filibuster

WASHINGTON — If Democrats win control of the Senate and White House in November, many progressives want to get rid of a long-standing Senate rule — the legislative filibuster — to ensure that their agenda in a Joe Biden presidency isn’t foiled by Republicans’ obstructions.

That would allow legislation to pass with 50 votes instead of the 60 required in recent decades for any significant initiatives. Whether to abolish or scale back the filibuster is one of the most consequential decisions Democrats would make, affecting the prospects for bills on healthcare, climate change, guns, immigration and more.

Proponents say the filibuster has been grossly misused, undermining the Senate’s effectiveness, and they believe Republicans would use it to block anything Biden tried to achieve. But critics in both parties warn that ending the filibuster would damage the Senate as an institution, and allow the majority to steamroll the other party.

What is the filibuster, and why does it matter?

The filibuster is a political blockade by a united minority to prevent a Senate vote on a bill. In recent decades, when the minority party won’t relent in its opposition, the majority must hold a so-called cloture vote — requiring a supermajority of 60 votes — to break the blockade and permit the Senate to act on the pending legislation.

Ideally for the minority party, if the majority can’t muster 60 votes, either it must compromise with the minority or its legislation dies.

Why do progressive Democrats want to get rid of the filibuster now?

If Democrats win a majority, they will almost certainly have fewer than 60 votes. Presumably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — if he wins reelection — would become the minority leader and instruct Republicans to filibuster any progressive legislation that comes before the Senate, much like he did as minority leader in President Obama’s first six years.

“We don’t think Mitch McConnell should be allowed to weaponize partisan obstruction … to prevent any opportunity to make the changes that the American people want,” said Eli Zupnick, spokesman for Fix Our Senate, a coalition of progressive groups advocating to eliminate the filibuster.

Among their Senate allies is Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “I’m holding conversations with [senators] saying, ‘Are we going to have a functioning legislative body or not?’” he said.

Will Senate Democrats actually end the filibuster?

That’s unclear. But an increasing number of Democrats have become supportive.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) wants to keep the filibuster, but acknowledged that moderates like him could change their minds if Republicans use it to block a Democratic majority’s legislation.

“I didn’t come here just to watch somebody stonewall,” he said. “If it’s like the economy is going to hell and we’re not doing anything to help, that’s not healthy.”

Given the hesitance of those like Tester, few expect Democrats — if they’re the majority — to have enough votes to change the rules when the new Senate convenes in January. More likely, momentum would build if Republicans repeatedly filibuster.

Democratic leaders, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Patty Murray of Washington, have voiced more support in recent days. Murray said in a statement that she’d prefer bipartisanship, but “I also know we’ve got a long list of challenges that grow more urgent by the day. And I’m not interested in watching Sen. McConnell or Senate Republicans keep us from acting if we have the chance.”

The top Democrat in the Senate, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, has not ruled out the idea, nor has Biden. In the first presidential debate Tuesday, Biden sidestepped the issue: “Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue.”

While Biden, a longtime senator before he was vice president, is considered an institutionalist who favors Senate tradition and bipartisanship, he also doesn’t want his agenda to be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Democrats’ anti-filibuster momentum already may be building, given their outrage at Senate Republicans’ power play to confirm a successor to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — Amy Coney Barrett — even as voting has begun for the next president. Senate Republicans in 2016 blocked President Obama’s nominee after Justice Antonin Scalia died nine months before the election.

“If the Senate Republicans confirm Judge Barrett, Democrats must move to end the filibuster and expand the Court in the next Congress,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said.

Why keep the filibuster?

Proponents, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), say eliminating it would only deepen the polarization in Washington. The 60-vote requirement is supposed to encourage the majority to reach consensus with the minority on bills, though that’s increasingly rare.

The filibuster “really does require some level of bipartisanship. It requires some negotiation,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said in 2018. “The majority can’t just run over the minority, and in the long run, legislation is better if it’s formed that way.”

Richard Arenberg, a former Senate Democratic aide who co-wrote “Defending the Filibuster: Soul of the Senate” in 2012, warned that without the filibuster, legislation could be enacted and then undone again as control of Congress and the White House changed hands.

“The legislative filibuster may be the single most important thing preserving the Senate’s constitutional role as a check on majority tyranny,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, a Republican leader, said recently.

What might Democrats do?

They could completely eliminate the filibuster. But options that stop short of that are viewed as more likely.

Merkley has proposed requiring a more active filibuster. Senators would have to be in the chamber to lodge their opposition or have to keep talking, alone or in tandem with allies. Either method would likely reduce the number of filibusters.

Absent the filibuster, could Democrats pass Medicare for All and the Green New Deal?

