'We Have To Stop Rewarding Obstruction:' Will Democrats Nuke The Filibuster?

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🗓️ 25 January 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Adam Jentleson knows firsthand how powerful a tool the filibuster can be — and what's possible without it. He was deputy chief of staff to former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who was majority leader in 2013 when Democrats exercised "the nuclear option," eliminating the filibuster for presidential appointees.

Now, Jentleson and a growing number of Democrats argue Senate leaders should eliminate the filibuster for legislation, which would enable Democrats to pass major legislation with a simple Senate majority, instead of the current 60-vote threshold. Jentleson lays out his argument in a recent book, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	One of the big questions right now in Washington, D.C. is about the filibuster.
0:05.0	Where does President Biden come down on that? Does he think that there should not be a filibuster so that the Senate?
0:11.0	It was a question White House press secretary Jen Psaki got on her first full day of work and on her second.
0:18.0	Does the president still oppose overturning the legislative filibuster?
0:23.0	The answer, by the way, is that Biden said last year he did oppose doing that.
0:27.0	His position hasn't changed. He opposes overturning the legislative filibuster?
0:32.0	He has spoken to this many times. His position has not changed.
0:35.0	But a lot of the president's most progressive supporters on the left think changing the filibuster is exactly what the Senate needs.
0:42.0	Right now, the Senate makes it incredibly easy for a single senator or a minority of senators representing as little as 11% of the American population to block every single thing that the majority wants to do.
0:54.0	And I think that part of the reason reform is such a pressing need right now is that we have to stop rewarding this sort of feudalistic behavior.
1:03.0	We have to stop rewarding obstruction.
1:06.0	Consider this. It's called the nuclear option for a reason.
1:11.0	It looks plain the debate about whether Democrats should make a dramatic change to the rules of the Senate in order to advance President Biden's agenda.
1:20.0	From NPR, I'm Audit Cornish. It's Monday, January 25th.
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2:24.0	There's a point in most explanations of the filibuster, where inevitably someone mentions Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 film Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
2:34.0	And if that movie was your only source of information about the filibuster, you think it was a tool for the little guy to stand up to big powerful interests by literally talking for as long as he could.
	...

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