Earlier (Sunday 14 March 2021), I wrote Busting the Filibuster, with a survey of popular ideas for fixing the filibuster and some of my own ideas. Over the last week, David Waldman was good enough to put an audio version of this material on his show, Kagro in the Morning (here, here, and here).
In response to David’s commentary and comments on the original post, I’d like to revise and extend my remarks, as noted below.
Quoting from the original article
[Deletions appear struck out and additions appear in italics.]
We’ve been here before, a Democratic President with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. In a real world, the Democratic Party would pass and sign any legislation our party thinks is best for the nation. Tap-dancing across the Rotunda floor, right?
Not as long as the Senate requires 60 votes to move any important legislation and there are 50 Republican Senators.
Fortunately, Democrats were able to push pandemic relief through reconciliation, which doesn’t require 60 votes (as long as provisions are reasonably related to the federal budget). But now we are faced with piles of critical legislation that will grind to a halt in the Senate unless we eliminate or seriously curtail the filibuster rule.
In the 116th Congress, the House passed and sent to the Senate 18 bills, including bills for: voting rights, lower drug costs, infrastructure, equality for gender orientation and identity, background checks for firearms, decriminalization for marijuana, banking for marijuana, and fairness for Internet traffic, as well as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. (See List of bills in the 116th United States Congress.)
Many of these bills are extremely important, but were stopped by Republicans with their control of the Senate. They plan to stop similar legislation this session, but they don’t control the Senate. Even so, they can block any of these bills with the filibuster. Historically, the filibuster has been often dysfunctional and detrimental to the country. But now the situation has reached a critical point.
Time to Break the Filibuster
Why? Because the Democratic Party faces oblivion. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, by late January over 100 bills 250 bills were pending in 28 states 43 states to restrict voting rights. (See footnote this section.) Congress has the power to set rules for federal elections, but it can only do that if it can make law. A filibuster would require 60 Senators to support voter protections, so we can only stop this enormous Republican power grab under current rules with support of ten Republican Senators. Republicans in Congress have shown no interest in what’s best for the country, so even one Republican is out of the question.
Current state legislatures will set the boundaries of congressional districts based on the 2020 census. They will then be able to use voter suppression to gain a majority in Congress. And they even have laws pending that would allow Republican legislatures to overturn the popular vote for President and send Republican electors to the Electoral College, rigging the 2024 presidential election.
Yet even some Democrats in the Senate, not to mention President Joe Biden, believe we should retain the filibuster. They are worriers. They worry that when Democrats regain the minority, Republicans will use democracy to push through legislation we won’t like. This is a tiny problem compared to being locked out of office for all time.
Recently, President Biden said that he now supports changing the rule to require a talking filibuster, where the minority would need to speak on the floor to prevent a vote. But what this does not do is change the 60-vote requirement to end debate. In effect, Republicans could hold up legislation indefinitely, as long as they were willing to keep someone talking. We would get the same results, just with more air time for Republicans to make their objections. A talking filibuster will only work with a change to the cloture rule allowing the Senate to pass legislation with a simple majority after the minority talked themselves out.
Contact your Senators and urge them to support enough filibuster reform to at least get critical legislation, like the voting rights bills now pending, adopted by the Senate. This may require eliminating the filibuster, or just modifying it sufficiently.
Democracy really is on the line. Republicans tried to suppress it at the ballot box. They tried to deny it in the courts. They tried to steal it with a violent insurrection. They are highly motivated, because they know that real democracy, with one vote per person, will end their goal of rich, elite, minority rule. Let’s find a way to stop them.
Congress Must Pass the ‘For the People Act’
By Wendy R. Weiser, Daniel I. Weiner, and Dominique Erney
29 January 2021, last updated 18 March 2021
The original estimate is from Voting Laws Roundup: January 2021
26 January 2021
Brennan Center for Justice
The Best Minds Have Proposed Filibuster Reform
Writing in The Washington Post this month, Norm Ornstein proposed reform options he thought all Democrats might be willing to support. He warned that Democrats can only push Senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia so far without pushing them out of the party. (See footnote this section.)
Ornstein suggests the goal is to “preserve some rights for the Senate minority, with the aim of fostering compromise.” To that end he suggests three options.
Option 1: Require at least 40 Senators to be present and opposing the bill to prevent the question from coming to a vote.
