President Joe Biden gave his strongest indication yet Thursday night that he’d support revamping — or possibly even doing away with — the Senate’s filibuster rules.
What You Need To Know
- In a CNN town hall Thursday night, President Joe Biden said, “We’re going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster”
- It was the president’s strongest indication yet that he’d support revamping — or possibly even doing away with — the Senate’s filibuster rules, which require 60 votes to pass legislation
- Republicans used the filibuster this week to block Democrats’ voting rights legislation for a third time, and GOP lawmakers earlier this month used the filibuster to prevent Democrats from raising the debt limit
- Biden suggested the chamber return to the old-fashioned “talking filibuster,” which would delay, but not halt, legislation
“We’re going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster,” he said during his CNN town hall in Baltimore.
Many Democratic lawmakers have been calling for an end to the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to end debate and pass most major legislation in the Senate.
Republicans used the filibuster this week to block Democrats’ voting rights legislation for a third time. And GOP lawmakers earlier this month used the filibuster to prevent Democrats from raising the debt limit before a deal was reached on a short-term increase.
In the past, Biden has seemed to reluctant to abolish the filibuster, but his position has steadily softened.
Biden, who served in the Senate for 36 years, again suggested the chamber return to the old-fashioned “talking filibuster,” which would delay, but not halt, legislation.
“It used to be you had to stand on the floor and exhaust everything you had, and when you gave up the floor and someone else sought the floor, they had to talk until they finished,” he said, adding: “I propose we bring that back now, immediately.”
Biden said his Democratic colleagues who want to see the filibuster changed — if even to allow carve-outs for issues such as civil rights — “make a very good point.”
When asked whether he supported suspending the filibuster rules for voting rights legislation, Biden responded, “And maybe more.”
But the president acknowledge that eliminating the filibuster would face long odds.
“If, in fact, I get myself into, at this moment, the debate on the filibuster, I lose three — at least three votes right now — to get what I have to get done on the economic side of the equation, the foreign policy side of the equation,” he said.
All 50 Senate Democrats and independents would have to vote for doing away with the filibuster. Moderate Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have said they are firmly opposed to such a move.
Biden said he thought it was “the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen” when Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from raising the debt ceiling, which could have caused the U.S. to go into default for the first time and trigger an economic calamity.
He added that such obstruction by Republicans could stoke greater opposition to continuing with the filibuster as is.
“If that gets pulled again, I think you are going to see an awful lot of Democrats being ready to say: ‘Not me. I’m not doing that again. We’re going to end the filibuster.’”
Congress will have to address the debt ceiling again by December.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has defended the filibuster, saying: “The Senate requires collaboration and deliberation. It’s a feature, not a bug, that slim majorities can’t ram through half-baked ideas.”
Manchin has said the filibuster is needed to give rural and small states a voice in the government and to ensure there aren’t drastic swings in federal policymaking whenever a new party takes control. And in a June op-ed in the Washington Post, Sinema argued that “if we eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, we will lose much more than we gain.”
“Instability, partisanship and tribalism continue to infect our politics,” Sinema wrote. “The solution, however, is not to continue weakening our democracy’s guardrails.”
