‘Completely scorched earth.’ McConnell warns Democrats on filibuster.
Mitch McConnell on Tuesday starkly warned Democrats against scrapping the filibuster, promising sweeping retribution on a litany of conservative issues once Republicans return to the majority in the U.S. Senate.
Speaking on the Senate floor as liberal pressure swells for Democrats to scrap the 60-vote threshold necessary for most legislation, McConnell said Republicans would pass nationwide right-to-work and concealed carry laws, defund Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities that protect noncitizens and implement massive security measures on the Southern border.
Domestic energy production and anti-abortion measures were also included on his list of initiatives in a GOP-controlled Senate without the filibuster.
“As soon as Republicans wound up back in the saddle, we wouldn’t just erase every liberal change that hurt the country, we’d strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero -- zero input from the other side,” McConnell warned. “Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched earth Senate would look like.”
The Senate GOP leader’s comments come as an increasing number of Senate Democrats voice support for some type of change to the filibuster, including mandating that senators physically appear in the upper chamber in order to deploy it.
Last week Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada said if McConnell chooses to block Democrats’ agenda, “he should have to stand on the Senate floor and be transparent about his obstruction,” an idea that has earned the support of the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Right now, simply threatening a filibuster shuts down debate on legislation.
Democrats note that it’s McConnell who went “nuclear” during Donald Trump’s presidency, eliminating the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees. The Republican-controlled Senate voted 52-48 in 2017 to reduce the vote threshold for confirming nominees to the nation’s highest court from 60 to 51, paving the way for Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
McConnell did not mention that in his floor speech on Tuesday, but did recount that he was under pressure from Trump to kill the filibuster for other domestic legislation.
“A sitting president leaned on me to do it. He tweeted about it. What did I do, Mr. President? I said to the president, at that time, ‘No.’ I said no repeatedly,” McConnell said.
Right now, Democrats lack the votes necessary to wipe out the procedure, because moderate Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona remain opposed to a change.
But pressure is growing with a House-approved voting rights bill heading to the Senate without a chance of passage unless Democrats alter the rules.
McConnell said Democrats were foolish to believe any policy they passed with 50 votes would survive very long, dismissing their dreams of “an express lane for liberal change.”
Instead, he said a Senate without a filibuster would create a “radically less stable and less consensus driven system of government” that would leave federal law perpetually unsettled.
“The pendulum, Mr. President, would swing both ways. And it would swing hard,” he warned.
This story was originally published March 16, 2021 at 12:01 PM.
