Filibuster
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, last week, Leader McConnell called up a bill to the floor of the U.S. Senate. It was a coronavirus relief bill, which included a number of components that both sides had agreed needed to be in any coronavirus relief bill. It was a targeted bill. It was a fiscally responsible bill, and it was a bill that was rooted in reality. In other words, there was a belief that it could be signed into law if, in fact, it was passed by the Congress.
So, when it was called up, obviously, we talked about the features in the bill, many of which are things, as I said, enjoyed bipartisan support. When I said it was fiscally responsible, it actually repurposed funds from the previous coronavirus relief bill, from the CARES Act, that had not yet been spent. So it took some of those dollars, repurposed them, used them in another way, which I think would be a fiscally responsible way in which to approach the whole issue of how we spend taxpayer dollars on any issue, including a crisis. So there was a repurposing that I think, again, represents a fiscally responsible approach to doing this.
It also addressed the issue of people who were unemployed. It had a provision in there that allowed people to continue to receive unemployment insurance above and beyond what their States offered in terms of the benefits--$300 above that on a per-week basis, which, on average, represents about an 85-percent wage replacement. So it was about an 85-percent wage replacement in terms of an unemployment benefit. It also included bipartisan improvements and bipartisan amendments and modifications to the PPP program, things which both sides had agreed upon. That program has been very successful but needed to be expanded and reauthorized, so it included those changes--again, bipartisan changes.
It included significant funding for both elementary and secondary education--about $70 billion there to help our schools open safely and another $30 billion to $35 billion for colleges and universities for the same purpose: to help them be able to open safely--again, a bipartisan priority.
Those are just a few of the things that were included. It also included, of course, additional funding for vaccines, therapies, testing, all things that we think are vitally important if we are going to defeat the virus.
Those were all components that were included in the bill last week that was brought up to the floor by the majority leader, Senator McConnell, and it was blocked. It was filibustered by the Democrats. Now, when I say blocked, I am not talking about blocking the end bill. I am talking about blocking even getting on the bill. It was a motion to proceed under the Senate rules, something that is necessary to get on a bill.
It is important, I think, to point out that there are several ways in which a bill can be stopped, and they require a supermajority--60 votes in the Senate. Once you are on a bill and it is subject to an amendment process, you can, at the end of that, if you don't like the bill, you can still block it with 41 votes. In other words, it takes 60 votes to get on a bill, to proceed to a bill, and 60 votes to get off the bill, to report it out. So there are several places where if you are opposed to something and you think that you haven't been treated fairly, you can block it.
But blocking the motion to proceed means you are blocking a bill-- even just the idea of getting on the bill and opening it up to an amendment process and debating it on the floor of the Senate. That is not, obviously, the first time that has happened. It happened in the police reform bill. It happened earlier this year in the original CARES package.
But on the police reform bill, you had, again, a bill that had many bipartisan provisions in it. In fact, about 75 to 80 percent of the bill were things that both sides agreed upon, and, there again, the motion to proceed just to get on the bill was blocked. It was by the use of the filibuster. It was by the use of the 60-vote threshold in the Senate to prevent the Senate from even proceeding to the bill--even after, I would add, the manager of that bill and the author of that bill, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, had indicated through the leadership that they would be willing to accept up to 10 amendments or up to 20 amendments. They were offered unanimous consent to get 10 or 20 amendments offered in the police reform bill, but it was still blocked even on the motion to proceed by the Democrats in the Senate.
So, when they blocked the bill last week, it was pointed out, I think, accurately by the media reporting on the bill. These were a few of the headlines to give you a sense of the reaction.
The Hill: ``Senate Democrats block GOP relief bill.'' The Washington Post said: ``Democrats block slimmed-down GOP coronavirus relief bill. . . .'' ABC News said: ``Democrats block Senate GOP COVID 19 relief proposal.'' National Public Radio said: ``Senate Democrats Block GOP's $300 Billion Pandemic Relief Bill.''
So those were some of the headlines. Maybe this doesn't mean anything to anybody but Congress watchers, but I am sure the irony is not lost on anybody who follows this process. The Democrats used the legislative filibuster. When I say blocking a motion to proceed, it was the use of a legislative filibuster to block a bill last week--as I mentioned, several times earlier this year--at the same time that they are calling for an end to the legislative filibuster.
Imagine that. Think about the irony of that. On Friday, NBC News reported: ``Democratic insiders are assembling a coalition behind the scenes to wage an all-out war on the Senate filibuster in bullish anticipation of sweeping the 2020 election. . . .''
So the very mechanism that they used repeatedly here just in the last year--but, frankly, for the last 6 years that they have been in the minority--to block or, in some cases, even to improve a bill that comes to the floor of the U.S. Senate, they are now talking about getting rid of that very rule. I mean, think about that. The irony of that is pretty rich.
It was a disturbing confirmation that the campaign by some Democrats to eliminate the Senate's nearly 200-year-old practice for considering legislation has become official. It used to be sort of whispered around here and talked about, but now they are talking openly about getting rid of the filibuster. It puts into stark contrast the choice the voters are going to face in November.