Option 2: Require three-fifths of the Senators to be present and voting. Possibly add to that a requirement that at least one person in the minority be part of the debate.
Option 3: Change the requirement from three-fifths, which is 60 Senators, to a lesser number, but still more than 51.
Ornstein believes Senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema cannot be pressured into eliminating the filibuster, but they might be enticed to reform the rules to get debate and compromise without simply blocking all Democratic initiatives.
Ornstein’s ideas are part of a broader effort to change the rules. The website Vox suggests a number of additional ways to change the filibuster that centrist Democrats might support. (See footnote this section.)
Idea 1: Require opponents to speak on the floor, the way the public thinks a filibuster ought to look.
Idea 2: Exempt other matters from the cloture rule besides court appointments and budget bills. These could be either exceptions for classes of legislation or for specific bills.
Idea 3: Allow legislation to pass with a simple majority if it was blocked by a filibuster in the previous session of Congress. This allows the public to express their opinion during the intervening election.
Idea 4: Allow a vote on a legislative bill to proceed without the requirement of unanimous consent, so that it would take more than one Senator’s objection to stop the vote.
The specific proposal from Vox for Idea 4 is as follows: “The Senate could make it harder to initiate a filibuster. Right now, unanimous consent is required to hold a vote without invoking the time-consuming cloture process. But the rules could be changed to allow an immediate vote unless a larger bloc of senators — perhaps two or five or 10 — objected to such a vote, instead of just one.”
I don’t think any of these proposals quite get to the objections I’m hearing from Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema. Changing the vote threshold or how it is calculated simply makes it possible for the majority party to have a better chance of passing the legislation they want. This moves away from Manchin’s stated desire to have the parties come together to pass legislation they can agree on.
And a talking filibuster, as in Vox’s Idea 1, requires the public to care about and pay attention to the debate in Congress. That’s not going to happen. The public is used to getting small, clearly defined options and then swiping left or swiping right. The filibuster fix needs to fit their attention span.
Do you remember when I started this sentence? I didn’t think so. That’s the attention deficit disorder we must deal with. Whatever fix we make to the filibuster, the American people cannot be required to understand what the Senate is doing. They need to get a result, which they will then either like or dislike.
Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema appear to want a Senate where all members have a part in the final legislation. In the following sections, I propose possible changes that would directly address this issue.
I changed Idea 3 and Idea 4 in this revision based on comments from David Waldman. He rightly points out that Vox Idea 3 requires successive congresses, not just sessions, because there can be sessions without an intervening election. I added the specific text from Vox under Idea 4, because refusal of unanimous consent only kicks off the process, and the text from the Vox article may clear up any confusion about what they mean.
I don’t support either of these ideas. Idea 3 could require nearly two years to get legislation passed to squeeze in an election, and Idea 4 would not change the calculation. If you required 41 Senators to sign on to delaying the vote, the Republicans would just get 41 Senators to sign on. I think the answer lies elsewhere, but I wanted to give fair time to proposals that are out there, within my resources to do so.
Democrats can’t kill the filibuster. But they can gut it.
By Norman Ornstein
2 March 2021
5 ideas to reform the filibuster that Joe Manchin might actually support
By Michael Ettlinger
19 January 2021
How Joe Manchin can make the filibuster “more painful” for the GOP without eliminating it
By Ian Millhiser
Updated 8 March 2021
Sen. Manchin’s Filibuster Support
One of the key claims of people, like Sen. Manchin, who support the filibuster is that it encourages the parties to work together, which results in better legislation. Taking them at their word, let’s think about how we could improve the filibuster, so that it accomplished this goal.
My first proposal, called “Put Up or Shut Up”, is designed to encourage the parties to reach compromise. It would change Senate rules to allow any legislation to pass with a simple majority unless a Senator moved to “refer it to a joint committee for settlement”. If the motion to refer is seconded, debate on the issue would be suspended and the issue referred to committee.
That committee, by default, would have three Senators from each party, and be chaired by the minority party. That committee would have one month, by default, to bring a solution back to the floor. Their proposal would need to pass out of committee by a majority vote, meaning that at least one member of the majority party would need to vote in favor of it. Their solution would stand for an up or down vote on the Senate floor, and could be passed on a simple majority. If it failed, the original bill would automatically go to a final debate, with one hour allocated for closing arguments, and a decision by a majority vote immediately following.
