Democrats Shift To ‘Reforming’ The Filibuster Amid Concerns Senate Will Become ‘Legislative Graveyard’

Progressive Democrats are pushing for Senate leadership to shift from the Biden administration’s legislative agenda to an all-out push to “reform” the filibuster amid concerns that the Senate is becoming a “legislative graveyard.”

The Senate will tangle with the Biden administration’s COVID-19 relief bill at the end of this week. And while the bill passed easily through the House late last week, Democrats in the Senate will likely have to push the measure through using “reconciliation” — a procedural method that allows them to pass a “budget-related” measure with a simple majority vote but leaves progressives’ agenda items, like the “minimum wage” on the cutting room floor.

For other Biden agenda items, Democrats are dependent on just a handful of more moderate Senators, like West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, whose constituents are not supportive of far-left ideas like the minimum wage hike and the Green New Deal, leaving progressive bills dead on arrival at the Senate’s doorstep.

“Liberal Democrats are growing more and more worried that the Senate will serve as a legislative graveyard for President Biden’s agenda unless he and other centrists rally behind doing away with the filibuster,” the Hill noted Wednesday. “The tensions, for now, are mostly under the surface as the party approaches an initial victory under Biden: passage into law of a giant $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill.”

“This initial victory will cover up for fears among Democrats that big-ticket items passed in the House will die in the Senate unless the party greases the gears for change by ending the filibuster,” the outlet continued.

The proposed “solution” of doing away with the filibuster allows Democrats to seek just 50 — not 60 — votes for much of their legislative agenda and avoids having to court Republican assent. But that idea is having a hard time earning leadership’s support, according to The Hill, even if it means the Senate would be able to easily pass much of President Joe Biden’s pet legislation, particularly in light of how doing away with the filibuster for judicial appointees ended up handicapping Democrats on the Supreme Court.

“The bottom line is we’re going to figure out — we’re going to come together as a caucus and figure out a way to get the bold action that the American people demand,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday, neatly ducking a question over whether the White House was pressuring him to move on the filibuster issue.

Biden, for his part, appears to oppose it — at least currently.

“The president’s view on the filibuster is well known,” Jen Psaki said when asked about the idea last week. “He has not changed that point of view but certainly any step to protect voting rights, to ensure that it’s easier and not harder for people to vote in the country, we feel is a positive step.”

There’s also the matter of Manchin and Sinema; both would have to agree to drop the filibuster for Democrats’ plan to work, and neither seems in favor of the idea — and neither represents a constituency that loves it, either.

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