Senate Republicans are currently debating whether to use a “talking filibuster” to pass the SAVE America Act. But while some in the GOP are worried about preserving the Senate’s long-standing rule requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation, Democrats have already signed its death warrant.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has now been shut down for more than five weeks, leading to excruciatingly long TSA lines at major airports and tens of thousands of federal workers going without pay. Democrats forced the shutdown back in February by using the filibuster. They threatened to shut down the entire government to block funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because they oppose the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration law.
To avert a government-wide shutdown, Republicans sliced off DHS funding, and Democrats provided the necessary votes to fund the rest of the government. Since then, Democrats have refused to budge on any deal that includes one penny for ICE. The shutdown is causing massive headaches for Americans – and is imperiling national security to boot – but Democrats are downright giddy about it.
The mainstream media has entirely missed what a seismic moment this is in American politics. There have been whole or partial government shutdowns due to the minority party using the filibuster before, but this is something different entirely.
Democrats are effectively weaponizing the filibuster to exercise a legislative veto over the executive branch enforcing the law in a manner that a majority of the American public voted for just 16 months ago. This is a new precedent that has opened the door to mass chaos in the future.
Imagine if Senate Republicans had employed this strategy during the Biden years. The GOP could have simply picked any Democrat agency they didn’t like – say, the FBI for targeting conservatives and Christians – and used the filibuster to block funding until the Biden administration and congressional Democrats agreed to policy changes in writing. In that case, this underhanded strategy actually would have been morally justified. But one can only imagine the media outrage about “norms” and “democratic accountability.”
Ask yourself this: If a party that can’t win at the ballot box is able to take an entire government agency hostage to try to force the executive branch to not enforce immigration law, do we still live in a democracy?
But rest assured, that tension will resolve itself the next time Democrats have unified control in Washington. The moment Republicans try to pull the same stunt – as they would now be more than justified in doing – the filibuster will be abolished completely and for good.
This is Democrats’ long-term play with their DHS shutdown gambit. They have created an unsustainable new status quo that will eventually lead to one party getting rid of the filibuster.
Republicans are mistaken if they believe that showing restraint now will make any difference to Democrats later on. The filibuster itself is not an untouchable institution. The current “silent filibuster” – where any senator can block most legislation indefinitely unless 60 senators vote to move forward on it – only emerged in the 1970s. Before that, senators had to physically hold the floor and speak if they wanted to block a bill. That was known as the “talking filibuster” – what most Senate Republicans want to use now to pass the SAVE America Act.
The silent filibuster has survived this long because both parties have exercised some degree of restraint in how they use it. While it has led to an infuriating amount of gridlock, major funding bills have usually passed – a pattern that Democrats have upended starting with Trump’s first term (the 2018 shutdown was also a result of liberal opposition to Trump protecting America’s borders).
The filibuster is the product of a more genteel age that is now long gone. Accordingly, its days are numbered – it’s just a question of which party pulls the lever first. In 2022, it was only the opposition of moderate Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona that prevented Democrats from abolishing the filibuster, and both are now retired. It is difficult to envision any current Senate Democrat opposing a push to abolish the filibuster, a change which would only require 51 votes.
As things stand, Democrats don’t really care which party delivers the final blow because they believe that they will benefit regardless.
Republicans want to institute a talking filibuster to pass election integrity legislation that will prevent noncitizens from voting – a good and absolutely necessary bill, to be sure. But the moment Democrats take power in a Congress without a filibuster, they will reverse that law and go further by banning Voter ID nationwide and mandating that states distribute universal mail-in ballots and allow ballot harvesting. Then, they will hike the minimum wage, add Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico as states (thus cementing four new Democrat senators and likely a permanent majority) and pack the Supreme Court with new liberal judges – and that’s just a start.
There is no question which agenda would be more consequential for the country.
So, what are Republicans to do?
Using the talking filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act would be a good start. But perhaps even more important than that is keeping control of the House and Senate this November and then taking a long, hard look at what policies they could potentially pass without a silent filibuster. Republicans should be sober-minded and clear-eyed about what Democrats intend to do if they win back the Senate, and act now to preempt the damage their agenda would do to the country, along with passing conservative policies that Senate Democrats have long blocked.
Perhaps Democrats’ better angels will win out even if they do win back the Senate and they will respect the rights of the minority party. But if the last decade is any indication, that’s anything but a sure bet.
Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
