Biden: 'Nothing at all will get done' if filibuster abolished

[Celerity]

(video included at the link)

The president said that ending the filibuster will give Republicans an excuse to do nothing.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/21/biden-nothing-done-filibuster-abolished-500502

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that scrapping the filibuster would “throw the entire Congress into chaos” and that “nothing at all will get done.” During a CNN town hall in Cincinnati, the president was repeatedly pressed on his stance on the legislative filibuster, which establishes a 60-vote threshold to move most bills through the Senate. Biden deflected when an audience member asked him if abolishing the filibuster is the logical next step to address the attack on voting rights — what Biden has called the “most significant threat to our democracy since the Civil War.”

Biden said the “abuse of the filibuster is pretty overwhelming,” before talking about his decades in the Senate, when members had to “hold the floor.” The president stuck to his long-standing position and said he supports filibuster reform that would return to those rules, requiring those who oppose a bill to remain physically on the Senate floor in order to block it. When pressed by CNN’s Don Lemon on why the filibuster is worth protecting, Biden said keeping the filibuster is not more important than protecting voting rights. He said that he believes his administration and Congress can pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act without axing the Senate rule — one Biden has agreed, as former President Barack Obama put it, is a “relic of the Jim Crow era.”

He said abolishing the rule would give Republicans in Congress an excuse to spend time debating the filibuster instead of passing his legislative agenda. “There’s no reason to protect it other than you're going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done. Nothing at all will get done. And there’s a lot at stake. The most important one is the right to vote,” Biden said. “Wouldn’t my friends on the other side love to have a debate about the filibuster instead of passing the recovery act?”

In recent months, more of the Senate's 50 Democrats have expressed a willingness to abolish or modify the filibuster, as activists have continued to put pressure on the White House to budge. The president’s reluctance to shift has put him at odds with civil rights leaders, labor and social justice advocates, as well as a growing number of Democrats.

snip

[brooklynite]

1. "Dems in Disarray!!!!"

It's a Politico story, so I figured we could get the tag line out of the way before focusing on the actual subject.

[NCjack]

2. Repukes don't need an excuse to do nothing. End the filibuster, now. If the Repukes

like the filibuster, the next time they are in control, they can restore it.

[Celerity]

7. they overall love it, as it rarely blocks them and usually blocks us

The filibuster hurts only Senate Democrats -- and Mitch McConnell knows that. The numbers don't lie.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/filibuster-hurts-only-senate-democrats-mitch-mcconnell-knows-n1255787

snip

Cutting off debate in the Senate so legislation can be voted on is done through a procedure called "cloture," which requires three-fifths of the Senate — or 60 votes — to pass. I went through the Senate's cloture votes for the last dozen years from the 109th Congress until now, tracking how many of them failed because they didn't hit 60 votes. It's not a perfect method of tracking filibusters, but it's as close as we can get. It's clear that Republicans have been much more willing — and able — to tangle up the Senate's proceedings than Democrats. More important, the filibuster was almost no impediment to Republican goals in the Senate during the Trump administration. Until 2007, the number of cloture votes taken every year was relatively low, as the Senate's use of unanimous consent agreements skipped the need to round up supporters. While a lot of the cloture motions did fail, it was still rare to jump that hurdle at all — and even then, a lot of the motions were still agreed to through unanimous consent. That changed when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and McConnell first became minority leader. The number of cloture motions filed doubled compared to the previous year, from 68 to 139.

Things only got more dire as the Obama administration kicked off in 2009, with Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Of the 91 cloture votes taken during the first two years of President Barack Obama's first term, 28 — or 30 percent — failed. All but three failed despite having majority support. The next Congress was much worse after the GOP took control of the House: McConnell's minority blocked 43 percent of all cloture votes taken from passing. Things were looking to be on the same course at the start of Obama's second term. By November 2013, 27 percent of cloture votes had failed even though they had majority support. After months of simmering outrage over blocked nominees grew, Senate Democrats triggered the so-called nuclear option, dropping the number of votes needed for cloture to a majority for most presidential nominees, including Cabinet positions and judgeships. The next year, Republicans took over the Senate with Obama still in office. By pure numbers, the use of the filibuster rules skyrocketed under the Democratic minority: 63 of 123 cloture votes failed, or 51 percent. But there's a catch: Nothing that was being voted on was covered by the new filibuster rules. McConnell had almost entirely stopped bringing Obama's judicial nominees to the floor, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

