Democrats’ Rule-Breaking Senate Takeover Would Silence Millions of Americans and Permanently Damage the Institution
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats’ radical Senate takeover:
“Something disturbing is happening in Washington this week.
“A group of politicians are trying to set aside election results, overrule American voters, and break our institutions to get a political outcome they want.
“I’m speaking, of course, about the Senate Democratic Leader and the radical left.
“The Senate Democratic Leader is trying to bully his own members into breaking their word, breaking the Senate, and silencing the voices of millions of citizens. So that one political party can take over our nation’s elections from the top down.
“In January 2021, a mob tried to intimidate and change the Senate and they failed. In January 2021, the Senate stayed true to itself and stood strong.
“But in January 2022, some of the Senate’s own members want to permanently damage the institution from within. They want to shatter its central feature.
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“The Democratic Leader is using fake hysteria about 2021 state laws to justify a power grab he began floating in 2019 and an election takeover that was first drafted in 2019.
“President Biden has spread so much misinformation about the basic facts of state voting laws that he was called out and debunked by the Washington Post.
“A sitting President of the United States who pledged to lower the temperature and unite America now invokes the brutal racial hatred of Jim Crow segregation to smear states whose new voting laws are more accessible than in his home state of Delaware.
“10 days of early voting and excuse-only absentees in Delaware is just fine, but 17 days of early voting and no-excuse absentees in Georgia is racist Jim Crow?
“The Senate Democratic Leader pretends it is a civil rights crisis that Georgia has enshrined more early voting and more absentee balloting than his state of New York has ever allowed.
“This is misinformation. A Big Lie. Designed to reduce faith in our democracy… justify a top-down election takeover… and justify smashing the Senate itself.
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“Some years back, a veteran Democratic Senator explained the ‘nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power…. [it] would transform the Senate from the so-called cooling saucer our Founding Fathers talked about… to a pure majoritarian body…’
“This was then-Senator Joseph Biden. He continued: ‘at its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it is about compromise and moderation.’
“Before President Biden abruptly reversed this position he’d held for decades, he was in good company.
“Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the legendary Senate institutionalist, was this crucial tradition’s fiercest defender.
“The current Democratic Leader has tried to invoke the late Senator Byrd in support of his push to vandalize the Senate. This is more misinformation. Senator Byrd went out of his way to rebut Leader Schumer’s arguments, years in advance.
“Here is a direct quote from Senator Byrd: ‘Proponents of the so-called nuclear option cite several instances in which they inaccurately allege that I blazed a procedural path toward an inappropriate change in Senate rules. They’re dead wrong – dead wrong. They draw analogies where none exist and create cockeyed comparisons that fail to withstand even the slightest intellectual scrutiny.”
“Down to his final public statements before his death in 2010, Senator Byrd was completely consistent. ‘I oppose cloture by a simple majority, because it would immediately destroy the uniqueness of this institution… minority rights would cease to exist in the U.S. Senate.’
“That Democratic Leader knew how to serve and protect the Senate.
“This Democratic Leader wants power so badly, he’ll misrepresent his own late predecessor if it helps him get it.
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“Senator Byrd’s successor, the current senior Senator for West Virginia, has eloquently restated these same points.
“Our colleague Senator Manchin published an op-ed explaining why, ‘there is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.’ He pointed out that finding compromise across party differences and differing regional interests was ‘never supposed to be easy… but it is the work we were elected to do.’
“He noted that the current rules guarantee ‘that rural and small states and the Americans who live in them… always have a seat at the table.’
“Our colleague also pointed out that the 60-vote threshold keeps federal law durable and predictable. ‘If the filibuster is eliminated or budget reconciliation becomes the norm, a new and dangerous precedent will be set to pass sweeping, partisan legislation every time there is a change in political control… our nation may never see stable governing again.’
“This has been a key point for Senators on both sides, going back generations. In his farewell address before retirement, our former colleague Lamar Alexander put it this way: The Senate rules exist to ‘force broad agreements on controversial issues that become laws that most of us will vote for and that a diverse country will accept.’
“In other words — major changes need major buy-in. Otherwise every policy would ping-pong wildly whenever the gavels change hands.
“This is a point which our colleague the senior Senator for Arizona has explained powerfully. As Senator Sinema wrote just a few months ago, ‘the 60-vote threshold… compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings’ and ‘radical reversals in federal policy.’
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“Sometimes the effect of the filibuster is to block bills outright. Republicans are using the tool to stop one-party election takeovers. In 2020, Democrats used it to kill Senator Tim Scott’s police reform bill.
“But as President Biden argued decades ago, the filibuster is about more than what gets blocked. It shapes almost everything the Senate does pass. It gives all kinds of citizens and all kinds of states a meaningful voice in nearly everything we do.
“By breaking the Senate, this Democratic Leader wants to silence the voices of millions and millions of Americans. He wants to throw whole regions of the country into a political power outage because those voters don’t agree with his radicalism.
“We’ll see which Senators have the courage and the principle to put a stop to it.
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“Finally, on a more practical level, I want to make something very clear.
“Fifty Republican Senators, the largest possible minority, have been sent here to represent the many millions of Americans whom Leader Schumer wants so badly to leave behind.
“If my colleague tries to break the Senate to silence those millions of Americans, we will make their voices heard in this chamber in ways that are more inconvenient for the majority and this White House than what anybody has seen in living memory.
“Last year, the Senate passed major bipartisan legislation on infrastructure, on hate crimes, on government funding, on competing with China.
“Last year, Senators helped speed through noncontroversial nominees.
“A post-nuclear Senate would not be more efficient or more productive. I personally guarantee it.
“Do my colleagues understand how many times per day the Senate needs and gets unanimous consent for basic housekeeping?
“Do they understand how many things could require roll call votes? How often the minority could demand lengthy debate?
“Our colleagues who are itching for a procedural nuclear winter have not even begun to contemplate how it would look. Our colleagues who are itching to drain every drop of collegiality from this body have not even begun to consider how that would work.
“If the Democratic Leader tries to shut millions of Americans and entire states out of the business of governing, the operations of this body will change. Oh, yes. That much is true.
“But not in ways that reward the rule-breakers. Not in ways that advantage this President, this majority, or their party.
“I guarantee it.”
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