Pressure is building on Democrats to ditch the filibuster to pass a long list of party agenda items that Republicans oppose.
Democrats hope to pass a trio of amnesty bills, major election reform legislation, and a massive infrastructure bill paid for with tax increases.
While Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House, their agenda could be thwarted by the GOP.
Few Republicans are likely to get behind the legislation Democrats are proposing, which means Senate passage remains unlikely unless Democrats either change the bills to accommodate the GOP or find a way to eliminate the 60-vote threshold required to bring legislation to the Senate floor.
Senate Democrats control 50 votes and the majority with the tiebreaking power of Vice President Kamala Harris. They need at least 10 Republicans to open debate on a bill.
A growing number of Democrats now support an end to the filibuster and join liberal groups in pressuring centrist Democratic holdouts to help them end it.
Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, is among lawmakers who signaled that she supports ending the filibuster.
“There’s so much important work we have to get done,” Smith said. “How can I go out and tell people, ‘Oh, we really need to get this done, but we can’t because the Senate rules won’t let us’?”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, also a Minnesota Democrat, signed a bipartisan letter in 2017 opposing the filibuster’s end.
At the time, Klobuchar and 60 other senators argued that the filibuster is needed “to preserve the ability of members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor” and ensure “that this great American institution continues to serve as the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Four years later, most of the Democrats on the list, including Klobuchar, have changed their minds and say the 60-vote threshold should either be weakened or eliminated.
“I’m all in favor of filibuster reform,” Klobuchar told reporters in the Capitol. “We can’t wait six months to negotiate pandemic relief, and we have to get things done for the American people, and if the Republicans want to work with us, great, but we just can’t wait two years to get things done. So, rules are blocking us from progress.”
All 50 Democrats would have to agree to changes to the filibuster to pass it with a majority vote.
Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are the most vocal opponents of the change within the Democratic Caucus.
Manchin has softened his view slightly and appears to be ready to consider reviving a decades-old “talking filibuster,” which would require senators to block a bill with endless floor speeches.
Biden endorsed the “talking filibuster” on Tuesday.
“I don’t think you have to eliminate the filibuster. You have to do what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days,” Biden said on Tuesday. “And that is … you had to stand up and command the floor. And you had to keep talking along.”
Liberal groups are stepping up pressure on the Senate to eliminate the filibuster.
Fix Our Senate, made up of dozens of liberal organizations, launched a nationwide advertising campaign calling for the elimination of the filibuster on Thursday.
“Momentum to eliminate the filibuster is growing each day, and we’re going to keep working to make sure people across the country understand why the filibuster needs to be eliminated to make progress on the issues they care about most,” Fix Our Senate spokesman Eli Zupnick said. “We want to make sure voters understand that the filibuster, an abused and outdated ‘Jim Crow relic,’ is a big part of what is broken about our government, and we are encouraging them to make their voices heard and call on their senators to choose progress, not more gridlock.”
While Democrats have grown more determined to weaken or eliminate the filibuster, Republicans warn that they won’t stand by and let it happen.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that if the Democrats vote to end the filibuster, Republicans will bring the Senate to a halt by objecting to every procedural aspect of operating the chamber, which could result in a drastic slowdown or complete gridlock.
“Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” the Kentucky Republican warned on March 16.
Democrats avoided a filibuster fight when they passed Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending package using a budgetary tactic that allowed the measure to advance with only 51 votes.
They can use that tactic one more time this year and are likely to pass a massive infrastructure bill combined with a significant tax increase.
After that, Manchin, Sinema, and other Democrats who are hesitant to change the filibuster will be under tremendous pressure to go along with the rest of the party and end a decadeslong practice that has helped preserve the framers’ view of the Senate as the “cooling saucer” for House-passed legislation.
Manchin sought a lifeline in Biden’s comments on the “talking filibuster,” which he said suggests the president, who served in the Senate for 36 years, hopes to maintain the filibuster, at least in some fashion.
“The president understands the importance of preserving the filibuster,” Manchin said. “Everybody has different variations of how they want to preserve it. The bottom line is, you have to preserve the right of the minority to participate, period.”