McConnell defended the filibuster on the Senate floor last week, reminding his counterparts of their dependence on it during President Donald Trump's term. "Democrats used it constantly, as they had every right to," he said. "They were happy to insist on a 60-vote threshold for practically every measure or bill I took up." Except, if anything, use of the filibuster plummeted those four years. There are two main reasons: First, and foremost, the amount of in-party squabbling during the Trump years prevented any sort of coordinated legislative push from materializing. Second, there wasn't actually all that much the Republicans wanted that needed to get past the filibuster in its reduced state after the 2013 rule change. McConnell's strategy of withholding federal judgeships from Obama nominees paid off in spades, letting him spend four years stuffing the courts with conservatives. And when Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was filibustered, McConnell didn't hesitate to change the rules again. Trump's more controversial nominees also sailed to confirmation without any Democratic votes. Legislatively, there were only two things Republicans really wanted: tax cuts and repeal of Obamacare. The Trump tax cuts they managed through budget reconciliation, a process that allows budget bills to pass through the Senate with just a majority vote.

Republicans tried to do the same for health care in 2017 to avoid the filibuster, failing only during the final vote, when Sen. John McCain's "no" vote denied them a majority. The repeal wouldn't have gone through even if the filibuster had already been in the grave. As a result, the number of successful filibusters plummeted: Over the last four years, an average of 7 percent of all cloture motions failed. In the last Congress, 298 cloture votes were taken, a record. Only 26 failed. Almost all of the votes that passed were on nominees to the federal bench or the executive branch. In fact, if you stripped out the nominations considered in the first two years of Trump's term, the rate of failure would be closer to 15 percent — but on only 70 total votes. There just wasn't all that much for Democrats to get in the way of with the filibuster, which is why we didn't hear much complaining from Republicans. Today's Democrats aren't in the same boat. Almost all of the big-ticket items President Joe Biden wants to move forward require both houses of Congress to agree. And given McConnell's previous success in smothering Obama's agenda for political gain, his warnings about the lack of "concern and comity" that Democrats are trying to usher in ring hollow. In actuality, his warnings of "wait until you're in the minority again" shouldn't inspire concern from Democrats. So long as it applies only to legislation, the filibuster is a Republicans-only weapon. There's nothing left, it seems, for the GOP to fear from it — aside from its eventual demise.

snip

[BeyondGeography]

3. As opposed to...?

[Autumn]

4. Republicans in Congress will not pass his legislation. And they sure as fuck won't bother

giving any piss poor excuses for it. Dems need to understand that and not try to give the Pukes any excuses or cover. Their goal is to stop everything and take over in 2022.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Remind me of how much is happening with the filibuster?

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I'm still waiting.

[JohnSJ]

6. Where did Biden say that "ending the filibuster will give Republicans an excuse to do nothing"?

Here is last nights trascript:

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/21/joe-biden-cnn-town-hall-transcript/8051311002/

[Celerity]

10. its right in the video, starting at 1:45

here is that part from your own link

LEMON: If you -- you agree with the former president. He has called -- as you called him, your old boss, that it's a relic of Jim Crow.

BIDEN: It is.

LEMON: If it's a relic of Jim Crow, it's been used to fight against civil rights legislation historically, why protect it?

BIDEN: There's no reason to protect it other than you're going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done. Nothing at all will get done. And there's a lot at stake. The most important one is the right to vote. That's the single most important one. And your vote counted and counted by someone who honestly counts it.

But it goes beyond that. For example, wouldn't my friends on the other side love to have a debate about the filibuster instead of passing the Recovery Act? Or wouldn't they love doing it instead of being in a position where we provide for -- how many of you have children under the age of 17? Raise your hand. Guess what? You're getting a lot of money in a monthly check now, aren't you? No, you deserve -- no, no, no, I really mean it.

