take back the White House in 2024.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.