The legislative filibuster isn’t going anywhere any time soon

By Joshua C. Huder

It’s a nuclear week in the Senate. Majority Leader McConnell has hinted that he has the votes to go “nuclear” on Judge Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In effect, McConnell would invoke the same process then-Majority Leader Harry Reid used in 2013 to change the Senate’s interpretation of Rule XXII. The effect would reduce the cloture threshold to break a filibuster on SCOTUS nominees from 60 to 51. This change affects the final 9 judicial seats not already confirmed by a strict majority thanks to the 2013 nuclear option. These 9 seats are very important. And you can expect a fundamentally different style of politics on Supreme Court nominees for the rest of our lives. But this is not a fundamental change to the Senate. Procedurally speaking, it’s actually quite limited.

The broader question is will this change create a slippery-enough slope to kill the legislative filibuster? In the short-term: no. In the mid-term, also probably no. Short of something extraordinary pushing Senate majorities over the edge (maybe not that far after all), it’s likely here to stay for a while. Why? The filibuster empowers all senators. It gives senators – majority and minority alike – the ability to affect all policies that come before the Upper Chamber. If a senator doesn’t like bill language, they can filibuster, force an amendment, force a compromise, and otherwise alter the text and intent of that legislation. If a bill adversely affects their state, they have significant leverage to kill it or at least mitigate its impact.

The filibusters on judicial and executive branch nominees offered a similar power. The president had to consult the minority before making a nomination. But historically speaking this is not often a controversial process, even in the post-nuclear Senate. For example, of the 23 judges confirmed by the Senate from April 2015 to January 2017, only three received more than 10 votes against. In the 113th Congress – the original nuclear Senate – there were more judges confirmed by voice vote and unanimous support than there were votes that garnered even a little opposition. Party line votes on judicial nominees are not the norm. Nominees confirmed unanimously and voice vote are far more common.

What this tells you is senators do not consider confirmation votes critical to their reelection, at least not to the same degree as legislation. Some confirmations matter a great deal. At some point in history, a confirmation vote surely affected a senator’s reelection. But those cases are rare. The overwhelming majority of senators who voted for the current Supreme Court justices remained in the Senate after their votes.  And if voting patterns indicate how important confirmations are to reelection, most senators, most of the time, have not considered them anything close to a career ender.

In short, there’s a reason the legislative filibuster has a special exemption. Giving up the ability to affect legislation would be the equivalent of a majority of the Senate (or at least 50) giving up what makes being a senator cool. Many, if not most, aren’t happy they are giving up power on nominations. The ability to force presidents to moderate their choices for someone more personally appealing is nothing to scoff at. However, the individual power to affect policy has defined the Senate. It is a fundamentally different power. Majority Leader McConnell doesn’t have the votes to nuke the legislative filibuster. And in all likelihood, he hasn’t even seriously considered it.

Joshua C. Huder, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute.

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Topics: Legislative Procedure
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