[JohnSJ]

18. He did not use the words that "the filibuster will give republicans an excuse to do nothing"

The author of Politico is saying that

Politico wants to interpret it that way with a broad brush generalization. He is saying it would delay the Recovery Act, which it would, and the republicans would love that, so nothing would get passed because the clock would run out before the midterms.

Funny that so many ignore the fact that elimination of the filibuster wouldn't pass anyway because the reality is the Senate Democrats don't have the votes to pass it.

Some people are under the illusion that this is all up to Biden. It isn't. It is up to the Senate. Anyone who believes that Biden will move Manchin or Sinema on this is dreaming.

Manchin made it very clear that he wouldn't even eliminate the filibuster just for issues involving voting rights.

I don't know if anyone remembers, but Manchin said if Sander got the nomination, he not only wouldn't back Sanders, but consider voting for trump. This isn't someone who is going to be moved by Biden or anyone. The only way this will succeed is if we win enough seats in the Senate to make Manchin, Sinema, and any other Democrat who is against the filibuster irrelevent.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/468278-manchin-says-he-wouldnt-back-sanders-against-trump-in-presidential-race



If the Senate was able to eliminate the filibuster, there is no doubt Biden would support that, but it is NOT his decision, it is up to the Senate to decide THEIR rules.

Threads like this serve as an excuse to rag on Biden, and that is fine, but the fact is if those self-identified progressives who refused to vote for the Democratic nominee in 2016 instead of third party or not voting, this would not have been a problem, and the SC would not be where we are today.

In every critical swing state, Hillary lost by less than 1%, and Jill Stein got 1% of the vote in those critical swing states.

It made a difference, and helped bring us to where we are today

[Celerity]

22. it's a paraphrase and you have now twice used fake quote marks, so are not operating in good faith

The actual article's actual quotes are correct, and their paraphrase is backed up by your very own transcript.


I clearly show this right here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15649964

[Takket]

8. Fine. Remove the filibuster for voting rights legislation

If we can actually have easily accessible voting we’ll get 60 seats and end the filibuster the hard way.

[wryter2000]

15. That's how I feel

You shouldn’t be allowed to block people’s right to vote. I remember the 1960’s. Someone ought to remind the “party of Lincoln” types that it was Republicans who overcame the Dixiecrats’ filibuster to give us civil rights. They shouldn’t be blocking civil rights now.

[JohnSJ]

20. That would be great except Manchin already said he wouldn't do that

From the Washington Post, "Manchin says there is ‘no circumstance’ where he would vote to get rid of or ‘weaken’ the filibuster in blow to Biden agenda"

I doubt his position will change on that

[frazzled]

9. The main problem I see is that ...

abolishing the filibuster will lead to the kind of instability we have with respect to executive orders: a Democratic president makes an order, and then a succeeding president rescinds it, ad infinitum.

This could happen in the Senate: a Democratic majority passes a piece of legislation; and then a Republican one votes to repeal that legislation. It's something to think about.

[Celerity]

14. it rarely plays out like that, look at their fail with trying to repeal the ACA in a non-filibuster

vote (reconciliation)


See this for further detail why the filibuster mostly hurts us and doesn't effect them to any great extent

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215649680#post7

[frazzled]

27. I think that was a special case

If they had ever been able to come up with an alternative plan, they would have repealed and "replaced" it in a heartbeat. But there was no alternative that could possibly work. So it failed every time. Also, filibuster would have prevented them passing something far less helpful to the public.

The main reason this has rarely taken place, as you say, is primarily because of the presence of filibuster.

When it comes to something like voting rights, which entails their own political survival, they'd reverse the John Lewis Act in a heartbeat.

I'm not really advocating one way or the other with respect to jettisoning the filibuster or retaining it, because consequences are so unknown either way. The main problem seems to be that the Republicans have totally abused the filibuster in recent times. It worked pretty well for many decades and was used rarely, until the GOP became slash and burn.

I'm just thinking out loud as to what some of the negatives could be. Our country is unstable enough right now, and I'm always a bit wary of big change. But maybe this is the time that big change is needed. I admit to being completely not up to the task of making an informed decision.