This would directly address the issue cited by Sen. Manchin, that the filibuster forces the sides to work together. The put-up-or-shut-up rule would force the sides to work together in the absence of the filibuster. If it is possible for the two parties to come up with a bill that satisfies a majority of the Senate, this process would prove it.
To make sure the minority had no legitimate objections, the settlement committee would be chaired by a member of the minority. This puts the onus on the out party (in this case, the Republicans) to say how to solve the problem this legislation is supposed to address.
The size of the committee could be different, but three members from each side is small enough to work quickly on a problem, yet large enough to represent the interests of their peers. An equal number from the minority ensures both sides feel like they are equally represented in the solution.
One of the most frustrating things about the Republican Party is its refusal to propose a workable solution to any of the country’s major problems. Republicans demanded repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but they were completely unable to propose a fair, affordable, and universal replacement. They have yet to propose any workable solution to climate change. They haven’t proposed changes to police procedures to stop police treating communities like occupied territories. If they don’t want Democrats to take action it is their moral responsibility to propose workable alternative solutions.
The Republican Party is not a legitimate political party. They don’t have the good of the country at heart. Their entire purpose is to stop the government from taking effective action on critical issues. Democrats should only work with Republicans in Congress under narrowly defined rules that will keep them from obstructing the process, at least until the Republican Party shows an interest in working for the good of our country.
I took out the word “joint” in this proposal because David pointed out this is a term of art for a committee that includes members of both houses of Congress. I don’t want anyone to be confused by this.
David suggested this proposal was unlikely to get support in the Senate. One reason is because it requires members of the committees of jurisdiction to give up power over the ultimate solution. I suppose this could be mitigated by stipulating that the chair of the committee of jurisdiction for the original bill sit on the settlement committee. But, I frankly don’t think that this committee is likely to come up with a solution that would pass the full Senate without including the major elements from the original bill that the majority wanted. So, in practical terms, I don’t think these committees give up any power that they wouldn’t have to give up to allow the minority a say in the outcome. And that’s the premise of satisfying the Senators that don’t want to end the filibuster.
David also thought this might cause the Senate to spin off these committees for every bill. This is true. But that’s just saying that Republicans would filibuster every bill under the current rules. The difference here is that the clock starts ticking as soon as the bill hits the floor. At that point, it’s going to pass in some form within about a month.
He also was not certain how the committee members for these settlement committees would be picked. This is something the Senate is fully capable of handling. At a minimum, each party could just pick three of their Senators to serve on the committee for any given bill. I don’t think this selection process needs to be written into the Senate rules.
I should stipulate here that my goal is not to write rules for the Senate. My goal is to show that there are options that will answer the objections of Senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Then, if the Senate doesn’t fix the filibuster, it’s on Democrats in the Senate. It isn’t because there’s no possible solution.
Focusing on the Important
Critical issues, like fair elections, have been stymied for years by Republican obstruction in the Senate. The filibuster blocked civil rights for decades. The way to break this barrier is to change the filibuster rule and allow a majority vote on critical legislation.
The Senate should adopt a new rule allowing it to label a bill as essential to address a critical issue: that is, an issue urgent and vital to the health or safety of the country. With this designation, all further debate on a bill would be curtailed, and a majority vote on that bill would quickly take place. The critical issue designation would require a simple majority in the Senate to apply, but under specific guidelines. The majority would have to find that the legislation is:
- Vital, in that failing to act would foreseeably result in a significant number of deaths,
- Vital, in that failing to act would foreseeably result in widespread and unrecoverable property damage, or
- Vital, in that failing to act would foreseeably result in irreparable harm to the government or the security of the nation.
Additionally, the Senate would have to find this issue is urgent enough that failing to act would result in any of these harms within the following year.
For example, action on climate change fits both criteria one and two. Action on healthcare fits both criteria one and two. And action on voting rights fits criterion three because it attacks the core of democracy.
Let’s take a closer look at these examples.
- Action on climate change is vital and urgent. A significant number of people are already killed by weather conditions outside the historical norms each year. Significant property damage is already occurring, such as flooding in Miami resulting from sea level rise. Since these effects are already happening, action is urgent.
