WASHINGTON – The fight over the Senate obstruction increased dramatically on Tuesday, when President Biden for the first time put his weight on changing the rules, even with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, threatening harsh reprisals if Democrats moved. to weaken procedural tactics.
In an interview with ABC News, Biden gave his most direct endorsement until the obstruction review, saying he was in favor of a return to what is called speaking obstruction: the requirement that opponents of legislation occupy the room and present their arguments against Is it over there .
“I don’t think you have to remove the obstruction; you have to do it, which it used to be when I arrived in the Senate in the old days, ”said the president. “You had to get up and command the ground, and you had to keep talking.” The comments were a significant departure for Biden, a 36-year-old Senate veteran who has often been described by advisers as reluctant to change Senate procedures.
“It’s getting to the point where, you know, democracy is having a hard time working,” he added.
Currently, senators need only register their objections to the legislation to force supporters to produce 60 votes to break the obstruction, which has become an almost daily part of the Senate’s life. Requiring opponents to keep the floor would put more burden on them and, theoretically, make it more difficult for them to sustain their opposition.
Biden’s comments came as McConnell issued his stern warning and the president’s allies on Capitol Hill began to build a public case for the elimination of the tactic.
After Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second Senate Democrat, called for changes to reduce his power, McConnell, of Kentucky, bluntly promised a “scorched earth” response and promised to crush the Senate to a standstill and derail it. Biden’s agenda if Democrats take that step.
“Everything the Democratic Senates did to Presidents Bush and Trump, everything the Republican Senate did to President Obama, would be child’s play compared to the disaster that Democrats would create for their own priorities if – if – they broke the Senate” , said McConnell said.
He was referring to the possibility that Democrats would resort to a measure known as the “nuclear option”, using their majority status to force a change in Senate rules that allow lawmakers to block action on a bill unless that proponents get 60 votes for the forward proposal. This would effectively destroy the obstruction, allowing the majority party – currently Democrats – to enforce any measure on its own.
Progressives have been agitated by this shift to allow Biden to guide his agenda around Republican obstruction, and an increasing number of Democrats are openly considering it. The idea gained momentum following the enactment of the $ 1.9 trillion Biden stimulus measure, which Democrats passed in the Senate without a single Republican vote under a special budgetary process, delivering legislation that has so far been well received by the public and it gave Democrats a taste of the possibilities of a postfilibuster world.
Seeking to slow down Democrats and get the White House’s attention, McConnell was adamant that Republicans would tie up the Senate in retaliation if they took that step. He made his statement after Durbin, a respected veteran of the institution, said on Monday that it was time to stop allowing the minority party to routinely block legislation, requiring a three-fifths majority to move most projects forward. It was the most explicit call for a Democratic leader to act.
Mr. Durbin noted that it was Mr. McConnell who institutionalized the use of the obstruction, which historically was rarely used before the Kentuckian was in charge. Durbin said the procedural weapon was a particularly sensitive point for him, as for two decades he prevented Democrats from enacting the so-called Dream Act, a popular bipartisan bill he wrote that would create a path to the legal status of undocumented immigrants brought in to the United States as children. Although he has the support of the majority, he has never been able to exceed the limit of 60 votes.
“I brought him to the Senate floor on five different occasions, and on five different occasions, he was interrupted by the obstruction,” said Durbin on Tuesday.
In his speech on Monday, Durbin argued that the burden should be transferred to opponents of a given bill to maintain an obstruction, rather than supporters producing 60 votes to promote it, a view similar to that expressed by Biden . Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia and one of the party’s main opponents to end the obstruction, also said he would consider the idea of requiring obstructors to speak.
Democrats say they are not yet ready to move forward with any attempt to reform the obstruction rules and also have no votes for their own party to do so at the moment. For now, activists are asking them to build momentum following the same strategy they used in 2013, before using the nuclear option to end obstruction against candidates from the Executive and the Judiciary.
That year, Harry Reid of Nevada, then the Senate majority leader, lined up a series of three highly regarded judicial nominees for seats in a prestigious appeals court to show that Republicans would block those nominated for the Obama administration, no matter what. how qualified they were. The Democrats then repeatedly brought the nominees up for a vote in the plenary and failed to break the Republican obstruction, a process that eventually persuaded enough senators in their ranks that they had no choice but to lower the 60-vote limit for nominees to prevent the Obama administration was denied its right to sit judges.
Supporters of obstruction change say Democrats can now do the same with progressive legislation that is supported by the majority. This includes a voting right measure now starting to reach the Senate, immigration legislation, an arms security bill, a gay and transgender rights bill, a union organization measure and potentially a measure large-scale public works. The House has spent the past few weeks approving many of the measures against the unanimous or almost solid Republican opposition; the Dream Act is scheduled to vote on Thursday.
“We need to build a record that can be passed immediately and that is failing the obstruction,” said Adam Jentleson, a former Reid aide during the 2013 confrontation who wrote a new book that attacks the obstruction, arguing that it destroyed the Senate and prevented it public policies that have broad national support.
Senators seem to be increasingly receptive to calls to end the obstruction as it exists now, as they consider the possibility of months of Republican resistance to their agenda.
“I think people just did it,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who heads the Rules Committee, of the blockade tactic she had endorsed in the past. “I don’t think we should let an old-fashioned Senate rule undermine the foundations of our democracy and prevent us from making progress.”
Ms. Klobuchar intends to convene a hearing next week on the broad voting rights bill already approved by the Chamber, and she acknowledged that it is likely to “be a major test for obstruction”.
In his comments, McConnell threatened that Republicans would overturn the rules against Democrats and try to make it virtually impossible to do anything in the Senate if they proceeded with the change. He referred to the fact that the chamber operates under mysterious rules, often bypassed by what is known as a unanimous consent agreement, where no senator is opposed. If Democrats went ahead to destroy the obstruction, he warned, Republicans would deny consent to even the most mundane issues, effectively bogging down the Senate.
“Let me say this very clearly to all 99 of my colleagues,” said McConnell. “No one serving in this chamber can even begin – or even begin – to imagine what a completely scorched earth Senate would be like – none. None of us served a minute in a Senate that was completely deprived of courtesy, and this is an institution that requires unanimous consent to turn on the lights before noon. “
McConnell, who noted that he resisted President Donald J. Trump’s aggressive demands to get rid of the obstruction and push the Republicans’ agenda, said that removing it would represent a transformative change in government and would go far beyond what voters intended to elect Mr. Biden and the Senate divided equally.
“Does anyone really believe that the American people were voting for an entirely new system of government by electing Joe Biden to the White House and a 50-50 Senate?” he asked. “There was no mandate to completely transform America for the American people on November 3.”
Klobuchar disagreed with this assessment, saying that the Americans voted for a new approach and that it may be necessary to get rid of the obstruction to achieve it.
“They voted for someone more moderate for president, but for someone who will do great things,” she said. “They voted for the change.”