Republicans Will Filibuster Partisan Legislation by Marc A. Thiessen

Political Crossfire Republicans Will Filibuster Partisan Legislation. Get Over It.

By Marc A. Thiessen

Senate Democrats engaged in a show of political theater this week, bringing up a partisan election bill they knew had no chance of passing – and then using the Republicans’ justified resistance to argue for eliminating or weakening the filibuster.

Republicans were right to kill S. 1, an 800-plus-page monstrosity that was a breathtaking federal assault on states’ authority to conduct their own elections. The bill was a caricature of liberal government overreach – it actually mandated the kind of glue that must be used on absentee ballots (requiring “self-sealing” envelopes that are known to gum up postal equipment, which would have caused mailin ballots to be lost or rejected). It required states to auto-enroll voters; overruled state laws against ballot harvesting by paid political operatives; allowed felons to vote in federal (but not state) elections after completion of their sentence; required states to count mail ballots that show up 10 days after the election; and banned states from requiring “any form of identification as a condition of obtaining an absentee ballot” – even though 80% of Americans (including 62% of Democrats) support requiring photo identification for voting.

It was a poorly written partisan wish list – exactly the kind of legislation the filibuster was designed to stop. Yet Democrats pilloried Republicans for objecting to it, accusing them of supporting voter suppression and a return to Jim Crow – until one of their own, Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), declared his opposition to what he rightly called their “partisan voting legislation.” Manchin’s announcement forced Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) to negotiate a scaled-down framework to win Manchin’s support.

He had no choice. If Manchin withheld his vote, S. 1 would have died because of insufficient Democratic votes – which would have undermined Schumer’s Republican “voter suppression” narrative. So, Schumer agreed to a Manchin substitute he knew would never even receive a vote ---so he could move forward with his show vote on the Democrats’ original election bill. In fact, there was never an actual “Manchin bill” – just some vague talking points. If there had been actual legislation, and Schumer was serious about it, he could have brought it up for a vote instead of S.1. But he didn’t – because it didn’t exist and might not have gotten enough Democratic support if it did.

The whole exercise was little more than a PR stunt. Yet some argue that the GOP’s failure to accept Schumer’s fake deal with Manchin is justification to “reform” the filibuster. So, let’s get this straight: Democrats negotiate a “compromise” among themselves, never introduce actual legislative language, and this somehow obligates Republicans to drop their objections? Sorry, that is not compromise – and it is not how the Senate works.

The fact that Republicans used the filibuster to block what they believed was harmful legislation is not outrageous. When Democrats were in the minority, they did it all the time. Democrats filibustered funding for Trump’s border wall, covid-19 relief legislation, police reform, legislation requiring “sanctuary cities” to cooperate with federal law enforcement and legislation to protect unborn human life. Yet Senate Republicans never seriously considered eliminating or weakening the filibuster to force their agenda through over Democratic objections -- even though they controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. But now that Republicans are using the same tool that Democrats did as recently as last year, that justifies blowing up the Senate guardrails protecting the minority party’s rights? What utter hypocrisy.

Here’s a hard truth Democrats need to accept: Republicans are going to filibuster partisan legislation. Get over it. Every time they do so, it’s not an excuse to get rid of the filibuster. If Democrats want to avoid Republican filibusters, there is a simple way to do so: Stop acting as though they won in a landslide in 2020, when voters elected a 50-50 Senate and one of the narrowest House majorities in modern times. Democrats have no popular mandate to enact a partisan agenda.

When Democrats focus on areas of bipartisan agreement, the system works just fine. This month, the Senate approved landmark legislation aimed at countering China’s rise. Some Republicans used the leverage filibuster rules gave them to delay final passage of the bill to secure changes. Democrats allowed GOP amendments, and eventually, the bill passed with 68 votes – proving, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pointed out, that “the rules of the Senate don’t stand in the way of bipartisan legislating.”

But here is the news you probably have not heard: House Democrats are refusing to pass this carefully negotiated, bipartisan legislation that is vital to America’s economic and national security – stopping President Joe Biden from signing it into law. Where is the indignation at their obstructionism? And why should Senate Republicans feel any pressure to pass blatantly partisan legislation passed by the House, when House Democrats seem to be under no pressure to pass bipartisan legislation passed by the Senate?

Apparently, these days, obstruction is only an outrage when Republicans do it.