Sinema Explains To Dems They Just Used The Filibuster Last Year In Their Attempt To Get Rid Of It

If Democrats really want to get rid of the filibuster, let’s also go back to the old way and get rid of the 17th Amendment, putting the election of Senators back in the hands of the State general assemblies, giving States power in the Congress of our federal republic, the way it should be, since we are not a democracy

Kyrsten Sinema: Dems hypocritical for trying to end filibuster after using it ‘just last year’

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema Monday doubled down on her defense of the Senate’s legislative filibuster, declaring in a Washington Post op-ed that it is important to stop “repeated radical reversals” of federal law.

Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have been the two most vocal Democrats in the chamber defending the 60-vote threshold for legislation, often attracting the ire of their more liberal colleagues. And Sinema took a page from Manchin’s playbook Monday by laying out her case for the Senate’s controversial minority protection in an opinion piece.

“To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to pass the For the People Act (voting-rights legislation I support and have co-sponsored), I would ask: Would it be good for our country if we did, only to see that legislation rescinded a few years from now and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law or restrictions on voting by mail in federal elections, over the objections of the minority?” Sinema wrote in The Post.

“This question is less about the immediate results from any of these Democratic or Republican goals,” she continued. “[I]t is the likelihood of repeated radical reversals in federal policy, cementing uncertainty, deepening divisions and further eroding Americans’ confidence in our government.”

Would Democrats be fine with Republicans passing their own legislation that has zero or just a couple Democrats in support? That they simply go with a 51-50 vote to end debate and pass it? You know that if the Democrats nuke the filibuster now they will caterwaul like 3 year olds with no cookie when Republicans do exactly as Democrats did. And they know the media will help. Seriously, if you cannot attract enough votes to hit the 60 vote threshold to end debate and go to a formal vote on legislation, then the legislation is too partisan and should be changed or nuked itself.

Sinema notes in her op-ed that Democrats often used the filibuster to stop Republican-supported legislation during President Trump’s tenure, when Republicans controlled the Senate.

“Once in a majority, it is tempting to believe you will stay in the majority. But a Democratic Senate minority used the 60-vote threshold just last year to filibuster a police reform proposal and a covid-relief bill that many Democrats viewed as inadequate,” Sinema wrote. “Those filibusters were mounted not as attempts to block progress, but to force continued negotiations toward better solutions.”

Well, not really, they just didn’t want to give Trump and Republicans a win. They used the filibuster 327 times in 2020. They’ve used it to block funding for “Trump’s wall”, a wall that is actually required by previously passed federal law. Don’t forget, Biden said in 2005 that the filibuster should be retained

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., spent over an hour on the Senate floor Wednesday night reading a 2005 speech from President Biden verbatim where Biden said eliminating the filibuster would “eviscerate the Senate.”

Biden, then a Delaware senator, said at the time it was “one of the most important speeches for historical purposes that I will have given in the 32 years since I have been in the Senate.”

He said that ending the 60-vote hurdle would turn the Senate “into the House of Representatives.”

Biden said at the time “the Senate ought not act rashly by changing its rules to satisfy a strong-willed majority acting in the heat of the moment.”

Don’t want the filibuster? Write better, more even handed, bipartisan legislation.