When I served in Congress from 2013 to 2017, I became increasingly frustrated as we in the House passed the REINS Act several times, only to have it die in the Senate. It died because it couldn’t amass the sixty votes needed to pass cloture. Without clearly understanding the importance of the Senate's filibuster rules, I publicly called for their demise. I’ve come to realize how myopic and shortsighted that public stance was.
While Harry Reid served as Senate Majority Leader and Barack Obama was President, they became frustrated by how the filibuster impeded the President’s ability to secure speedy confirmation of his judicial appointments. Consequently, Reid decided to invoke the nuclear option on judicial filibusters. In other words, the filibuster was set aside for judicial appointments, which were confirmed by a simple majority. Since neither party maintains a majority for a protracted period in today’s political landscape, President Trump was able to stack the Supreme Court with conservatives, using the precedent set by Harry Reid's nuclear option on the filibuster for judicial appointments.
When Biden had the White House and Chuck Schumer was Majority Leader, they didn’t appear to learn anything from Harry Reid’s short-sightedness on enacting the nuclear option for judicial appointments. Not able to get any of their left-wing policies past Cloture, Biden and Schumer again called for Democrats in the Senate to approve the nuclear option for legislation. All it takes to invoke the nuclear option is a simple majority to change the rule. Thank goodness, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin resisted the instant-gratification impulse and denied Schumer the votes to do away with the filibuster.
Soon after the Democrats again lost the majority in the Senate, they clearly saw the error of their ways and quit pushing to end the filibuster.
Now, fast forward to the present, and Donald Trump is pushing Majority Leader Thune to end the filibuster for legislation so he can sign the SAVE America Act. Even if you believe the SAVE America Act is the greatest piece of legislation since the passage of the Constitution, restraint is still the operative word of the day when looking at ending the filibuster. The proverbial wisdom of being careful what we wish for needs to be plastered on every wall on Capitol Hill. Never mind the fact that midterms aren’t very successful for the same party as the President in midterm elections, and there’s a fair chance that Republicans could lose the majority in either one or both of the legislative bodies. It’s also entirely possible that in 3 years, Democrats could have the White House and both the House and Senate.
Let’s not be as foolish as Harry Reid was and pave the way for the Majority to be able to trample all over the Minority and change forever the way the Senate operates. The Senate is hailed as the deliberative body of Congress, and the filibuster has been central to that reputation for decades upon decades, put in place for a reason, just like the Constitution itself. Let’s keep the filibuster intact!