Biden says he supports reforming Senate filibuster in ABC News exclusive interview
Even reforming the filibuster to actually give it some cost to use would mean a lot. In its current state it’s as simple as the minority sending an email threat that they may filibuster to hold a vote captive. There’s no skin in the game, no cost benefit analysis involved. It’s just cheap and easy for them to throw around at virtually everything.
They should have to stand up on the floor and talk in order to capture the session and delay. No hiding, make their opposition known and explain their arguments in detail. Even more than that, I’m warming up to the idea that they should have to assemble a threshold of 40 votes to be present to extend the filibuster, rather than triggering it with a simple threat and requiring 60 votes to break it. Flip it around and put the onus on those who want to use it; if they cannot muster 40 votes to continue filibustering then debate ends, cloture is invoked, and the bill passes with a simple majority. It should be there to give the minority a voice and for them to invoke on extraordinary occasions, not to lazily make threats with no discretion and no cost that control the legislative agenda.
McConnell Threatens To Grind Senate To Halt If Dems Don’t Let Him Keep Power To Grind Senate To Halt
This is the guy who
Said his primary objective was to make Obama a one term president
Forced Reid to go nuclear to get anything done ten years ago
Failed to fulfill his constitutional obligation to prevent a SCOTUS nominee for Obama because it was "election year"
Rammed through a SCOTUS nominee two weeks before an election
Had to filibuster his own bill, which was designed solely to embarrass Obama
You just need to ignore this guy - he has no morals or principles, and he will inevitably take whatever steps he wants, and rationalize it irrespective of consistency
This is from the article:
"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) came out with his strongest threat about abolishing the filibuster yet on Tuesday, warning that he will use procedural delays to turn the Senate into a “100-car pileup” if Democrats go nuclear.
“Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” he said.
If Democrats torch the filibuster on legislation, or at least torch the 60-vote threshold part of it, McConnell said he’d use Senate rules to slow down and force votes on every single small piece of Senate operations. Much of Senate business runs on unanimous consent, a quick way to dispense with unobjectionable and housekeeping tasks.
“I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum, which, by the way, the Vice President does not count in determining a quorum,” he said."
Mitch McConnell Doesn't Care About Saving the Senate
If the Democrats don't watch themselves, then McConnell might do something radical like hold up a Supreme Court nominee for a made up reason about an upcoming election and then shove another one through while an election is underway!
What's that? He's already done this?
Let's face it, McConnell will do whatever gives him the most power. If the Democrats lost the Senate and prevented him from passing bills he wanted to pass, McConnell wouldn't hesitate to ditch the filibuster.