So what is the legislative filibuster? Well, it is the product of the Senate's tradition of unlimited debate. The legislative filibuster is essentially the requirement that 60 Senators agree before the Senate can end debate and vote on a contentious bill. In other words, you need 60 percent of the Senate to agree before you can pass a bill
Now, what this means in practice is that unlike the House of Representatives, where legislation can easily pass with the support of just one party, in the Senate, you generally need the support of at least some Members of the other party before you can pass legislation. Nowadays, the Senate's filibuster rule could be said to be the primary thing that distinguishes the Senate from the House of Representatives.
That matters because the Senate is supposed to be different from the House of Representatives. The Framers of the Constitution designed the Senate to be, as the minority leader once said--alluding to the legendary exchange between Washington and Jefferson--the cooling saucer of democracy.
Wary of--to quote Federalist 62--``the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions,'' the Founders created the Senate as a check on the House of Representatives. They made the Senate smaller and Senators' terms of office longer with the intention of creating a more stable, more thoughtful, and more deliberative legislative body to check ill- considered or intemperate legislation.
As time has gone on, the legislative filibuster is the Senate rule that has had perhaps the greatest impact in preserving the Founders' vision of the Senate. Thanks to the filibuster, it is often harder to get legislation through the Senate than through the House. It requires more thought, more debate, and greater consensus.
Those are good things. Historically, Senators of both parties have recognized this. They have seen beyond the narrow partisan advantage of the moment and fought for the preservation of the filibuster.
In 2005, when there was talk of abolishing the judicial filibuster, Democratic Senators, some of whom still serve in this body today, fought fiercely to safeguard it. At a rally in March of that year, the current Democratic leader said:
They believe if you get 51% of the vote, there should be one party rule. We will stand in their way! Because an America of checks and balances is the America we love. It's the America the Founding Fathers created. It's been the America that has kept us successful for 200 years and we're not going to let them change it! . . . We will fight, and we will preserve the Constitution.
That is from the current Democratic leader back in 2005, speaking about proposals to eliminate the filibuster. Well, unfortunately, the Democrats changed their tune a few years later when they thought abolishing the judicial filibuster would serve their advantage. But even then, Democrats--and later Republicans--sought to distinguish between confirming nominees and the importance of preserving debate on legislation. Now they are talking about abolishing the fundamental practice of the Senate, the legislative filibuster, for the same prospect of temporary partisan gaming.
``Nothing's off the table,'' the minority leader said when asked about Democrats' intentions for the legislative filibuster if they win back the Senate. It is a far cry from what he said just a few years ago.
Eliminating the legislative filibuster would permanently change the nature of the Senate. The cooling saucer that the Founders envisioned would essentially be gone, and the one-party rule the Democratic leader decried back in 2005 would become a reality.
Some might ask why one-party rule is a problem. After all, sometimes one party wins the Senate, the House, and the Presidency. Shouldn't that party be able to pass whatever legislation it wants? Well, the answer is no. Our country is relatively evenly split down the middle, with the advantage sometimes moving to the Republicans and sometimes to the Democrats, but even if one party were a permanent minority in this country, one-party rule still wouldn't be acceptable.
Let me go back to the Federalist papers for just a minute. Federalist 10 and 51 discuss two issues that the Founders were concerned about: minority rights and the tyranny of the majority. While we tend to think of tyrants as single individuals, the Founders recognized that a majority could be tyrannical as well. So the Founders created a system of government designed to prevent tyrannical majority from running roughshod over the rights of the minority, and one of those checks was the Senate.
Today, the legislative filibuster may be the single most important thing preserving the Senate's constitutional role as a check on majority tyranny. By requiring 60 votes, the filibuster ensures that any legislation has to take into account the views of a broad group of Senators. With a 60-vote threshold, you are unlikely to get your legislation passed unless you bring some Senators of the opposite party on board, and that means the minority party has a real role in shaping legislation in the Senate, something the minority party in the House lacks.
Democrats have repeatedly, as I pointed out earlier, used the legislative filibuster to their advantage during this Congress. In March, Democrats filibustered our largest coronavirus relief bill, the CARES Act, until Republicans agreed to add some Democratic priorities, and Democrats quickly took credit for making the bill better. You would think that Democrats would want to preserve this influence, especially--especially--now that Democrats have experienced the consequences of their decision to abolish the judicial filibuster.
Of course, when they say they want to abolish the legislative filibuster, Democrats mean that they want to abolish the legislative filibuster if they win a majority in November. They have a lot of legislation they want to pass, and they don't want to have to moderate that legislation to address Republicans' or Americans' concerns.
But I would remind my colleagues that no one is in power forever. If Democrats do win in November and abolish the legislative filibuster, they may quickly come to regret that decision once they are in the minority again, because no matter how permanent a majority thinks it will be, sooner or later every majority party returns to minority status.
In addition to doing away with the bipartisan nature of the Senate, ending the legislative filibuster would also erode the stability of government. Legislation would become more partisan because the majority would not have to take into account the opinions of the minority party. That would make legislation likely to be reversed as soon as the opposite party gains the majority in a future Congress.
