When President Biden expressed his support For a modest filibuster change this week, reform advocates saw it as a major turning point. Their reason for a party? The president acknowledged that the fate of his agenda is linked to the senate process, making campaign promises difficult to fulfill. And a blocked agenda can have consequences for the party.
“It’s going to be Armageddon,” Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley told CBS News when asked if Democrats will suffer in the meantime if they don’t implement reforms. ‘Our base will be so despondent, so angry, so dissatisfied. They will stay at home. And I understand why they stay at home if we don’t succeed. ‘
Merkley has long pushed for changes to the filibuster, introducing the “talking filibuster” that would require senators to actually take the floor to stop legislation rather than the current practice of calling it. he supported reforms like that, which reminded him of how the upper room worked in his early days as a senator. Now he said, “It gets to the point where, you know, democracy has a hard time working.”
Support for major changes in the filibuster is still a long way off, and some Democratic senators, such as Joe Manchin, continue to oppose changing the 60-vote threshold for legislation, even though they appear to be open to adjustment.
But advocates note that Republicans have not yet introduced legislation, such as the COVID account for emergency aid, which via a reconciliation process that only requires support from the majority. As soon as the opposition starts seriously with agenda items such as voting rights, climate, immigration and other democratic priorities, calls from the base of the party to change the rules of the upper house will only get louder.
“Right now it’s an abstract problem, nothing has been filed yet. It will happen very soon,” said Eli Zupnick, spokesman for Fix Our Senate, who launched a six-figure ad campaign this week to push lawmakers to file the filibuster to eliminate.
Democratic candidates “didn’t run,” we’ll do these things for you if McConnell allows us, “said Zupnick, a former Senate aide.” When Democrats show voters and people why they elected Democrats, they have the best chance to keep the majority … But if they don’t do those things, people will wonder why they put Democrats in charge when they don’t. t deliver. “
Merkley said his party’s voters are becoming increasingly frustrated after seeing Republicans change the filibuster’s rules to confirm Supreme Court nominees by simple majority – the court is a major agenda item for the GOP – while the Democrats express their reluctance to change the rules for their priorities.
“Our base goes,” What a bunch of idiots you are, “Merkley said. “You campaigned for this stuff and you’re going to give the Republicans a simple majority vote just saying, ‘Well, I’m sorry but we can’t get anything done because McConnell is blocking us?’ They expect us to have the same guts to get things done that the Republicans had to get their agendas done. ”
Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the leadership, has this week pushed for filibuster reform. “If there had been no reconciliation, we would have little more than nominations for this session,” he said.
The filibuster is not mandated by the constitution and the rules on preventing legislation have been revised over time. But it did not become a widespread obstruction tool until the late 20th century. And in the past decade, “there have been as many clotting movements in the past 10 years (959) as there have been in the 60-year period from 1947 to 2006 (960),” said the Brennan Center.
In 2013, then-Senate Leader Harry Reid moved to change the filibuster to allow for judicial and executive appointments with support from the simple majority after Republicans blocked President Obama’s nominees. When Republicans gained control of the Senate, McConnell changed the rules to approve Supreme Court justices by simple majority, paving the way for the confirmation of three nominees under the Trump administration.
Filibuster changes are “usually tied to a specific policy moment,” said Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. “It’s a long war of attrition … with both sides sometimes in the majority, sometimes in the minority, and frustrated by the impediment of being willing to change the way the Senate works.”
Activists believe the specific policy moment to push for filibuster reform this time around is the right to vote, with a sweeping proposal that has passed the house and is likely to threaten death in the Senate. The issue was central to Senate campaigns in Georgia that gave Democrats a majority.
One of those senators, Rafael Warnock, used his first-floor speech this week to get that message across. “It is contradictory to say that we must protect the rights of minorities in the Senate while refusing to protect the rights of minorities in society,” he said. “Fellow Members, no Senate rule should override the integrity of democracy and we must find a way to pass the vote whether we get rid of the filibuster or not.”
Former President Obama endorsed the filibuster’s killing to protect voting rights, noting that it has traditionally been used to block civil rights law.
But Mr. Biden hasn’t gone that far. And there are limits to how far the talking filibuster he endorsed could actually ease the obstruction, if it took 60 more votes after the debate to go ahead with the bill. The question is also whether such a delay would have any effect on other legislation that the Senate is considering.
Currently, the “no-show” filibuster allows the Senate to move to other items, while the filibrated bill is brought to a halt. The procedural step could be changed to force senators who want to block a measure to stand on the ground and talk about it for hours and days. This would allow them to become a little more selective about the bills they would submit. And talking filibusters could also demand a majority prize if they stop the action on all other items, including the priorities the majority wants to move – like other bills or nominations – while the filibuster is in progress.
Other than slowing down the already famous slow-acting Senate, what would this accomplish? If lawmakers had the courage, a true filibuster reform could give senators more time to talk to each other and find a compromise.
“When we look at these reforms, the devil is in the details,” says Zupnick. “It has to be so that these reforms actually lead to the passing of bills. There has to come a time when it comes to a conclusion.”
Manchin, who has expressed openness to a speaking filibuster, said this week that maintaining the 60-vote threshold is a priority for him and he said he opposes making exceptions to certain pieces of legislation, such as a bill for voting rights. . His presence in the Senate reminds us that even if Democrats had the vote to change the filibuster’s rules, which they don’t, it’s not clear that some of the more moderate Democrats would support any major piece of legislation anyway.
“We always have to ask ourselves, are there actually 50 votes in the Senate? The rules are not magical, they cannot enforce an agreement if there is no agreement,” says Reynolds.
The West Virginia Senator pointed to the other part of Biden’s comments where he said he did not think the filibuster should be eliminated, taking those comments to show “ the importance of preserving the filibuster and preserving the rights of the filibuster. minority. . On possible reforms, he added: “Everyone has different ideas and there is a good conversation to be had.”
Adam Jentleson, a former assistant to Senator Reid who recently published a book on senate rule reform called Kill Switch, says a talking filibuster with a 60-vote threshold could ease the drag on smaller bills, but Republicans are likely struggling. would do to be present to block big ticket items.
Jentleson says filibuster reforms will likely take a while, but Mr. Biden’s comments this week were important in moving the needle.
“It’s not all we want, but it’s very encouraging,” he said. “Not only the endorsement of a talking filibuster, but also his reflection on the use of the filibuster since his time in the Senate, showing that he is thinking very seriously about this.”
“It’s March 2021 and you have President Biden and Joe Manchin endorsing the concept of reform. Even if in very lenient terms, that alone is light years ahead of where I thought we would be right now,” he said . “This is the senate equivalent of a very rapid shift.”