Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a stern rebuke to Democrats pushing to end the legislative filibuster.
A New York Times op-ed by the Kentucky Republican Thursday offers a detailed defense of the filibuster, which effectively requires any piece of legislative to have at least 60 votes in the 100-member chamber, rather than a bare majority of 51. McConnell’s opinion piece comes days after his Democratic predecessor as majority leader, former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, called for the filibuster’s demise. Reid argued the practice prevents the will of the people from being carried out and is undemocratic.
McConnell disagreed, saying the 60-vote requirement ensures legislation passed by the chamber is the result of compromise and negotiation, not sheer majority whim.
“The legislative filibuster is directly downstream from our founding tradition. If that tradition frustrates the whims of those on the far left, it is their half-baked proposals and not the centuries-old wisdom that need retooling,” McConnell wrote.
Warning of the long-term consequences of such a move, McConnell said he and his GOP colleagues “will not vandalize this core tradition” simply because it would benefit them in the short term as they maintain the majority in the Senate.
“We recognize what everyone should recognize — there are no permanent victories in politics. No Republican has any trouble imagining the laundry list of socialist policies that 51 Senate Democrats would happily inflict on Middle America in a filibuster-free Senate,” he said.
McConnell also alluded to relatively frequent changes of party control, which can mean today’s majority party is tomorrow’s minority. Starting with the 1980 elections, Senate majority has shifted seven times (nine if an additional 17-day run of Democratic control in January 2001 is included).
The Senate filibuster has been weakened in recent years thanks to both Republicans and Democrats.
In 2013, the Senate, led by then-Majority Leader Reid, went “nuclear” by eliminating the use of the filibuster on all presidential nominees except for those picked for the Supreme Court. At the time, Democrats accused Republicans of blocking President Barack Obama’s nominees in a show of political retribution.
After Republicans took control of the Senate, McConnell removed the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees in 2017, which paved the way for the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch. Brett Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court and dozens of lifetime circuit court judges followed.
McConnell pinned the “legacy of the procedural avalanche” squarely on the Democrats and said the “consequences of taking Senator Reid’s advice will haunt liberals for decades.”
In his New York Times op-ed last week, Reid, who served as majority leader from 2007 to 2015, argued that the filibuster is “suffocating” the will of the American people, including on issues of climate change and gun control. “Something must change. That is why I am now calling on the Senate to abolish the filibuster in all its forms. And I am calling on candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president to do the same,” he said.
McConnell warned that on legislation deliberation is a “treasured tradition” and removing the filibuster would force the Senate to lose its status as a “safeguard” of the American government to become too much like the House, where a simple majority is all that is needed. “One of the body’s central purposes is making new laws earn broader support than what is required for a bare majority in the House. The legislative filibuster does not appear in the Constitution’s text, but it is central to the order the Constitution sets forth,” he said.
Noting how some Democratic leaders in the Senate and candidates running for president are flirting with the idea of eliminating the filibuster, McConnell said he hopes “saner voices among Democrats can help their compatriots see reason.”
