Sen. Bob Casey calls the filibuster rules a joke.
Last updated on March 9th, 2021 at 08:09 am
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) became the second Senate moderate to support changing the filibuster on Sunday as he called the current rules a joke.
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Sen. Casey said on CNN:
I’m very much open to it, and I wouldn’t have said that two years ago. When you consider the destruction of Mitch McConnell in the Obama years, all they seemed to be doing every day is confirming right-wing judges, making no progress on major issues. It’s pretty difficult to see how we can make the progress we must make on voting rights, on climate change, on increasing the minimum wage without changing the rule on the filibuster, or at least, at the very very least, making it harder. If you’re going to invoke the filibuster, you have to earn it. You have to be on the floor, you’re members have to be on the floor. You have to be on the floor for a really, really long time. But this idea you just call for — you invoke a filibuster without doing the work to bring it forward, I think, is really a joke.
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It’s been an abused process. The Senate is not the Senate of years ago, and I think it needs to be open to change.
It isn’t a coincidence that Sen. Casey’s comments came on the same day that Sen. Manchin called for changes in the filibuster to make it hurt for Republicans to block legislation.
The United States has been trapped in an era of zero-sum political thinking for too long. The filibuster is not an all-or-nothing rule. The moderates in the Democratic Party were not calling for the filibuster to stay as it has been. They don’t want to see it totally gone.
The answer that Democrats in the Senate are moving toward is to make it harder for McConnell and the Republicans to filibuster. Democrats will change the filibuster without killing it, and the result will be a gutted process that will no longer be open for Mitch McConnell to abuse to block legislation.
The writing is on the wall.
Change is coming to the Senate filibuster.
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