Save the Filibuster: It Is the Senate Choke Point to Stop the Left’s Assault on Our Republic

So what is this all about?  Why should we care?

Those in the Senate have viewed the filibuster as key to the claim that the “Senate is the world’s greatest deliberative body.”  The actor James Stewart depicted the filibuster in the classic movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” in a marathon floor speech that ultimately wore down the opposition to a Senate vote he, as Senator Smith, was trying to achieve.

Background. In essence, the filibuster is an extended debate, which continues until, under current Senate Rule 22, sixty (60) Senators vote to limit further debate to 30 hours.  This is called a “cloture” vote – that is, close the extended debate and move forward to consideration of either a particular bill or nomination, requiring Senate confirmation.  Any Senate Rule can be changed by a simple majority vote – in the current 100-member Senate, that is 51 votes.

In the case of presidential nominations for judgeships (other than the Supreme Court) and presidential cabinet members, the 60 votes for cloture requirement in the Senate rule was dispensed within 2013 — when the Democrats held the Senate majority to foster the confirmation of judicial and cabinet appointments by then-Democratic President Obama. Republicans re-captured the judicial appointment process by winning the Senate in 2014 and the White House two years later. In April 2017, the Republican majority further amended Rule 22 to prohibit filibusters of the one position left alone by Democrats — the Supreme Court. President Trump benefited from these changes in filling 234 judicial appointments, including three Supreme Court associate justices.

Reducing the 60-vote filibuster cloture requirement to a simple majority for legislation is now at the heart of the internal Democrat partisan turmoil in the Senate.  Substantial pressure is being brought against Democrat Senators. They do not wish to change the 60-vote requirement and fear that if majorities should change in the Senate in the next election, they could lose that Senatorial prerogative for extended debate, as well.  In this connection, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying:

“When you have a place that’s broken and not working, and many would say that’s the Senate today, I don’t think the solution is to erode the rules,” she said in an interview after two constituent events in Phoenix. “I think the solution is for senators to change their behavior and begin to work together, which is what the country wants us to do.”

Its Crucial Importance to Stop the Left. Today, the 60-vote cloture requirement has taken on greater national importance to our republic.  It is the “choke point” for blocking the onslaught of leftist big-government-control legislation aimed at achieving one-party – Democrat – control of both the Congress and the White House. The legislation passed and others to be passed by the House of Representatives under Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s control should be viewed as planned sequential steps toward achieving this leftist strategy – not as separate and disparate measures.  In short, do not miss the forest because of the trees.

The Democrat House and Senate political bosses’ strategy reflects this progression and strategy. First, eliminate the sixty (60) vote filibuster cloture requirement, thereby reducing it to a simple majority – 50 Republican votes to keep it and 50 Democrat votes plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Harris equals 51 votes. Then with a simple 51 vote – the 50 Democrats plus the Vice President, pass and enact the following legislation that is intended to dispose of the Founders’ and Constitutional intent that the federal government authorities be bounded by defined and limited roles and responsibilities and that all other authorities lie with the states under the 10^th Amendment:

1. Establish federal control over the conduct of elections held in the states, enable elections fraud, and require federal reporting of expressions of free political speech. This bill called the “For the People Act” (S.1/H.R.1) is intended to reverse the Constitution’s vesting of elections primacy in the states and provide a statutory basis to foster perpetual one-party dominance in the Congress and the White House and assault our First Amendment right to free political speech on legislation and policy by requiring federal reporting.
2. Make transgender identification equal of biological gender. H.R. 5, the so-called “Equality Act,” which is intended to confound and remove the distinctions between male and female in all public activities of everyday life, as well as foster a new money trough for plaintiff litigation.
3. Erode or override the Second Amendment right to bear arms and increase federal government control over the lawful purchase and possession, including seizure, of firearms.
4. Make the District of Columbia the 51^st Since Republicans tally less than 10 percent of the DC vote, the object by the Democrat leaders is to gain two more Democratic Senators – again to achieve a perpetual Democrat party majority in the Senate.
5. Kill the Trump era economic recovery and growth by tax increases and costly regulation. In effect, President Biden’s plans will reverse the economic recovery, progress, and prosperity that resulted for all socioeconomic groups under the Trump era Tax Cut Jobs Act (TCJA) and regulatory relief. Biden’s so-called “American Jobs Plan” would increase the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% — higher than that of China and job-killing for US employees, as well as forcing eventual price increases impacting all socioeconomic groups – the poor and middle income most severely, among a good number of other business and job-killing taxes on business that can only serve to stimulate inflation, higher prices, and job loss.
6. Destroy America’s energy independence by actions stifling coal, oil, and gas production and jobs and replace them with “green energy” sources and a vague promise of eventually replacement jobs under the “Green New Deal” legislation, also in the Biden “American Jobs Plan” proposal.

In conclusion. These are the current examples in what is an apparent Biden-Pelosi-Schumer strategy – that starts with changing the 60-vote filibuster cloture rule — to establish single-party – their party – perpetual control of Congress and the White House, to squash the Constitutional position and powers of the states in our republic, and ultimately subjugate the American people to them and their successor party bosses.  This is the horrible “change” to America they are working toward.