That’s unlikely, at least in the short term. Democrats would still need 51 votes, and neither program is thought to have that much support even if the party has additional members in next year’s Senate.

How did the filibuster come to be?

The Constitution says the Senate makes its own rules. In 1805, shortly after then-Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton, he persuaded the Senate to get rid of its rule for cutting off debate. But according to Sarah A. Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that opened the door to the filibuster in the mid-1800s — with opposing senators talking nonstop to prevent a vote on bills.

In 1917, the Senate acted to curb the practice. The result was a precursor of the filibuster rule as it exists today: The Senate could end debate by a vote of two-third of all senators. The threshold was later reduced to three-fifths, or 60 votes.

For a half-century after 1917, filibusters were few; the Senate cast votes to end them no more than seven times in each two-year Congress, according to congressional statistics. Over time, however, they gradually increased and then spiked as politics became more polarized in recent decades.

The Senate over the last two years has set a new record: 258 votes to end filibusters. Yet even that doesn’t convey the impact of the obstructionist tactic: If the majority leader knows 41 senators would support a filibuster, he typically has shelved a bill because of the difficulty of corralling 60 votes.

Hasn’t the filibuster been scaled back already?

Yes. Amid Republicans’ obstruction of Obama’s appointees, in 2013 Democrats got rid of the filibuster for executive branch nominees and all judges except Supreme Court justices. Just four years later, Republicans got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court justices, to confirm President Trump’s first nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, 54-45.

Obama said the filibuster is a relic of Jim Crow times. True?

In his eulogy of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis in July, Obama urged the Senate to eliminate the filibuster — calling it “another Jim Crow relic” — so the Senate could pass a new voting rights bill. While Obama overstated the connection — the filibuster has been used against many policies and nominees — history does show a link.

Southern Democrats for decades used the filibuster — or just the threat of one — to oppose Civil Rights-era bills, including anti-lynching legislation going back to the 1920s. In the mid-50s, Vice President Richard M. Nixon — acting as the president of the Senate — led an unsuccessful effort to repeal the filibuster to allow passage of a voting rights bill, according to Adam Jentleson, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and author of the forthcoming book “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.” Perhaps the most famous filibuster was Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour, 18-minute talkathon against a Civil Rights bill in 1957.

WASHINGTON — As the federal shutdown has dragged on to become the longest in American history, President Trump has shown little interest in talks to reopen the government. But Republican losses on election day could change that.

Trump told Republican senators at the White House on Wednesday that he believed the government shutdown “was a big factor” in the party’s poor showing against the Democrats in key races.

“We must get the government back open soon, and really immediately,” Trump said, adding that he would speak privately with the senators to discuss what he would like to do next.

The president’s remarks are a departure from what has largely been an apathetic response from him about reopening the government. With Congress at a stalemate for more than a month, Trump’s attention has mostly been elsewhere.

He spent most of last week in Asia attempting to broker trade deals. Before that, much of his focus was on reaching a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and building a $300-million White House ballroom.

To date, Trump’s main attempt to reopen the federal government has been calling on Republican leaders to terminate the filibuster, a long-running Senate rule that requires 60 votes in the chamber to pass most legislation. Trump wants to scrap the rule — the so-called nuclear option — to allow Republicans in control of the chamber to push through legislation with a simple-majority vote.

“If you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape,” Trump told the GOP senators and warned that with the rule in place, the party would be viewed as “do-nothing Republicans” and get “killed” in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump’s push to end the shutdown comes as voters are increasingly disapproving of his economic agenda, according to recent polls. The trend was reinforced Tuesday as voters cast ballots with economic concerns as their main motivation, an AP poll showed. Despite those indicators, Trump told a crowd at the American Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday that he thinks “we have the greatest economy right now.”

While Trump has not acknowledged fault in his economic agenda, he has began to express concern that the ongoing shutdown may be hurting Republicans. Those concerns have led him to push Republicans to eliminate the filibusters, a move that has put members of his party in a tough spot.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has resisted the pressure, calling the filibuster an “important tool” that keeps the party in control of the chamber in check.

The 60-vote threshold allowed Republicans to block a “whole host of terrible Democrat policies” when they were in the minority last year, Thune said in an interview Monday with Fox News Radio’s “Guy Benson Show.”

“I shudder to think how much worse it would’ve been without the legislative filibuster,” he said. “The truth is that if we were to do their dirty work for them, and that is essentially what we would be doing, we would own all the crap they are going to do if and when they get the chance to do it.”

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said last week he is a “firm no on eliminating it.”

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t,” Curtis said in a social media post.

As the government shutdown stretched into its 36th day Wednesday, Trump continued to show no interest in negotiating with Democrats, who are refusing to vote on legislation to reopen the government that does not include a deal on healthcare.

