Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday refused to commit to keeping the filibuster should Democrats claw back a majority in the 2020 elections.
“Our focus should be on winning the majority, and we’ll have a nice caucus of more than 50 Democrats and we will decide what to do,” the New York Democrat told reporters during a Capitol Hill briefing.
His hesitancy to publicly stand behind the filibuster, which allows legislation and confirmations to pass the Senate with a simple majority, comes as 2020 Democratic presidential candidates clamor on the campaign trail for the parliamentary procedure’s elimination. Doing so would provide them with the opportunity to push their platforms through the upper chamber should they be elected to the White House.
When asked whether he stood by comments he made in October about potentially bringing back the filibuster for Supreme Court justices, Schumer declined to do so.
“I’ve taken no position on any of these things,” he said.
In the briefing, held ahead of Friday’s anniversary of the first 100 days of the Republican-controlled Senate, Schumer gave Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell an “F” for his performance so far during the 116th Congress. But, he said the Kentucky Republican’s recent move to shorten debate time for President Trump’s Cabinet members and judges, including Supreme Court justices, had not necessarily changed his working relationship with his counterpart.
“I always thought he would change the rules,” Schumer said. “I think he is hanging his entire hat on putting all these judges in. I don’t think history is going to look kindly on either the way he’s changed the rules to do that, but more importantly how the Senate has done so little on the major issues of the day.”
Schumer also used the briefing to blast Attorney General William Barr as the “press secretary of the president,” saying congressional Democrats “have very little faith that he’s going to be fair and dispassionate in terms of the redactions” for special counsel Robert Mueller’s federal Russia investigation report.
He additionally praised failed 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial contender Stacey Abrams, whom he is courting in the hopes she will vie for a Senate seat.
“It’s certainly not too late,” Schumer said. “I’ve told her I think she could play a major role in the Senate the minute she got here and how important it was to the country.”
