Democrats are debating over Vice President Kamala Harris’s latest stance against the filibuster after she demanded to end it in order to codify abortion rights, with some notable senators warning that if “you change it for one thing, you change it for everything.”
Harris, who has previously flipped on supporting the U.S. Senate’s filibuster practice — depending on whether or not it suits her political goals — called for the end of the legislative practice during a Tuesday segment on Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), Breitbart News reported.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” the presidential candidate said. “To actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
When she was a California senator in 2017, however, Harris signed a letter pledging to support the filibuster to ensure the Senate “continues to serve as the world’s greatest deliberative body”:
Several current Senate Democrats wasted no time in voicing their concern over Harris’s call to abolish the filibuster, with Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) telling the Hill, “We should approach it very carefully because what goes around comes around. That’s one of the few permanent rules of the United States Senate.”
Referring to when his party reduced the minimum threshold for approving district and circuit court judges in 2013, Reed said Democrats saw how that worked out for them when Republicans lowered the minimum for approving Supreme Court justices in response — leading to the 6-3 conservative majority that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“We said, ‘Let’s reduce it to 50 [votes] for just circuit and district judges.’ And when the Republicans took over, they said, ‘Let’s do it for Supreme Court justices, too.’ And I think it’s really affected the quality of the court,” the longtime senator said.
“Before, [with] 60 votes, you had to [find] someone really qualified and more to the center” to confirm a SCOTUS nominee, he continued.
“I think it would be good to have a national abortion [law] to protect the reproductive freedom of women, and I think we should try to get it, but I don’t think the first procedure would be to change the rules of the Senate,” Reed added.
The 60-vote de-facto threshold created by the filibuster has forced Democrats and Republicans to reach across the aisle in order to cooperate on major legislation, with the Hill citing gun control and inflation bills as examples.
Instead of joining Harris in her quest to end the filibuster, Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) said that he would rather try to work with Republicans first.
“Reproductive freedom is a right that women should have everywhere. The surest way to ensure that, which makes it much, much more durable, is to get 60 votes, and I think, having talked to Republicans, I think there’s a reasonable chance we could do that. So the first effort would be to go and pass it, get it done with 60 votes,” he told the outlet.
According to Hickenlooper, a “couple” Republican senators are “cautious” about helping him, but people might be “surprised.”
“Again, if we get 60 votes, it becomes more durable,” the senator said of codifying Roe v. Wade.
“If it becomes a pendulum that swings one way and then back the other — one way, back the other — that harms everybody. Again, that’s why 60 votes really kind of nails it down and says this is the law of the land,” he added.
Even Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), described by the Hill as an “outspoken advocate” for abortion, stopped short of agreeing with Harris.
“I’m looking at it,” she told the outlet on Wednesday.
On the other hand, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) implied that the filibuster makes Senate proceedings inefficient.
“Sign me up for an honest-to-goodness conversation about reforming the filibuster beyond one or two [issues], voting rights and reproductive rights. I think we’ve allowed the filibuster rule to eat the business of the Senate,” the Democrat whip said. “We’ve reached the point now where we’re doing nothing. We’re reporting every three months that we didn’t shut down the government, a big source of pride.”
“If we’re going to be a functioning legislature, we’ve got to change some fundamentals,” Durbin added.
Sens. Krysten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV), both independents after leaving the Democrat party, are the “two biggest” proponents for keeping the filibuster in the Democrat voting bloc as they were the only ones to vote to protect it in 2022, the Hill reported.
However, both are leaving office after their 2024 terms conclude.
Another Democrat senator who spoke under the condition of anonymity was concerned that “the minute you change it for one thing, you change it for everything,” asserting that it is not possible for the filibuster to be “carved out” only for issues that the Democrats support.
“It’s just a question of who’s going to [step up]” against lowering the minimum support needed for passing legislation, the senator explained. “Somebody will. I think so. … I have always believed that there are four or five people who didn’t have to say anything because Manchin or Sinema were there.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), whom Manchin and Synema thwarted in 2022 when he attempted to make an exception to the filibuster to pass a voting rights bill, told reporters that the party would debate reforming the practice next year if they retain a majority of seats — but declined to say if he supports Harris’s idea to fight against it for abortion rights.
