Biden supports changes to filibuster
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is calling for changes to the filibuster to require lawmakers to speak on the floor of the Senate to hold up a bill, while the chamber’s Republican leader warns of “scorched-earth” tactics if Democrats use their new control to bring an end to the legislative roadblock entirely.
Biden, in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, restated his opposition to eliminating the filibuster but suggested he supported changes to make it more costly and time-consuming for those trying to block bills. Currently, any lawmaker can signal an intent to filibuster, setting a 60-vote threshold to advance most legislation, without ever speaking on the floor.
“I don’t think that you have to eliminate the filibuster. You have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days,” Biden said. “You had to stand up and command the floor. You had to keep talking.
“You’ve got to work for the filibuster,” said the president , who was first sworn in to the Senate in 1973. “It’s getting to the point where, you know, democracy is having a hard time functioning.”
His comments Tuesday came hours after Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell warned of a “scorched earth” landscape if Democrats end the filibuster in hopes of muscling Biden’s agenda past GOP opposition.
Mcconnell forecast a Senate that would all but cease to function, implying that Republicans would grind business to a halt by refusing to give consent for routine operations – from the start time for sessions, to the reading of long legislative texts, to quorum call votes.
“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,” he said Tuesday in a Senate speech.
Mcconnell said the partisan gridlock of the Trump and Obama eras would look like “child’s play” compared with what’s to come.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer brushed off Mcconnell’s remarks as a “diversion.” He said he hopes to work with Republicans on the upcoming bills, but all options for filibuster changes are on the table.
Senate Democrats are talking privately about changing the decades-old rules for the filibuster, which allow a single senator to block a bill by objecting. In earlier eras, senators would seize the floor, speaking for hours about their objections. They also used it to stall civil rights legislation in the middle of the 20th century.
Supporters of the process say it protects the rights of the party not in power, but detractors argue it is being used to block popular bills.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-ill., said Tuesday that nearly 65 years after South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond’s record-setting 24-hour-plus filibuster over the 1957 Civil Rights Act, “the filibuster is still making a mockery of American democracy.”
It takes 51 votes to change the Senate rules to do away with the filibuster, and Democrats do not appear to have the support from within their ranks to do so, even with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker. At least two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have signaled their objections, but there may be more.