- Single-payer healthcare is vital and urgent. Tens of millions of people have no healthcare coverage and millions more are under-covered. This is already resulting in loss of life. The requirement for people to pay out of pocket for healthcare that isn’t covered by insurance means that people are driven to bankruptcy by the current system, resulting in loss of property to them.
- Election reform is vital and urgent. Republicans have already taken action in many states to suppress lawful votes. This has already caused irreparable harm to democracy, and therefore to the operation of our government. It is even more urgent because laws are pending in many states to curtail lawful voting and disenfranchise citizens.
What about minimum wage legislation? I don’t think this would qualify as critical. However, someone could argue that low wages result in unnecessary deaths, and so raising the minimum wage is vital to the health and safety of the American people.
Still, raising the minimum wage is only one part of making life affordable for workers. Fair, affordable, and universal healthcare would lower costs for working families. Eliminating the trade deficit would raise wages. We should also alter the tax system to give people an exemption from personal income taxes up to the point they are making a living wage in their area. (For calculation of the living wage, see footnote in this section.) One or more of these issues that impact wages and jobs might qualify as critical issue legislation, and the minimum wage could be part of that package.
With the critical issues rule, the Senate would become functional again, taking timely action on critical national problems. This rule can be combined with the put-up-or-shut-up rule to give the minority more input into the process. But it is the minimum necessary for a functional Congress. Critical issues have been postponed indefinitely. Meanwhile, competitors like China are plotting to take over the world. Our Senators need to look up from their petty squabbles and get on with it.
This proposal fits within “more exceptions to the filibuster rule”, as presented by Vox, and also presented here in an earlier section as “Idea 2”.
Objections to this rule generally take the form that eventually all legislation would be considered critical, and so this would apply to every bill. That means when the Republicans take over the Senate, they will then just pass whatever they want.
My first reaction is, “So?” So it eventually is equivalent to eliminating the filibuster. Okay, that might be an objection from Sen. Manchin’s side.
But I don’t think this is true. I think that you are first going to get a ruling from the parliamentarian that bills that don’t fit the criteria still require 60 votes to proceed. Generally, I think the Senate will respect that finding, where it’s true. And if a bill does go to a vote on a simple majority that doesn’t fit the criteria, then that’s fair game in the next election.
Also, if we use this rule to pass the For the People Act, I think it will be a long, long time before Republicans regain the Senate. The Republican Party is anaerobic. The Republican Party can’t survive in the open air of democracy. If you redistrict fairly, require sensible early voting opportunities, make mail-in voting widely available, eliminate most voter suppression efforts, and count the ballots in a fair and impartial way, the Republican Party as it is currently constituted will be wiped out of politics. #RepublicansAgainstThePeople.
In any case, we have a problem. Legislation for critical issues has been languishing for years. This rule attacks that problem directly by setting criteria for a class of bills that should be moved on a simple majority. If Joe (either one) has a better way to address this problem, then let’s hear it. A talking filibuster doesn’t address this problem. You still find the Senate deadlocked on critical issues. Don’t like the critical issue rule? Fine, propose a workable alternative. I’ll just sit here tapping my foot.
MIT Living Wage Calculator
I always use the calculation for a single person with one child, because each person should be able to afford to have and raise a child. The cost of raising a child is roughly $1,000 per month in the U.S., according to the USDA.
Let Them Talk (Just Not Forever)
If you don’t like the put-up-or-shut-up rule, which refers controversial issues to a joint settlement committee for a set time to hammer out a compromise, and you don’t like the critical issues rule, which allows the Senate to proceed on legislation to solve vital and urgent problems, then perhaps you will like this final proposal, which gives the opposition plenty of floor time to object to legislation.
This is the allocated floor time rule, which eliminates the cloture requirement in favor of allocating equal floor time to each Senator. If a Senator feels strongly about an issue, they can take to the floor and speak on the issue for as long as they like—within their allotted time.
Time would be allotted based on the available prime time when the Senate is going to be in session, according to the calendar. Typically, the Senate meets about half of the weeks of the year, give or take, that is 25 weeks. In each week, there are five working days, and I’ve arbitrarily designated the hours of 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM Eastern Time as prime time. That is, 50 hours per week times 25 weeks, or 1,250 hours, divided by 100 Senators or twelve and one-half hours apiece.
