Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell finally relented and dropped his demand that the Democrats foreswear eliminating the legislative filibuster before he will agree to allow the new 50-50 Senate to pass an organizing resolution. The impasse was preventing the formation of committees and impairing many Democrats from taking over as chairmen.
McConnell’s action was dramatic. Before now, a party which had lost its majority had never sought to hold onto control of the committees by insisting on a 60-vote supermajority to re-organize the body. It was basically a coup attempt, and it never stood any chance of sticking. But McConnell got what he could out of his antics. Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona made strong oral commitments not to scrap the filibuster, which McConnell used as his pretext for backing down. Sinema and, especially, Manchin are two of the most vulnerable Democrats, and they’ve upped the political cost they’ll pay if they later reverse themselves and vote to end the legislative filibuster.
It’s not much of an achievement for McConnell. If he uses the filibuster to stymie highly popular bills that are vital to the Biden administration’s agenda, he’ll give Manchin, Sinema and other reluctant Democrats the excuse and cover they need to change their mind and scrap the rule. And a filibuster isn’t worth much if you can’t use it without losing it.
The next question is whether McConnell will be strategic and restrained in his blocking strategy or if he’ll just obstruct everything until frustrations reach a boiling point.
One point is worth emphasizing. The unanimous consent rule provides that a single senator can block a motion to proceed and force a 60-vote threshold cloture vote, so McConnell can’t prevent a Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee or Rand Paul from filibustering every motion Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduces. It also means that at least 10 Republicans will have to vote with the Democrats on those motions in order for the Senate to do its business. McConnell hates when his caucus is divided, so he’s stuck in a difficult position. If he wants a unified caucus, he’ll have to block everything and punish aisle-crossers as he did during the Obama administration. But this will probably cause the Democrats to unify against the filibuster in response. If he wants to preserve the filibuster, then he’ll need to encourage his colleagues to vote with the Democrats on cloture motions most of the time. There are bad options, but he’s in a weak position.
As for the centrist Democrats, they also face a conundrum. In states like Montana and West Virginia where Trump easily won in 2020, Democratic senators do not want to be voting with the party over and over again on strictly party-line votes. They would vastly prefer the political cover that comes from bipartisan legislation. But if no Republicans will join them in voting for bills and everything gets blocked, then avoiding partisan votes also means avoiding getting anything done.
However, once the centrists realize that they cannot keep the filibuster without crippling the Biden administration, they’ll find that they’re in a position of maximum leverage. With the Democrats holding only a 50-50 majority (with vice-president Harris breaking ties), the party has to have their votes on nearly everything. If Manchin wants a provision added or dropped from a bill, his demand must be met. If people make too much of a fuss about it, he can just switch parties. He’d have a much smoother ride to reelection as a Republican anyway. Unfortunately, the Senate Democrats are also in a weak position with only bad options.
But, at least now, with McConnell backing down on his opposition to the organizing resolution, the committees can be formed and get to work.
It seems like this provides incentive for one of two political dynamics in the Senate:
1) a 10-15 member “Blue Dog-like” GOP caucus that votes on a fairly regular basis with the Democrats on procedural matters, allowing legislation to come to the floor.
2) a unified, obstructionist GOP caucus and a series of votes on widely popular and important legislation (e.g., Covid relief, $15 minimum wage, infrastructure) in which (and this is the important part) Manchin and Sinema get everything they want (or don’t want) in the bill, ultimately giving Dems the 50 votes they need to end the filibuster.
By the way, whatever happened to the practice of passing of an inferior version of a bill just to get to conference committee, improving the bill in conference, and then pushing the conference version through? Former majority leader George Mitchell describes that process in some detail in his memoir regarding the 1990 Clean Air Act (one of his proudest legislative accomplishments). Let Joe Manchin strip out of a clean energy and infrastructure bill whatever he needs to strip out to tell West Virginians he kept faith with coal miners, pass a weak bill, put a bunch of good things back in the bill in conference (and keep every bit of pork barrel spending for WV Manchin wants), and then have a final vote.
Great points and I’ll add that much of Biden’s agenda has bi-partisan voter support.
1 – Raise taxes on companies. From Gallup polling 69% say corporations don’t pay enough
2 – Add a public option to Obamacare. Again from Gallup: 69% of Americans favor “a government-administered health plan that would compete with private health insurance plans and be available to all Americans”
3 – Increase infrastructure spending. Quinnipiac University poll puts this idea at 87% approval.
Start with the most popular ideas and dare the republicans to oppose them…
Nice article. I agree with everything except the line at the end about Manchin having it easier to be reelected as a Republican. This is only true if he doesn’t get primaried and in WV he’d be up against some terrible Trump stooge that would easily destroy him. Also, he had much more chance to switch previously and didn’t, so I don’t see why he’d do this.
What I believe is that Schumer had the votes if push came to shove. McConnell couldn’t get it in writing which shows his weakness. There are also ways to reform the filibuster or modify reconciliation to pass more of Biden’s agenda
One final aspect worth pointing out is that too much of the left is engaged on the filibuster and not on the agenda. Voters will care about the results and if it gets done through reconciliation they won’t care. Regardless of the filibuster, we have the barest of majorities, so large controversial legislation like immigration will have to wait. I expect three things have a chance: 1) stimulus, 2) HR-1, and 3) infrastructure. HR1 might get some bipartisan cover from one or two Rs, maybe. This will be outstanding if we can get it. I hope people have realistic expectations.
True, voters care about results…which is why the filibuster is a problem. Another of the Senate’s arcane rules (or set of rules) is that nly budget-related items can be done through reconciliation. (This was a huge headache with passing the ACA after Ted Kennedy died and Scott Brown was elected to finish his term.)
A lot of the “results” voters are looking for can be done through the budget…but a lot of them can’t.
Does any voter in West Virginia or Montana really care enough about the arcane filibuster to change who they vote for Senator? I doubt it. I doubt that most people care at all. Manchin and Sinema are off the mark if they think anyone cares.
If I were Manchin, I’d be very dubious about switching parties. McConnell can promise him the sun, the moon and the stars but he can’t prevent a challenge from his right. And were that to happen, he’d have zero friends. In this environment, party hopping is dangerous. Of course it’s dangerous to run as a Democrat in a red state but I think that’s by far his better option. I imagine he’ll cast some votes that frustrate us but keep his chairmanship and remain a Democrat.
By this time next year the filibuster will be history. When something popular in AZ and WV can’t get a vote because of it, they’ll get on board with nuking it. And they’ll figure out that being the linchpins for any bill to pass comes with lots of perks.
McConnell is going to do whatever he can to continue destroying this country. Anyone who thinks that McConnell is doing something for the benefit of the country needs to seek immediate psychiatric help, because you’re having clear delusions. So, assume that whatever McConnell is doing, is to benefit the GOP.
The only real solution here is to admit new states and add more Senators to have enough votes to destroy the filibuster. Otherwise it will be obstruction until the GOP regains the Senate and House, so they can continue destroying this country.
Thanks for your comment. The problem with your proposed solution is there aren’t enough potential new states to admit to overcome a filibuster under current Senate rules. Adding four (presumably, though Puerto Rico regularly elects Republican-aligned governors) Democratic senators through the new states of PR and DC only get Democrats to 52% of the Senate. Dems would have to add at least 12(!) new states *and win every new seat* to control 60% of the Senate.
(All of this just reinforces that Dems really need to 1) deliver the goods, and 2) move an agenda that attracts more rural and small-town white voters.)
I’m not talking about adding new states to overcome the filibuster. I’m talking about adding new states so there are enough Democratic Senators (51) to vote to do away with the filibuster altogether.