[Celerity]

30. Most all Democratic Party-passed major programmes become very popular, even with a sizeable

chunk of the Rethug electorate. If the Rethugs (in a no filibuster world where they also controlled the House and POTUS) went and played slash and burn with major, ensconced Dem-initiated programmes, the electoral blowback would likely be very very dire for them.

As it stands now, they have the ability to block a shedload of things that would very likely become popular across a wide swathe of the electorate, then disingenuously turn their blocking actions on their head and posit it as a failure of a 'do-nothing Dem power structure'. They will negatively target the fracture lines within our voting bloc (i.e. encourage apathy, non-turnout, and an distrust of our leadership) by exploiting frustration to hurt our GOTV drives. All so disingenuously done, as THEY were usually the reason our initiatives did not get passed, and were aided to a massive extent in that blockage by the filibuster.

[mcar]

12. He also said that he thinks the Senate should go back to an actual filibuster

where a person has to stand and talk. Funny how the media isn't reporting on that.

[JohnSJ]

13. Here is exactly what Biden said from last night's transcript, not what Politico said:

Biden NEVER SAID:

"ending the filibuster will give Republicans an excuse to do nothing."

That is a LIE, and Politico knows it.

What isn't mentioned in all these discussions, it is the SENATE THAT SETS THE RULES, NOT JOE BIDEN.

Does anyone here really believe that Biden will change the minds of Manchin and Sinema? They both have said under no circumstances would they do that. Manchin went as far as saying that he would NOT even make an exception eliminating the filibuster just for issues involving voting rights.

Here is the Transcript from the Town Hall on the filibuster last night:

"And so it takes -- go to your second point. I've been saying for a long, long time, the abuse of the filibuster is pretty overwhelming. When I got to the United States Senate at a time when we had guys like Jim Eastland and Strom Thurman, and Robert F. Byrd, and a whole range of people who were very, very, very, very, very, very conservative on race, to say the least, even then if you were to filibuster, you had to stand on the floor and hold the floor.

And that's why Strom, I think, set the record at 24 straight hours or something. Don't hold me to the number, but -- you know? So you had to take -- there were significantly fewer filibusters in those days, in the middle of the civil rights movement.

LEMON: Well, let me -- let me talk to you about that. Because--

BIDEN: Well, let me finish my answer, because I'd tell you what I'd do. I would go back to that, where you have to maintain the floor. You have to stand there and talk and hold the floor. You can't just say--

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: I understand that. But what difference does that -- if you hold the floor for, you know, a day or a year, what difference does it make? Here's the thing for me. You talked about people -- and this is important for people who look like me.

My grandmother would sit around when I was a kid, 5th grade, had a 5th grade education. I learned that she couldn't read when I was doing my homework. And she would tell me stories about people asking her to count the number of jelly beans in the jar--

BIDEN: Yeah.

LEMON: -- or the soap in -- so why is protecting the filibuster, is that more important than protecting voting rights, especially for people who fought and died for that?

(APPLAUSE)

BIDEN: No. It's not. I want to see the United States Congress, the United States Senate, pass S. 1 and S. 4, the John Lewis Act, get them to my desk so I can sign it.

(APPLAUSE)

But here's the deal. What I also want to do, I want to make sure we bring along not just all the Democrats. We bring along Republicans who I know, know better. They know better than this.

And what I don't want to do is get wrapped up right now `in the argument whether or not this is all about the filibuster or -- look, the American public, you can't stop them from voting. You tried last time. More people voted last time than at any time in American history in the middle of the worst pandemic in American history. More people did.

(APPLAUSE)

And they showed up. They're going to show up again. They're going to do it again. But what I want to do is, I'm trying to bring the country together. And I don't want the debate to only be about whether or not we have a filibuster or exceptions to the filibuster or going back to the way the filibuster had to be used before.

LEMON: But isn't that the only way you're going to get it done right now?

BIDEN: No, I don't believe that. I think we can get it done.

LEMON: If you -- you agree with the former president. He has called -- as you called him, your old boss, that it's a relic of Jim Crow.

BIDEN: It is.

LEMON: If it's a relic of Jim Crow, it's been used to fight against civil rights legislation historically, why protect it?