There’s some overhead to running the Senate, but we can probably allocate 10 hours of prime time to each Senator to have their say. Of course, they can schedule time outside those hours to speak to the cameras, so this isn’t everything. But, if, for example, Republicans seriously objected to an issue, then between them they could occupy 500 hours on the floor, railing against its adoption.
After that, the issue would come to a vote.
If the point is to give the minority time to convince the nation they are right on an issue, then an equal allocation of floor time will do this. It’s not quite a fair allocation, because Republicans represent far fewer voters than Democrats. That’s just an artifact of them occupying states with scattered populations. But within the structure of the Senate, this would give the minority at least a fair say in all matters.
This is the rule I think the Democratic leadership should start bargaining with. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could use this for Democrats’ negotiating position, in case he can’t get all Democrats to agree to the put-up-or-shut-up rule or the critical issue rule. It guarantees the majority in the Senate can pass any legislation that it wants. It’s just that it must first hear out its opponents. This is eminently fair.
Please urge the Senate to adopt some kind of filibuster reform that will allow critical legislation, such as the voting rights legislation, to go forward. It is vital and urgent for our country.
I heard some confusion about this suggestion, which I’d like to clear up.
This proposal doesn’t require the Senate to allocate specific times for Senators in the schedule. It only guarantees that any Senator may address any issue before its final vote up to their allotted floor time. It isn’t a scheduling suggestion. It is a suggestion that each Senator gets a right to speak on issues of importance to them.
This proposal does not require Senators to allocate their time at the start of the year. They can make their decisions to speak or not at any time. They only need to ask themselves whether the current bill under consideration is worth them expending some quantity of their allocated hours and how much they are willing to expend on it.
Generally, I expect there would be more time available at the end of the year for Senators to speak to issues. But if time runs short, then the Senate will have to curtail the hours available, and it should do so in a fair way by cutting back the allocation for all Senators proportionally.
Also, this suggestion is intended to address the filibuster problem. As such, it takes away the 60-vote requirement for cloture, and in its place gives each Senator the right to speak to any issue before the final vote on it. It therefore gives the minority party the right to be heard, while still allowing the Senate to move forward and make a final decision.
It’s not my intention to micromanage the Senate. They have plenty of intelligent people, both Senators and staff, to work this proposal into existing Senate rules and improve the workings of the institution. This suggestion is made in the context of the Senate using it as a suggestion and then applying their innate intelligence and experience to arrive at an appropriate process.
Fix the Filibuster
Now that you’ve heard an enormous number of options for fixing the filibuster, how do we get the Senate to act?
The key to getting all Senators on board is to get their constituents to demand they fix the problem. Democratic leadership could help us do that by requiring each Democratic Senator to solicit input from their constituents on what they think is the best fix. This forces Senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to face the problem. If these Senators don’t want to participate, the DNC could send a survey out directly to Democrats in all states to ask for their preferences, stating how important this is to the nation’s welfare, and urging constituents to contact their Senators to fix the problem.
Presuming all fifty Democratic Senators are willing to go forward with a solution, it is a straightforward matter to change Senate rules. The Constitution says:
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings…
There is no supermajority set in this clause. A simple majority is the default, and that means a majority in the Senate can determine its rules for considering legislation. The Constitution does not set any limit on when the rules can be changed, so this change can be adopted at any time.
Also, any attempt to stop the Senate from adopting a rule for its proceedings by anything other than a majority is unconstitutional on the basis of this clause. That would prevent the Senate from determining the rules of its proceedings.
The Senate can adopt any new rule with a simple majority. In the case of a tie, the Vice President will cast the deciding vote.
Please urge the Senate to adopt some kind of filibuster reform that will allow critical legislation, such as voting rights legislation, to go forward. It is vital and urgent for our country.
If Congress does not pass legislation that preempts the Republican bills pending in the states that will further curtail legitimate voting, it is possible Democrats will lose control of Congress in the 2022 elections. Redistricting is particularly critical in this regard. So is voting by mail, which is much harder to suppress than in-person voting, where the state can manipulate the number of machines at each polling place to disenfranchise specific communities.
The objective of the Republican Party is easy to see. They want to confine voting to people who will vote for their party. If they could manage it, they’d only allow white male business owners to vote. Slowly, that would be restricted to white males sitting on the boards of major corporations.