Without the legislative filibuster, it is not hard to see a future in which national policy on a host of issues could fluctuate wildly every few years. Taxes could go up and down on a regular basis. Government programs could be stopped and started every few years. The consequences for individuals, businesses, and our economy would not just be unpleasant but potentially devastating.
I understand the frustration of my Democratic colleagues. I have been in the minority of the Senate. I was in the minority my first 8 years here.
I also know what it is like when you get into the majority and can't pass everything you want because the minority party will filibuster your bills. I have certainly had moments when I wished we could just pass legislation with a simple majority, especially coming from the House of Representatives.
Democrats have stood in the way of a lot of legislation I would like to have passed this year, from Senator Scott's police reform bill, which I mentioned earlier, to additional coronavirus relief, to pro- life legislation.
It is also important to note that not every filibuster has been undertaken for noble purposes. Like every tool, it can be misused. But I know that no matter how frustrating the filibuster may be in the moment, preserving it is essential to preserving the institution of the Senate and the purpose for which it was created. It is essential to protecting minority rights, and it is an essential check on tyrannical majorities that would seek to curtail our freedoms.
Legend has it that when Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention, someone asked him what form of government the convention had instituted. ``A republic,'' Franklin said, ``if you can keep it''--``if you can keep it.''
Today, the legislative filibuster is the key rule preserving the Senate's constitutional role as a check on partisan passion. I pray that no future Senate will destroy the Senate's essential role in our system of government for temporary partisan gain.
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Mr. THUNE. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Alaska
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would say, through the Chair, to my colleague from Alaska that that is absolutely the case. I don't think there is any question but that, if the legislative filibuster is done away with in a future Senate--and, again, Members on the Democratic side are talking openly about doing that if they gain the majority after the election in November--it will transform the institution of the Senate and, by extension, transform our country.
The institution that was designed to protect minority rights and to put a check on a majority will no longer be a functioning institution in the way the Founders intended. In fact, it will essentially become, as the Senator from Alaska pointed out, the House of Representatives with longer terms.
I think that would be unfortunate for a country that was based upon a system of checks and balances and that recognized very early on how critical it was that minority rights be a part of our public debate and discussion and that those voices not be muffled or that those voices not be completely put out of the public debate.
I would simply say to my colleague from Alaska that I think this is a monumental issue in terms of what this institution has meant to this country and what it will continue to mean in the future if these rules are changed and this constitutional protection, as we have pointed out, is done away with. It will transform the Senate, and it will transform the country in ways that would be very detrimental to what the Founders intended.
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Mr. THUNE. Would the Senator yield for a question?
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, would the Senator from Illinois agree, however--because I think it is important to point out that this is not something that happened in the last few years. The Senator from Alaska had a colleague elected in 2008 who, when he ran again for election in 2014, the argument could be made against him that he had never gotten a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate on a single amendment in a 6-year term in the Senate.
I came here in 2005. In the first 8 years that I was here as a Senator, I witnessed time and again the very thing you are talking about, where amendments were shut down, the tree was filled, in the parliamentary language that we use here in the Senate.
So I would ask the Senator: Is this not a--this is not an issue that has cropped up in the last few years. Is this not a problem that originated some time ago and, as the Senator is suggesting, that we need to do away with the supermajority requirement that requires us here as Senators to work together in a bipartisan way to find common ground to fix what ails the Senate?
I would argue and a lot would argue that what ails the Senate right now requires nothing more than behavioral change. We have to agree that when somebody offers an amendment on one side, that it is not going to be blocked immediately and we get into this lockdown. That is what happened in recent years and in the last couple of examples we have had, as recently as last week, blocking the motion to proceed to the bill.
I mean, if you want to have an amendment process, you have to get on the bill in the first place. That has been, now, the routine that has been executed by the minority, is to prevent even a motion to proceed, which would enable us to get to an amendment process.
So this is not something that happened when Senator McConnell came; this was happening well before that. As I pointed out, the Senator from Alaska's colleague went through an entire 6-year term without getting a vote--a Democratic colleague--when he was in the majority here in the Senate.
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have one last question for the Senator from Illinois.
I don't disagree that, again, we can do a better job--both sides--of making the Senate a more open place where we have an opportunity to debate, which I think is the history and tradition of the Senate, but I don't think blowing up the Senate rules accomplishes that.
I just want to read for you from this morning--I was on the floor here, but in an interview on NPR, the junior Senator from Massachusetts was asked if there are parts of the Green New Deal that might attract bipartisan support. How did he reply? He replied that we need to enact the whole thing, and if Republicans disagree, Democrats should eliminate the filibuster.
Now, wanting to preserve the filibuster doesn't mean we can't reform the Senate, but it does mean that we shouldn't allow a majority to steamroll a minority. That is what the filibuster and the rules of the Senate were designed to protect.
What your Members are talking openly about doing--including your leader--is nuking the filibuster, blowing up the Senate, and changing and transforming it in a way that will transform not only the Senate and the way the government, I think, was designed to work by our Founders but also transform the country.
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