BIDEN: There's no reason to protect it other than you're going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done. Nothing at all will get done. And there's a lot at stake. The most important one is the right to vote. That's the single most important one. And your vote counted and counted by someone who honestly counts it.

But it goes beyond that. For example, wouldn't my friends on the other side love to have a debate about the filibuster instead of passing the Recovery Act? Or wouldn't they love doing it instead of being in a position where we provide for -- how many of you have children under the age of 17? Raise your hand. Guess what? You're getting a lot of money in a monthly check now, aren't you? No, you deserve -- no, no, no, I really mean it.

Republicans used to fight for it, as well. It's called the child tax credit. If you have a child under the age of 7, you get $300 bucks a month, $350 bucks a month. If you have a child under -- between 7 and 17, you get a total of $200 bucks a month. And guess what? It's cutting child poverty in half. In half.

[Celerity]

19. you are playing linguistic games and trying to posit that Politico put that part as a quote, when

they did not such thing.

you used fake quote marks and then tried to play games based off that manoeuvre:




they never quoted Biden as saying what you claim with your fake quotes

the actual article where they paraphrased part and quoted another part:



snip




and here, from your link, is the relevant part of the colloquy via the actual transcript

LEMON: If you -- you agree with the former president. He has called -- as you called him, your old boss, that it's a relic of Jim Crow.

BIDEN: It is.

LEMON: If it's a relic of Jim Crow, it's been used to fight against civil rights legislation historically, why protect it?

BIDEN: There's no reason to protect it other than you're going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done. Nothing at all will get done. And there's a lot at stake. The most important one is the right to vote. That's the single most important one. And your vote counted and counted by someone who honestly counts it.

But it goes beyond that. For example, wouldn't my friends on the other side love to have a debate about the filibuster instead of passing the Recovery Act? Or wouldn't they love doing it instead of being in a position where we provide for -- how many of you have children under the age of 17? Raise your hand. Guess what? You're getting a lot of money in a monthly check now, aren't you? No, you deserve -- no, no, no, I really mean it.

[JohnSJ]

23. Perhaps, but I would argue that Politico is playing the linguistic games. Regardless, just using

Manchin as the poster child for NOT getting rid of the filibuster, I do not see how anyone, could get him to change his position on that.

When Manchin says there is ‘no circumstance’ where he would vote to get rid of or ‘weaken’ the filibuster", from the Washington Post, that means he wouldn't even consider making an exception for issues involving voting rights.

The only way I can see doing this is if we win enough Senate seats to make Manchin and others for the filibuster, irrelevent.

However, unless we can get the SC to rule against state legislatures over-riding the result of an election, which a lot of these suppressive state voting laws have incorporated, it is going to be a very precarious task

[Celerity]

24. I also worry about Sinema (who is potentially even more radical as she wants to go to a 60 vote

threshold for all Senate business), Feinstein, and maybe some others who have held their cards close to the vest but are anti-binning the filibuster in reality.

Sinema:

“I want to restore the 60-vote threshold for all elements of the Senate’s work”

https://www.vox.com/22319564/filibuster-reform-manchin-democrats-nuclear-option




I hope they all cave and go to a talking filibuster (someone posted a link a day or so ago where Manchin appeared to at least be open to that, finally) and/or lower the threshold to 55 (although I do not know if 5 Rethugs will cross the line for the voter protection/rights bills).


Time will tell.

[JohnSJ]

25. That would nice Celerity. I certainly hope so

[Celerity]

26. +1

[WhiteTara]

16. I didn't know they needed one to do nothing

except obstruct. They made a game out of it.

[lindysalsagal]

17. I trust Biden's crystal ball above all others.

I don't claim to know anything, I just trust the man, his experience, and his intentions. He can't control the GQP.

When I was young, both sides knew their responsibility was to the country, not the party. They worked together. That's gone.

[getagrip_already]

21. He is probably right, but only because...

Once the fillibuster is gone, the red dogs won't have a place to hide by saying they support a bill they know will never get passed.

So they will throw more sand in the works than the gop. There are dems who don't want to end up voting for actual legislation. The corporate money would dry up.

[lsewpershad]

28. Let them

Dems, just continue to do your job.

[lsewpershad]

29. Let them

Dems, just continue to do your job.