President Biden is bearing down on a national crisis that could make radical policy acceptable to the public, but Senate guardrails are in the way.
Two Senate Democrats struck a blow to Biden’s liberal agenda by vowing this week to uphold the legislative filibuster. Those promises seem to have kneecapped liberal calls to nuke the longtime Senate rule that requires most bills to pass 60 votes. The senators were adamant.
“I will not vote to bust the filibuster under any condition, on anything that you can think of,” Sen. Joe Manchin told the Washington Post this week.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema likewise stressed that she is “not open to changing her mind.”
Granting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this assurance was viewed by Democrats’ left-flank as a preemptive surrender on enacting Biden’s agenda.
Some wager that the right political pressure will force the senators to fold.
Barely a week in office, Biden’s “unity” pledge has the president racing through a slew of executive orders designed to roll back former President Donald Trump’s four years in office. The president has delivered legislation on immigration and voting rights to Capitol Hill.
But his chief priority is a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that he hopes can garner his long-sought bipartisan votes.
A 36-year senate veteran, Biden is on record opposing efforts to get rid of the filibuster.
But the president did reveal in an interview with the New York Times last year that his view could shift.
“It’s going to depend on how obstreperous they become,” Biden said of Republicans.
Pressed on the issue in a briefing with reporters, press secretary Jen Psaki said the president’s position “has not changed.”
Gridlock in the Senate, and how to overcome it, isn’t lost on lawmakers, who only have to look to history to be reminded of how fleeting a promise can be.
Republicans spent years going after the so-called “nuclear option,” the parliamentary procedure that allows the Senate to override a standing rule, such as the 60-vote threshold, said James Wallner, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute.
Wallner, who led the Senate Steering Committee under Republican Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mike Lee of Utah, said they painted this nuclear button “as evil, as tyrannical, as illegitimate, as something that is going to destroy the Senate.”
“And then, without batting an eye, turned around in 2017 and used the ‘nuclear option’ to eliminate the filibuster to confirm [Judge Neil] Gorsuch, and then they did it again in 2019 regarding post-cloture debate time,” he said.
Even as both Manchin and Sinema promise to uphold the filibuster, liberals are mounting pressure.
Wallner points to their promises as a signal they can be swayed.
“The simple fact that they have issued press releases saying they choose not to eliminate the filibuster means that they acknowledge they have the authority to eliminate the filibuster,” he said, adding that their response “shows that they’re amenable to pressure.”
He continued: “So change the situation in the future, the pressure changes. The issues may change, and they still have acknowledged their ability to change the filibuster.”
Democrats who claimed to be opposed have ceded before.
Under pressure to confirm Obama’s Cabinet and judicial nominees in 2013, Senate Democrats, led by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, went nuclear, nixing the filibuster for most executive branch nominees.
“When senators think they can nuke the filibuster, their promises not to nuke the filibuster are not going to be binding on them in the future,” Wallner said.
Aaron Scherb, legislative affairs director for liberal political advocacy group Common Cause, pointed to Senate Democrats who ultimately ended up voting for the rules change despite holding different positions throughout the year.
“I think history could certainly provide a lesson this time, although it’s now a much narrower margin,” Scherb said.
In a sweeping column last week, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein argued that Democrats needed a show of force to overcome Washington gridlock, fending off challenges in future elections from nationalist populists like Trump.
So far, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has refused to agree to preserve the filibuster, and Democrats are urging him to push for reform.
Ira Shapiro, a former Senate staffer and author of two books about the Senate, said that while Manchin and Sinema would be “extraordinarily influential” in an evenly divided Senate, they forfeit influence to McConnell as long as the filibuster is in place.
“The filibuster is here to stay [until] Republicans object to everything and grind the Senate to a halt,” said Julio Lainez, a former aide to former Senate Majority Leader Reid, a Nevada Democrat. Lainez was working for Reid in 2013 when McConnell “did just that,” prompting Reid to hit the “nuclear” button, eliminating the filibuster for confirmation votes on most presidential nominees.
And if the filibuster stays intact?
“The person who will determine a lot of the outcomes is Sen. McConnell. And I don’t think that’s a good outcome,” said Shapiro.