The other future for America is a full democracy. That almost certainly requires Congress setting rules for federal voting that guarantee free and fair elections going forward. Passing that legislation almost certainly requires eliminating or significantly altering the cloture rule.
Let’s make sure we get a full democracy for the indefinite future.
I got a lot of objection to this part of the proposal. I think this requires specific responses.
First, Senators may well be resistant to leadership telling them what to do. I’m going to hold a pity-party for them. Remember that the reason we need filibuster reform is because Republicans have backed us into a corner by proposing hundreds of bills to rig voting in their favor. What leadership is telling these Senators is that getting rid of the filibuster is necessary to preserve democracy. If Republicans were willing to compete under fair election laws, then passing voting rights legislation wouldn’t be a critical issue, and if Republicans were willing to negotiate reasonably in the Senate to get fair voting laws, then it wouldn’t be necessary to remove or alter the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.
Second, Senators might be resistant to the public telling them how to operate the Senate. They might not like us coming to tell them how they should run their “workplace”. Let me remind such Senators that the reason the boss starts to take a close look at how their employees are conducting the work is because those employees are not getting the job done. And if the boss starts to intrusively direct the employee how to conduct work, it is a clue that the employee should make sure their work is completed correctly and on time, because micromanagement is usually a precursor to unemployment.
Third, I would not consider telling one of my representatives that I’m going to withhold my vote if they don’t do what I want. I consider them professionals. They are supposed to use their judgment. I don’t want to be in a position of having to know everything they need to know to make good decisions. I’m providing input, not directives. (Presuming, of course, they actually do the work. If not, then I’m not above giving directives. But I digress.)
Instead, I act politically. I’m not going to withhold a vote or oppose Senator Manchin if he decides to continue to back the filibuster. I don’t live in West Virginia, and even if I did, I have a much more effective way of getting what I want, politically. Similarly, I don’t live in Arizona, so I’m not going to withhold my vote from Senator Sinema, and wouldn’t even if I lived there.
What I can and will do is put my time, money, and effort into getting more progressives elected to the Senate, the House, and the White House. For example, I maxed out on contributions to Bernie Sanders in his 2016 run for President. I expanded my support to others who support the progressive agenda (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris) in 2020. That’s one of the reasons progressives have more power in government—progressive voters came out powerfully to support progressive politicians in recent elections. This support did not go to centrists and moderates.
As for the DNC, it may not be in the business of telling Senators what to do, either, but I think we should, just as a political matter, put maximum pressure on party leaders and party organs to weigh in on this. If these people hear from the public, I think it’s quite likely that they will convey that to the politicians. I get surveys from the party asking my opinion about issues (always with a solicitation for money). It’s not beyond the realm of possibility for one of those surveys to ask about the filibuster.
Not that I would give them money. I don’t contribute to them. For example, I never contribute to the DSCC because they’d turn around and give my money to people like Sen. Manchin. I give my money directly to candidates, usually through ActBlue.
The reason the Senate is filling up with progressives is because people are tired of excuses, and we are transferring our financial and practical support away from moderates and toward actual progressives. Each time I see “moderates” resisting needed change, I am more motivated to support actual progressives in Congress. Senators don’t need to fear I’ll withdraw my vote from them. What they should be cognizant of is how my support is affecting the Senate as a whole. It’s affecting Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema’s workplace.
One other point of confusion I should also fix is that nothing in this proposal suggests anyone go to the courts to get a ruling about whether the Senate rules can be changed by the majority. As David correctly points out, the precedent is for the courts to punt this back to Congress on the basis that this is a purely political decision.
What I think is that if Republicans go to court to try to stop Democrats from changing the rules by simple majority, that the courts should tell them what I said, “any attempt to stop the Senate from adopting a rule for its proceedings by anything other than a majority is unconstitutional on the basis of” the Constitution, as cited. Should the SCOTUS be so impertinent as to rule on this change, the Senate should just ignore the Court, because each branch is separately charged with upholding the Constitution.
It’s up to Senators how they want to do their work. What I’ve shown here is that they have multiple ways to alter or eliminate the filibuster enough to get critical legislation passed while still giving the minority plenty of input into the results. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Senate is out of excuses. It’s time for it to do the work of the American people and pass the legislation we need, for fair and free elections as well as to solve other critical problems.