When President Biden expressed his support for a modest filibuster change this week, proponents of the reform took it as a big turning point. Your reason for celebration? The president acknowledged that the fate of his agenda is tied to the Senate procedure, making it difficult to keep campaign promises. And a disrupted agenda could have consequences for the party.
“It will be Armageddon,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley told CBS News when asked if Democrats will suffer in the medium term if they don’t adopt filibuster reforms. “Our base will be so discouraged, so angry, so disappointed. They will stay home. And I understand why they will stay home if we fail them.”
Merkley has long been pushing for filibuster changes and introduced the “talking filibuster” that would require senators to take the floor to uphold legislation rather than the current practice of calling it. In an interview with ABC News, Mr. Biden said he supported such reforms, which reminded him of the running of the upper house in his early days as a senator. Now, he said, “it gets to the point where, as you know, democracy is hard to work with.”
Support for significant filibuster changes is still a long way off, as some Democratic senators like Joe Manchin remain in opposition to changing the 60-vote threshold for legislation, even if they seem open to adjustments.
But advocates point out that Republicans have not yet obstructed legislation, such as the COVID relief invoice, which was broadcast on party lines via a conciliation process this only requires majority support. Once the opposition really starts on agenda items such as the right to vote, the climate, immigration and other democratic priorities, calls from the party base to change upper house rules will only increase.
“Right now it’s an abstract issue, nothing has been leaked yet. It will be done really fast,” said Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for Fix Our Senate, which this week launched a six-figure advertising campaign that pushed lawmakers remove the filibuster.
Democratic candidates “didn’t participate,” we’ll do these things for you if McConnell allows us, “says Zupnick, a former Senate aide.” If Democrats show voters and people why they chose them, they have the best chance of keep the majority … But if they don’t do these things, people will wonder why they put Democrats in the lead if they don’t. “I don’t deliver.”
Merkley said her party’s voters are frustrated to see Republicans change filibuster rules to confirm Supreme Court candidates by simple majority (the court is the main topic on the Republican Party’s agenda), while that Democrats are reluctant to change the rules because of their priorities.
“Our base is ‘what a bunch of idiots you are,'” Merkley said. nothing because McConnell is blocking us? “They expect us to have the same desire to do the things that Republicans had to meet their agenda.”
Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the leadership, has been pushing for filibuster reform this week. “If it weren’t for reconciliation, we would have little to show in this session apart from the nominations,” he said.
The filibuster is not required by the Constitution and the rules on prevention of legislation have been revised over time. But it did not become a frequent tool of obstruction until the late twentieth century. And over the last decade, “there have been as many closing movements in the last ten years (959) as during the 60-year period from 1947 to 2006 (960),” according to the Brennan Center.
In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to change the filibuster to allow for judicial and executive appointments with the support of the simple majority after Republicans blocked President Obama’s candidates. Then, 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.
Molly Reynolds, a senior researcher in Governance Studies at Brookings, says changes to the filibuster “are generally related to a specific policy moment.” “It’s a long war of attrition … where both sides are sometimes in the majority sometimes in the minority and frustrated with the obstruction they were willing to make a change in the way the Senate works.”
Activists believe the specific political moment to push for filibuster reform this time around is about voting rights, with a widespread proposal that has passed the House and is likely to die in the Senate. The issue was central to the Senate campaigns in Georgia, which gave Democrats a majority.
One of those senators, Rafael Warnock, used his inaugural speech this week to push that message forward. “It is a contradiction to say that we must protect the rights of minorities in the Senate while we refuse to protect the rights of minorities in society,” he said. “Colleagues, no Senate rule should override the integrity of democracy and we need to find a way to pass voting rights, whether we get rid of the filibuster or not.”
Former President Obama approved killing the filibuster to protect voting rights, noting that it has traditionally been used to block civil rights legislation.
But Mr. Biden has not gone that far. And there are limits to what the talking filibuster he passed could ease the obstruction, if 60 votes were still needed to move to the bill after the debate. There is also a question as to whether this withholding would have any effect on other legislation the Senate is considering.
Currently, the “no-show” filibuster allows the Senate to move on to other articles, while holding back the bill. The procedural motion could be modified to force senators wishing to block a measure to stand on the ground and talk about it for hours and days. If you do, you could make them a little more selective about the bills they should reduce. And talking filibusters could also demand a cost for the majority, if they stop acting on the rest of the elements, including the priorities most want to move, such as other bills or nominations, while the filibuster is in progress.
What would this achieve, in addition to slowing down the already famous Senate that is acting slowly? If lawmakers had a stomach, the real filibuster reform could give senators more time to talk to each other and find compromises.
“As we look at these reforms, the devil is in the details,” Zupnick says. “It has to be the case that these reforms really lead to the possibility of approving bills. There has to be a time when you come to a conclusion.”
Manchin, who has expressed his openness to a talking filibuster, said this week that maintaining the 60-vote threshold is a priority for him and said he was opposed to making exceptions for certain legislation, such as a draft law. voting rights law. His presence in the senate recalls that even if Democrats had the vote to change the filibuster rules, which they do not, it is unclear if some of the more moderate Democrats would support all major legislation.
“We always have to ask ourselves if there are really 50 votes in the Senate? The rules aren’t magic, they can’t force an agreement where the agreement doesn’t exist,” Reynolds says.
The West Virginia senator pointed to the other part of Biden’s comments in which he said he did not believe the filibuster should be removed and took those comments to show “the importance of maintaining the filibuster, protecting the rights of the filibuster. On possible reforms, he added: “Everyone has different ideas and there is a good conversation.”
Adam Jentleson, a former aide to Senator Reid who recently published a book on reforming Senate rules called the Kill Switch, says a filibuster speaking with a 60-vote threshold could ease the obstruction of smaller laws, but that Republicans would probably try to be present to block the big bills.
Jentleson says filibuster reforms are likely to take a while, but Mr. Biden’s comments this week were significant in moving the needle.
“It’s not all we want, but it’s very encouraging,” he said. “Not just the endorsement of a talking filibuster, but also his reflection on the use of the filibuster since he passed in the Senate, which shows he’s thinking very seriously about it.”
“It’s March 2021 and President Biden and Joe Manchin support the concept of reform. Even if in very soft terms, that only goes a few years before I thought we would be right now,” he said. “That’s the Senate equivalent of a very quick change.”