Democratic heavyweights Kamala Harris, Tim Walz and Chuck Schumer are all indicating that they will try to weaken or kill the Senate filibuster if their party wins big on Election Day.
Harris and Walz, who are at the top of the Democratic ticket for the 2024 election cycle, have each indicated they believe the filibuster needs to go, while Schumer suggested in August that he would move to eliminate it if Democrats can secure a Senate majority. The filibuster is a key Senate rule that requires 60 votes to pass most major legislation rather than a simple majority of 51, frustrating slim majorities looking to pass transformative laws by narrow margins.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY): “You will not stop us from passing [gun control]. If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it.”
What happened to “defending democracy”? pic.twitter.com/wivfbkqPAo
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 2, 2022
Most recently, Walz suggested that he and Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are on the same page when it comes to getting rid of the filibuster while the pair played video games on a Sunday live stream.
“I don’t know where you stand, but I’m going to guess you and I are probably the same on the filibuster,” Walz said during the stream.
“Oh yeah, we have got to get rid of that thing,” Ocasio-Cortez said in response.
Walz also endorsed abolishing the Electoral College during an October fundraiser with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, though the Harris campaign subsequently attempted to clean up his comments by saying they are not representative of the campaign’s positions.
In September, Harris said she supports eliminating the filibuster in order to codify Roe v. Wade’s protections for abortion access.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” Harris said. “And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
Schumer, who helms the Democratic caucus in the Senate, has also suggested that he would take aim at the filibuster if his party is able to land a majority on Election Day. Senate Democrats tried to kill the filibuster in the first half of President Joe Biden’s term in office to pass the massive “Build Back Better” plan, but then-Democratic Sens. Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia held out against that effort despite immense pressure from activists.
Eventually, Democrats managed to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — Biden’s signature climate bill and a pared-down version of the “Build Back Better” plan — without a single GOP vote by using the budget reconciliation process.
“We got it up to 48, but, of course, Sinema and Manchin voted no; that’s why we couldn’t change the rules. Well, they’re both gone,” Schumer told reporters during the Democratic National Convention in August, NBC News reported. “Ruben Gallego is for it, and we have 51. So even losing Manchin, we still have 50.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned that eliminating the filibuster would allow Democrats to add two new states to the country that would reliably elect Democratic senators who would then enable the party to pursue major agenda items that are currently out of reach.
If Democrats can sufficiently weaken or eliminate the filibuster, “they’ll admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as two new states — that’s four Democratic senators in perpetuity — and then they’ll go after the Supreme Court,” McConnell told The Owensboro Times in August.
Notably, the late former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ended the filibuster for judicial nominations in 2013 to help get former President Barack Obama’s blocked nominees though the Senate, but that decision also helped pave the way for former President Donald Trump to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court during his term in office, according to CNN.
The Harris-Walz campaign and Schumer’s office did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
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