Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has commenced an aggressive public relations strategy to bully his fellow Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona into voting to exempt their bill to federalize elections from the Senate’s filibuster rule.
One of Sen. Schumer’s talking points is based on a lie that the late Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd would have supported this push. That assertion is flat-out false.
The Senate has an established process for changing its rules. First, senators must roll out the rules change on the floor of the Senate and shut down debate on the measure, which for rules changes requires a two-thirds vote.
Schumer is trying to circumvent that requirement by declaring that a filibuster of a bill federalizing elections is unconstitutional, triggering a Senate vote to ignore Senate rules. This tactic effectively collapses not only the legitimate Senate rules process but also the need for 60 votes to end debate on most legislation.
Schumer’s immediate predecessor, former Sen. Harry Reid, successfully used this tactic in 2013 on most executive branch nominees.
Schumer wrote a letter on Jan. 3, 2022, that attempted to tie the events of Jan. 6, 2021, to the push for the misnamed “Freedom to Vote Act.” He floated the idea of “reforming the Senate rules” and quoted Byrd as saying that rules “must be changed to reflect changed circumstances …Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.”
Taken out of context, Byrd seems to be opposing the filibuster. But the opposite is true: Byrd was one of the most outspoken critics of the “nuclear option” that Schumer is now trying to invoke in order to override Senate rules with a simple majority vote.
On April 25, 2005, the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, hosted an event titled “Going Nuclear: The Threat to our System of Checks and Balances.” The event was hosted by John Podesta, with Byrd as the keynote speaker. Byrd unequivocally condemned Republicans for discussing nuking the filibuster at that time, stating that such a move would amount to a “power grab.”
“Over the 88 years since 1917,” Byrd said, “no White House and no party in control of the Senate has ever, ever resorted to the use of this draconian weapon in order to achieve its goal, until now.” This is exactly the opposite of the argument Schumer is now trying to put in his mouth.
Byrd was very explicit in supporting the filibuster. “In my 53 years in Congress, I have never seen a matter that came before the Congress, before the Senate, or the House, as a matter of fact, that is so dangerous, so out of the mainstream, so radical as this one,” he said. Although the left-wing media fawn over Schumer’s bold tactic and ignore history, the tactic will make partisanship more extreme. It will lead to an even more dysfunctional Senate.
One irony is that Sinema might actually owe her Senate seat to the filibuster. As Sen. Byrd pointed out during his speech, “in March 1911, Sen. Owen of Oklahoma filibustered a measure granting statehood to New Mexico, arguing that Arizona should also be a state. President Taft opposed the inclusion of Arizona statehood because a provision of Arizona’s state constitution permitted the recall of judges. Arizona later attained statehood at least in part because senators took time to make the case the year before.”
Despite the liberal cry about the evils of the filibuster, one can cite example after example of it leading to good outcomes.
Let us heed the words of Byrd, who said, “The tradition of freedom of speech and debate in the Senate is under a serious — a serious threat of extinction by the majority party through resort to the nuclear option.”
Schumer now invokes Byrd’s name in vain, placing false words in his mouth in order to pressure Manchin. Byrd’s own words prove that it’s a lie.
Brian Darling is the former counsel and senior communications director for Sen. Rand Paul.
