In Defense of the Senate Filibuster
The U.S. Senate filibuster has been taking a lot of heat lately from Democrats wanting to ram through their extreme left political agenda.
The filibuster allows one or more senators to prevent proposed non-budgetary legislation from coming to a vote. The filibuster can be bypassed for budget and spending legislation using the budget reconciliation process. But sixty votes are required to end a filibuster for legislation that contains non-budgetary provisions.
I wholeheartedly support the leading senators who’ve opposed eliminating the filibuster since, in the words of one long-serving senator, it makes the senate a “sure refuge and protector of the rights of the states and of a political minority.”
Here’s a sampling of their reasoning:
Speaking for over an hour, one senator gave what he called “one of the most important speeches for historical purposes that I will have given in the 32 years since I have been in the Senate.” He said using the so-called “nuclear option” to end the filibuster “would eviscerate the Senate and turn it into the House of Representatives.”
He continued, “It is not only a bad idea, it upsets the constitutional design and it disservices the country. No longer would the Senate be that ‘different kind of legislative body’ that the Founders intended. No longer would the Senate be the ‘saucer’ to cool the passions of the immediate majority.
“The Senate ought not act rashly by changing its rules to satisfy a strong-willed majority acting in the heat of the moment.
“Proponents of the ‘nuclear option’ argue that their proposal is simply the latest iteration of a growing trend towards majoritarianism in the Senate. God save us from that fate, if it is true. Put simply, the ‘nuclear option’ changes the rules midstream. Once the Senate starts changing the rules outside of its own rules, which is what the nuclear option does, there is nothing to stop a temporary majority from doing so whenever a particular rule would pose an obstacle.
“Adopting the ‘nuclear option’ would change this fundamental understanding and unbroken practice of what the Senate is all about. Senators would start thinking about changing other rules when they became ‘inconvenient.’ Instead of two-thirds of the vote to change a rule, you’d now have precedent that it only takes a bare majority. Altering Senate rules to help in one political fight or another could become standard operating procedure, which, in my view, would be disastrous.”
In the words of a second senator, ending the filibuster would allow one party to “change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet. If the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.”
Here’s a third senator: “We are on the precipice of a crisis. A constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51 percent of the vote, you don’t get your way 100 percent of the time.”
He added that discussion of the “nuclear option” was “almost a temper tantrum by those…who want their way every single time. They will change the rules, break the rules, misread the Constitution so that they will get their way,” he said. “That … is what we call abuse of power.”
I couldn’t agree more with the first senator, then-Senator Joe Biden, the second, then-Senator Barack Obama, or the third, Sen. Chuck Schumer. All three were defending the filibuster at a time when Republicans were frustrated despite holding the presidency, a 55-45 Senate majority and a 232-202 House majority. Nonetheless, Republicans chose not to end the filibuster.
Contrast that with today’s Congressional configuration.
Nancy Pelosi lost a dozen Democratic seats in the 2020 elections, barely holding on to a 218-212 House majority. Democrats eked out a 50-50 split in the Senate with Vice President Harris providing a tiebreaking vote. These razor-thin Democratic majorities came despite a deeply-flawed Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket.
With their unexpected down-ballot losses at both the federal and state levels, and despite Pres. Biden’s many pre-inauguration pronouncements on working across the aisle with Republicans, Congressional Democrats are acting like they have a mandate, one that justifies eliminating the filibuster.
Recall that Sen. Schumer said, “if you get 51 percent of the vote, you don’t get your way 100 percent of the time.”
Democrats need only remind themselves of the grief then-Sen. Harry Reid brought the party when he led the charge to eliminate the filibuster for federal judicial appointments in 2013. Democrats got a number of liberal judges appointed. But when Republicans turned the tables in 2017, eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments, three new conservative justices were added to the court in the last four years.
Mason-Dixon Polling sampled a cross-section of voters in mid-April, asking whether they favored eliminating the filibuster. As expected, 70 percent of Democrats were in favor while 87 percent of Republicans were opposed. But Democrats beware: a stunning 69 percent of independents were also opposed.
If Democrats use their razor-thin Senate majority to eliminate the filibuster, independent voter opposition will be enough to elect a 2022 Republican-majority Congress. Then Democratic senators will be making speeches like those quoted above, yearning for the good old days when the filibuster would give them some say in the direction of the country.
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