The Senate filibuster to block a voting rights bill was a piece of orchestrated political theater, but Mitch McConnell has done everything within his power to give the proceedings an air of portentous finality. When Senator Kyrsten Sinema reiterated her support for the legislative filibuster, McConnell praised her courage and said she “saved the Senate as an institution.
The norm that the filibuster would be employed sparingly held through most of the Senate’s history. Only since the 1990s did it metastasize into a routine supermajority requirement. As recently as the early 1990s, legislation still passed with fewer than 60 votes. The rules McConnell helped design are very much to his liking. The measures he wants to pass can pass with 50 votes: tax cuts, spending cuts, and confirming judges. Measures he generally opposes, like creating new laws and regulations, need 60 votes. As it stands, Democrats needed 60 votes to pass Obamacare, while Republicans needed only 50 to destroy it. Conservatives could hardly design a more favorable arrangement.
Republicans like Pat Toomey, Guy Benson, and Glenn Greenwald have all complained about the “contradiction” between Democrats wishing to eliminate the legislative filibuster and still using it to block legislation they oppose. It seems almost insulting to one’s intelligence to have to address this “argument,” but arguing that the rule should be changed is completely different than insisting the use of the existing rules is immoral.
jonathanchait Dems not gaining control anytime soon.
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