DAVID MARCUS: Now is the time to nuke the filibuster
The argument seems to pop up every few years or so, whenever one of our political parties controls the House, Senate, and presidency: Should they end the 60-vote Senate threshold known as the filibuster to advance their agenda?
This is called the nuclear option for good reason. It would blow up the current system, allowing a single party with a simple majority to essentially pass anything it wanted, with no opposition. But as we enter the second month of the government shutdown, President Donald Trump is right to put this atomic idea on the table.
Let’s start with the very real downsides, as I can already see moderates of both parties tearing at their hair as they read this.
If Republicans pull the trigger on the filibuster, then the next time the Democrats, who are now socialists in all but name, take power — and they will eventually — a progressive parade of horribles seems all but certain.
TRUMP URGES GOP TO ‘END THE SHUTDOWN’ BY GOING NUCLEAR ON SENATE FILIBUSTER
Would the Democrat Socialists pack the Supreme Court? Yes. Make Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico states? Almost certainly. Provide free abortion up to nine months along with gender transitions? With glee.
But what if Democrats are likely to blow up the filibuster at their next chance anyway, even if the GOP declines to?
The last time this issue came up, during the Biden administration, there were only two Democrat senators who opposed the idea, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, neither of whom have letters after their name anymore.
Today, the only Democrat in the upper house who even resembles them in their willingness to buck the party is Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., but he has already said he supports ending the filibuster to solve the current shutdown.
There is plenty of reason to think that Democrats will blow up the filibuster eventually, regardless of what the GOP does, and like chess, there could be a big advantage to going first here.
Playing the white pieces means that your opponent’s priority has to be to neutralize what you have done, not to advance their own attack. Only the very best players can do both.
SENATE GOP RESISTS ‘NUCLEAR OPTION’ AS DEM SHUTDOWN STANDOFF DEEPENS
Nuking the filibuster would give Trump and Republicans at least one year to pass anything they want, three years if they hold the Congress in next year’s midterm. On issues like tax breaks, codifying the secure border, and supercharging energy production, they could prove very popular.
At that point, should Democrats come back into power, they would first have to try to unwind GOP legislation that many people would like, before embarking on their own attempts to transform the country.
Notice that even when they had the votes, Republicans have never been able to overturn Obamacare. Once people get used to something, it tends to stick.
TRUMP’S ‘NUCLEAR’ DEMAND NOT LANDING FOR SENATE REPUBLICANS AMID SHUTDOWN
The fact is that the 60-vote threshold used to be far more attainable because the Senate had factions that crossed parties, blue dog Democrats, pro-choice Republicans. But today, with the parties in lockstop, compromise is proving impossible.
It is a difficult balance between the filibuster strangling the Senate’s ability to pass anything, and the potentially dangerous changes at breakneck speed that eliminating it would occasion.
There are those, of both the left and right, who essentially argue that gridlock is a good thing. The argument is not without some merit. Much of the federal law Congress passes does more harm than good, and smoothlining the system would only create more of it.
JOHNSON WARNS AGAINST TRUMP’S DEMAND FOR SENATE TO GO ‘NUCLEAR’ TO END SHUTDOWN
But today, with the government shut down and no end in sight, Americans have to ask themselves if this artificially constructed hurdle to doing the nation’s work has become unworkable, like a broken gate at a parking garage, where nothing can pass.
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Donald Trump is the president of the United States, for the second time, largely because he promised to break things, to bust up the deep state’s hegemonic control over government. And make no mistake, when Congress refuses to act, it is the bureaucracy that truly holds power.
There is an episode of “The Simpsons” in which a Bond villain is threatening to launch a bomb, and a member of the United Nations wants to give in to him saying, “we can’t afford to take that chance,” to which another replies, “You always say that. I want to take a chance.”
That may be the point that Americans are at with our unpopular, dysfunctional and filibuster-blocked federal legislature. They may be willing to take this chance, even if it is a nuclear one.
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