Tag: Senate filibuster

Top Biden ally pleads with him to scrap filibuster for election reform

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Rep. Jim Clyburn said it’s time for the president to embrace more aggressive changes to the Senate rules.

After months of setbacks and gridlock on voting rights, one of President Joe Biden’s top allies in Congress is calling for him to support amending the Senate filibuster.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told POLITICO Biden “should endorse” the idea of creating a carveout to the legislative filibuster in the Senate for legislation that applies to the Constitution. In effect, the reform would make it possible for Democrats to pass their sweeping elections reform bill and another bill reauthorizing key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act with just Democratic support.

It’s a sentiment the congressman says he’s shared with White House counselor Steve Ricchetti and Office of Public Engagement Director Cedric Richmond as well. “I’ve even told that to the vice president,” Clyburn said. Continue reading.

How Joe Manchin Can Fix the Filibuster

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It’s easy to sympathize with the liberal desire to bury the Senate filibuster forever. The 60-vote threshold for Senate legislation is a choke point in a political system defined by gridlock, sclerosis and futility. It provides an excuse for policy abdication, encouraging the legislative branch to cede authority to the presidency and the courts, and the Republican Party to decline to have a policy agenda at all. Its history is checkered, its pervasive use is a novelty of polarization, and its eventual disappearance seems inevitable — so why not adapt now?

At the same time, it’s also easy to see why Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from a conservative state, might have some doubts about his party’s confident filibuster-busting ambitions.

Listen to Manchin’s fellow Democrats talk about their political position and the constitutional structures impeding them, and you would be forgiven for thinking that they have been winning commanding majorities for years, of the sort enjoyed by Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, while being thwarted again and again by a much smaller reactionary faction. Continue reading.

Mitch McConnell’s big bluff: Here’s the real reason he wants to keep the filibuster so badly

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Last week, United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema expressed ongoing support for the filibuster, arguing that “it is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation” and prevents our country from “[ricocheting] wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies.” Then, over the weekend, Joe Manchin echoed a similar sentiment, writing that Democrats have “attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.”

Sinema and Manchin have been rhapsodizing over the filibuster and the virtues of bipartisanship for months, so these arguments are far from surprising. One obvious problem is they fly in the face of overwhelming evidence that bipartisanship is (mostly) dead. However, there’s another, more troubling problem that warrants our attention.

Sinema and Manchin maintain that the filibuster protects not only our democracy, but also the Democratic Party. If we rely on a mere majority for legislation, the thinking goes, any leftward movement will be met with an equal rightward shift when the GOP inevitably returns to power. Thus, we are to believe that the filibuster not only ensures stability, but, in the long run, actually protects Democratic Party’s legislative interests.  Continue reading.

Presidential historian calls ‘baloney’ on Joe Manchin claim filibuster stance is about ‘protecting the Senate’

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Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley literally called “baloney” on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for his excuse for supporting the filibuster.

Manchin has drawn criticism from his own party, civil rights leaders, and historians with knowledge of the last centuries of Senate function. Everyone, other than his Republican allies, has spoken out against Manchin’s confused understanding of the process. Manchin, however, isn’t the only Democrat parroting right-wing talking points on the filibuster crafted from historic lies. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has also bought into the fake history. 

“You have to strong-arm them,” Brinkley encouraged President Joe Biden. “Lyndon Johnson would do the lean-in treatment and stare you down, make your life miserable for you. You have to have discipline. Manchin has become a media star as being the guy who holds the Democratic Party in the balance. It’s unfortunate.” Continue reading.

Senate parliamentarian to let Democrats bypass GOP filibuster on two more bills

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The Senate parliamentarian ruled Monday that Democrats can use special budgetary rules to avoid a GOP filibuster on two more pieces of legislation, setting the stage for President Biden‘s infrastructure agenda to pass in two packages with simple-majority votes.

It’s a win for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that allows him to pass Biden’s $2.25 trillion package by revising the fiscal 2021 Budget Resolution.

Schumer could pass a budget resolution for fiscal 2022 to do a third reconciliation package for the second half of the Biden infrastructure agenda. Or the fiscal 2021 budget could be revised a third time to set up a third reconciliation package. Continue reading.

Schumer eyes bypassing filibuster for third bill

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Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is looking at whether he could pass a third bill this year through reconciliation, an arcane budget process that lets Democrats avoid the legislative filibuster.

Schumer’s staff recently argued to the parliamentarian that they could use Section 304 of the Congressional Budget Act, which greenlights the use of reconciliation, to tee up passing at least a third bill this year by a simple majority, an aide for the New York Democrat confirmed.

“Schumer wants to maximize his options to allow Senate Democrats multiple pathways to advance President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda if Senate Republicans try to obstruct or water down a bipartisan agreement,” the Schumer aide added. Continue reading.

Fox & Friends filibuster freakout: If they end it ‘Democrats will rule o​ur country forever’

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Fox News on Wednesday seemingly made a huge admission: conservatives and their policies do not reflect the will of the majority of Americans.

That’s essentially what “Fox & Friends” telegraphed to viewers when co-host Ainsley Earhardt responded to a clip of President Joe Biden making news by merely saying he supports reforming the filibuster – not even eliminating it.

“If they end the filibuster, the Democrats will rule our country forever,” she warned. “We will become a socialist country.”

That’s by definition false. Continue reading.

McConnell offers scathing ‘scorched earth’ filibuster warning

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Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) offered a scathing warning to Democrats on Tuesday, amid growing pressure to nix the legislative filibuster.

“Let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin, to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” McConnell said.

He added that in a chamber that functions on a day-to-day basis by consent, meaning all senators sign off on an action, “I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum.”  Continue reading.

The most likely filibuster reform — and its limits

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The talking filibuster could get the support that repealing the filibuster wouldn’t. Like other ideas, though, it has its drawbacks. 

Senate Democrats this weekend passed President Biden’s historic $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on a party-line vote. But the exercise reinforced the reality for the party moving forward: GOP votes will be very hard to come by, and passing virtually any other significant Democratic legislation will be very difficult. This one required just 50 votes under the reconciliation process, but that legislative maneuver can be used only sparingly, and everything else will require 60 votes.

Enter the most likely current candidate for reform: the talking filibuster.

Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) is one of two moderate Senate Democrats posing the biggest obstacle to the left’s quest to get rid of the filibuster — the source of the effective 60-vote threshold. He and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have said there are no circumstances under which they would nuke the filibuster. Given that a majority of the Senate is needed to undo it — and Democrats have just 50 votes — that’s prohibitive for now. Continue reading.

Obama calls filibuster ‘Jim Crow relic,’ backs new Voting Rights Act bill

The Hill logoFormer President Obama on Thursday called the Senate filibuster rule a “Jim Crow relic” and said it should be ended to help pass legislation that would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Obama made the remarks while delivering a eulogy for civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who died earlier this month at the age of 80. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act would make it harder for states to enact racially suspect voting restrictions.

“Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching,” Obama said. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.” Continue reading.