Budget negotiations deadlocked as Democrats tried to force Republicans to extend federal healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year. If those credits expire, millions of Americans are expected to see the cost of their premiums spike.

With negotiations stalled, Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by their demands to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.

On Wednesday, Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter to Trump demanding a bipartisan meeting to “end the GOP shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.”

“Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a letter to Trump.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Democrats’ letter.

“The election results ought to send a much needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis,” Schumer told the Associated Press.

Trump’s remarks Wednesday signal that he is more interested in a partisan approach to ending the shutdown.

“It is time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that is to terminate the filibuster,” Trump told GOP senators. “It’s the only way you can do it.”

If Republicans don’t do it, Trump argued Senate Democrats will do so the next time they are in a majority.

Democrats have not signaled any intent to end the filibuster in the future, but Trump has claimed otherwise and argued that it is up to Republicans to “do it first.”

WASHINGTON — The government shutdown is poised to become the longest ever this week as the impasse between Democrats and Republicans has dragged into a new month. Millions of people stand to lose food aid benefits, health care subsidies are set to expire and there are few real talks between the parties over how to end it.

President Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by Democrats who are demanding negotiations to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Echoing congressional Republicans, the president said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” he’ll negotiate only when the government is reopened.

Trump said Democrats “have lost their way” and predicted they’ll capitulate to Republicans.

“I think they have to,” Trump said. “And if they don’t vote, it’s their problem.”

Trump’s comments signal the shutdown could drag on for some time as federal workers, including air traffic controllers, are set to miss additional paychecks and there’s uncertainty over whether 42 million Americans who receive federal food aid will be able to access the assistance. Senate Democrats have voted 13 times against reopening the government, insisting they need Trump and Republicans to negotiate with them first.

The president also reiterated his pleas to Republican leaders to change Senate rules and scrap the filibuster. Senate Republicans have repeatedly rejected that idea since Trump’s first term, arguing the rule requiring 60 votes to overcome any objections in the Senate is vital to the institution and has allowed them to stop Democratic policies when they’re in the minority.

Trump said that’s true, but “we’re here right now.”

“Republicans have to get tougher,” Trump told CBS. “If we end the filibuster, we can do exactly what we want.”

With the two parties at a standstill, the shutdown, now in its 34th day and approaching its sixth week, appears likely to become the longest in history. The previous record was set in 2019, when Trump demanded Congress give him money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

A potentially decisive week

Trump’s push on the filibuster could prove a distraction for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Republican senators who’ve opted instead to stay the course as the consequences of the shutdown become more acute.

Republicans are hoping at least some Democrats will eventually switch their votes as moderates have been in weekslong talks with rank-and-file Republicans about potential compromises that could guarantee votes on health care in exchange for reopening the government. Republicans need five additional Democrats to pass their bill.

“We need five with a backbone to say we care more about the lives of the American people than about gaining some political leverage,” Thune said on the Senate floor as the Senate left Washington for the weekend on Thursday.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday there’s a group of people talking about ”a path to fix the health care debacle” and a commitment from Republicans not to fire more federal workers. But it’s unclear if those talks could produce a meaningful compromise.

Far apart on Obamacare subsidies

Trump said in the “60 Minutes” interview that the Affordable Care Act — often known as Obamacare because it was signed and championed by then-President Barack Obama — is “terrible” and if the Democrats vote to reopen the government, “we will work on fixing the bad health care that we have right now.”

Democrats feel differently, arguing that the marketplaces set up by the ACA are working as record numbers of Americans have signed up for the coverage. But they want to extend subsidies first enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic so premiums won’t go up for millions of people on Jan. 1.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said last week that “we want to sit down with Thune, with (House Speaker Mike) Johnson, with Trump, and negotiate a way to address this horrible health care crisis.”

No appetite for bipartisanship

As Democrats have pushed Trump and Republicans to negotiate, Trump has showed little interest in doing so. He called for an end to the Senate filibuster after a trip to Asia while the government was shut down.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that the president has spoken directly to Thune and Johnson about the filibuster. But a spokesman for Thune said Friday that his position hasn’t changed, and Johnson said Sunday that he believes the filibuster has traditionally been a “safeguard” from far-left policies.

Trump said on “60 Minutes” that he likes Thune but “I disagree with him on this point.”

The president has spent much of the shutdown mocking Democrats, posting videos of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in a Mexican sombrero. The White House website is now featuring a satirical “My Space” page for Democrats, a parody based on the social media site that was popular in the early 2000s. “We just love playing politics with people’s livelihoods,” the page reads.

Democrats have repeatedly said that they need Trump to get serious and weigh in. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said that he hopes the shutdown could end “this week” because Trump is back in Washington.

