Senate Democrats voted to shut down the government for the 10th time Thursday, ensuring more paychecks will be lost and services unfunded. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) even brought up bipartisan legislation that would have funded the armed forces, an appropriations bill that passed committee on a bipartisan 26-3 vote, but Democrats voted against it, too. The party of the Left is now on record denying paychecks to our men and women in uniform unless the nation agrees to their ransom demands and extends temporary COVID-19 emergency funding indefinitely into the future.
Democrats continue to insist, however, that the shutdown is the Republicans’ fault since, according to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), “They have the presidency, they have the Senate, they have the House, so they’re in charge.”
This is disingenuous since Schumer knows that while Republicans have 53 Senate seats, they are thus seven short of having the 60 votes needed to overcome the Democratic Party’s filibuster and end debate on the continuing resolution passed by the House that would open the federal government through Nov. 21.
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The main Senate Democrat demand for opening the government through November is over half a trillion dollars in COVID-19-era bonus subsidies for health insurance companies, but they are also asking for a rollback of the Medicaid reforms Republicans made as part of their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, almost $100 billion of which the Congressional Budget Office has confirmed goes to illegal immigrants.
Democrats would also be pleased if, while failing to get these specific demands met, they nevertheless secured a permanent Senate rule change by Republicans ending the filibuster.
Senate Democrats unilaterally ended the filibuster for nominations in 2013, and they would have ended the filibuster for legislation, too, in January 2022, but Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) voted with Republicans to preserve it. The Democrats’ rage against Manchin’s and Sinema’s refusal to nuke the legislative filibuster was so fierce that both senators were run out of the party and became independents. Neither is serving in the Senate today. Democrats would love nothing more than to have Republicans do their dirty work for them and kill the filibuster.
The Constitution does not mention a filibuster, but it is clear that the Senate properly sets its own rules, and the Supreme Court has reaffirmed that power repeatedly over decades. The ability of one senator to prevent a vote on legislation by refusing to end debate has been a part of Senate rules from the beginning. It was not until 1917 that a mechanism was created — Rule 22 — that empowered a supermajority of senators to vote to end debate and move on to final passage. That is the filibuster rule the Senate has today.
While the Constitution does not mention the filibuster directly, it is undisputed that the Senate was designed to be a more conservative institution than the House. That is why senators staggered six-year terms instead of facing election every two years. The House is designed to be a more populist institution attuned to immediate passions prevailing at any given time. The Senate is supposed to be more deliberative and to debate, build consensus, and forge compromise. Republicans should not destroy that institutional capacity to overcome Democratic intransigence.
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Federal policy is already chaotic enough with so much of the administrative state able to switch legal directions 180 degrees every time the White House changes hands. Ending the filibuster would make one-party rule more likely, leaving minority views and interests more vulnerable.
So far, only Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) has said Republicans should do what Democrats tried to do in 2022 and end the legislative filibuster. Thune has been asked repeatedly and is set against it. No matter what happens in the coming weeks, Republicans should stay strong, follow Thune’s lead, and preserve the Senate’s deliberative capacity while they still can.