Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Spent more than an hour in the Senate floor on Wednesday night reading a 2005 speech by President Biden literally, where Biden said that removing the obstruction would “gut the Senate”.
Biden, then a Delaware senator, said at the time that it was “one of the most important speeches for historical purposes that I have given in the 32 years since I was in the Senate”.
He said that breaking the 60-vote barrier would transform the Senate “into the House of Representatives.”
The Senate at that time was also divided by 50%. George W. Bush was in office, which means that a Republican had the tiebreaker, Vice President Dick Cheney.
Biden said at the time that “the Senate should not act hastily, changing its rules to satisfy a stubborn majority acting in the heat of the moment”.
The former senator said: “It is my personal belief that the Senate should be more judicious in the use of obstruction”. He added that “it should come as no surprise that in periods when the electorate is divided very evenly, as now, nomination obstruction has been used extensively.”
BIDEN SAYS FILIBUSTER IS BEING ABUSED, THREATENS CHANGES
But ending the obstruction, he said, was a mistake.
“It’s not just a bad idea, it upsets the constitutional design and harms the country,” said Biden’s speech. “The Senate would no longer be that ‘different type of legislative body’ that the Founders intended. The Senate would no longer be the ‘disco’ to cool the passions of the immediate majority.”
Biden said on Thursday that he supports changes in the obstruction, but does not endorse calls for its elimination.
He said he would “strongly support” the reform of the silent obstruction to a “talking” obstruction, where senators who want to block the legislation would have to hold on to the word by talking non-stop. He cited statistics that there were only 58 motions to break an obstruction from 1917 to 1971, but in the past year alone, there have been “five times as many.”
SENATE REPUBLICANS PREDICT DEMS WILL USE VOTING PROTECTION TO KILL THE FILIBUSTATOR
Biden said he agreed with former President Barack Obama’s assessment that the obstruction was a “relic of Jim Crow”.
In 2005, Biden valued the obstruction, regretting what could happen if it were eliminated: “Senators would start thinking about changing other rules when they became ‘inconvenient’. Instead of two-thirds of the votes to change a rule, you would now have precedent that only a simple majority is needed. Changing the Senate rules to assist in a political or other struggle could become standard operating procedure, which, in my opinion, would be disastrous. “
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Democrats recently took on a pressure campaign to eliminate “racist” obstruction, especially as they work to pass the HR 1 radical election bill. Moderate Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin, W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, Ariz., Remain opposed to removing the obstacle.