Republicans “can’t move on anything without a Trump sign off,” Warner said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

Record-breaking shutdown

The 35-day shutdown that lasted from December 2018 to January 2019 ended when Trump retreated from his demands over a border wall. That came amid intensifying delays at the nation’s airports and multiple missed paydays for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on ABC’s “This Week” that there have already been delays at several airports “and it’s only going to get worse.”

Many of the workers are “confronted with a decision,” he said. “Do I put food on my kids’ table, do I put gas in the car, do I pay my rent or do I go to work and not get paid?”

As flight delays around the country increased, New York City’s emergency management department posted on Sunday that Newark Airport was under a ground delay because of “staffing shortages in the control tower” and that they were limiting arrivals to the airport.

“The average delay is about 2 hours, and some flights are more than 3 hours late,” the account posted.

SNAP crisis

Also in the crossfire are the 42 million Americans who receive SNAP benefits. The Department of Agriculture planned to withhold $8 billion needed for payments to the food program starting on Saturday until two federal judges ordered the administration to fund it.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNN Sunday that the administration continues to await additional direction from the courts.

“The best way for SNAP benefits to get paid is for Democrats — for five Democrats to cross the aisle and reopen the government,” Bessent said.

House Democratic leader Jeffries, D-N.Y., accused Trump and Republicans of attempting to “weaponize hunger.” He said that the administration has managed to find ways for funding other priorities during the shutdown, but is slow-walking pushing out SNAP benefits despite the court orders.

“But somehow they can’t find money to make sure that Americans don’t go hungry,” Jeffries said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump has thrown himself into the ongoing debate over the United States government shutdown, calling on the Senate to scrap the filibuster and reopen the government.

But that idea was swiftly rejected on Friday by Republican leaders who have long opposed such a move.

The filibuster refers to a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to overcome objections. Currently, that rule gives the minority Democrats a check on Republican power in the Senate.

In the chamber that’s currently split 53 to 47, Democrats have had enough votes to keep the government closed while they demand an extension of healthcare subsidies. Yet, neither party has seriously wanted to nuke the rule.

“THE CHOICE IS CLEAR – INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER,” Trump said in a late-night social media post Thursday.

Trump’s sudden decision to assert himself in the now 31-day-long shutdown – with his highly charged demand to end the filibuster – is certain to set the Senate on edge. It could spur senators towards their own compromise or send the chamber spiralling towards a new sense of crisis. Or, it might be ignored.

Republican leaders responded quickly, and unequivocally, setting themselves at odds with Trump, a president few have dared to publicly counter.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said he is not considering changing the rules to end the shutdown, arguing that it is vital to the institution of the Senate and has allowed Republicans to halt Democratic policies when they are in the minority.

The leader’s “position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged”, Thune spokesman Ryan Wrasse said Friday.

A spokeswoman for Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the number-two Republican, said his position opposing a filibuster change also remains unchanged.

And former Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who firmly opposed Trump’s filibuster pleas in his first term, remains in the Senate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also defended the filibuster Friday, while conceding “it’s not my call” from his chamber across the Capitol.

“The safeguard in the Senate has always been the filibuster,” Johnson said, adding that Trump’s comments are a reflection of “the president’s anger at the situation”.

Even if Thune wanted to change the filibuster, he would not currently have the votes to do so in the divided Senate.

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate,” Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah posted on the social media platform X on Friday morning, responding to Trump’s comments. “Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t. I’m a firm no on eliminating it.”

Debate has swirled around the legislative filibuster for years. Many Democrats pushed to eliminate it when they had full power in Washington, as the Republicans do now, four years ago.

But ultimately, enough Democratic senators opposed the move, predicting such an action would come back to haunt them.

Trump’s demand comes as he has declined to engage with Democratic leaders on ways to end the shutdown, on track to become the longest in history.

He said in his post that he gave a “great deal” of thought to his choice on his flight home from Asia, and that one question that kept coming up during his trip was why “powerful Republicans allow” the Democrats to shut down parts of the government.

But later Friday, he did not mention the filibuster again as he spoke to reporters departing Washington and arriving in Florida for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home.

While quiet talks are under way, particularly among bipartisan senators, Trump has not been seriously involved.

Democrats refuse to vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension to the healthcare subsidies. The Republicans say they won’t negotiate until the government is reopened.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN that Trump needs to start negotiating with Democrats, arguing the president has spent more time with global leaders than dealing with the shutdown back home.

From coast to coast, fallout from the dysfunction of the shuttered federal government is hitting home. SNAP food aid is scheduled to shut off. Flights are being delayed. Workers are going without paychecks.

And Americans are getting a first glimpse of the skyrocketing healthcare insurance costs that are at the centre of the deadlock.

“People are stressing,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as food options in her state grow scarce. “We are well past time to have this behind us.”