President Donald Trump’s top domestic priority is the SAVE America Act, a bill to create new voting restrictions in the name of “election security.” But the bill does not have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and pass the Senate. Trump’s solution: The Senate should return to Jimmy Stewart-style talking filibusters.
Senators these days rarely speak for hours to obstruct legislation like Stewart did in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Procedures since the 1970s have allowed them to trigger a filibuster “simply by announcing they wanted to block a bill,” said PBS NewsHour.
Trump and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) are now pushing to impose a “marathon talking filibuster” requirement to wear down Democratic opposition to the SAVE Act, said The Associated Press. That would not guarantee passage of the bill, Lee said, but “we can be certain that failure will be the outcome if we don’t try.”
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Under the Senate’s current rules, a talking filibuster “would require 51 GOP senators in or near the chamber at all times” to be ready to vote if a Democratic speech faltered, said NBC News. Just one Democrat would be needed to hold the floor. That sets up an “endurance test” that’s difficult for a Senate majority to win if it’s “not willing to go the distance” for days or weeks, said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University.
“Make them talk,” Brian Darling said at The Hill. The Senate has been “dysfunctional for decades” thanks to “procedural tactics” that make it easier to block a bill than to pass it. A talking filibuster would change the dynamic. Democratic senators would “stop talking at some point.” When and if that happened, the Senate could just “vote and pass the bill with a simple majority.”
The talking filibuster is a “mirage,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. The 60-vote threshold “always frustrates the party in power,” but Republicans may benefit disproportionately: Without the filibuster, Democrats would restructure the Supreme Court and create “new states out of Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.” The talking filibuster’s requirements would turn legislative battles into an “endless GOP campout,” forcing senators to wait around endlessly for Democrats to tire of speechifying. “Bring your pajamas, toothbrush and CPAP machine.”
What next?
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has been a longtime defender of current filibuster rules. But he’s in a runoff with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race to keep his Senate seat and angling for Trump’s endorsement. On Wednesday, he reversed himself. The SAVE Act “matters more than the filibuster,” Cornyn said in a New York Post op-ed.
Cornyn aside, there are not enough GOP votes to change the rules and force a talking filibuster, said Politico. Many Republicans believe weakening existing rules would “pave the way” for Democrats to eventually “pass far-reaching legislation of their own” in the future. The voting math “doesn’t add up,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).
