Don’t nuke the Senate filibuster

OPINION:

Why do politicians keep referring to America as a “democracy”? How many times have we heard that former President Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy”? By democracy, they mean majority rule.

Yes, we are a democracy. We vote our politicians in and out of office.

But more precisely, we are a republic. This is basic civics: Our forefathers set up checks and balances to protect against majority rule and to safeguard the rights of the minority. We have three branches of government, two houses of Congress, a presidential veto to repel bad laws and a Supreme Court to strike down laws that violate the rights of our citizens.

We have 50 states that make their own laws. These are all safeguards against tyranny.

In short, we don’t have mob rule in the United States. Sorry, 51% can’t impose their iron-fisted rule on the other 49% — thank God.

Now, Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats in Congress promise to end the filibuster in the Senate if they take power. This would allow a Democratic or Republican majority to steamroll legislation through with just 51 votes, not 60.

This is mob rule that would endanger the rights of the minority. It would also make it easier for Congress to pass laws. We should want to make it harder, given how many bad and invasive laws we live under today.

To be fair, Republicans have tried this when they have had majorities in the Senate. I made a lot of enemies when I came out against the Republicans for attempting to take this nuclear option several years ago. Even for appointments to the Supreme Court, it should take 60 votes, not 51, given the enormous power conferred to these robed justices.

One of the most brilliant defenses of the filibuster comes from Sen. Mike Lee. When President Biden was elected, he argued that retaining the 60-vote rule in the Senate should be sacrosanct.

The Utah Republican said that many Democrats “see the Senate’s 60-vote cloture threshold not as a prudent protection of minority rights, but as an anti-democratic obstacle to progress.”

Indeed, former President Barack Obama — a prolific filibusterer himself in his Senate career — falsely derided the filibuster rule as a “Jim Crow relic.”

But Mr. Lee warned: “The true purpose of nuking the filibuster is not to ’finally get things done’ or to ’break through the gridlock’ or any other hackish trope parroted by the political press. Rather, it is to allow a Senate majority to pass partisan bills that aren’t politically compelling enough to attract bipartisan support.”

He warns Democrats that if they “nuke the filibuster, they are being shortsighted.” Republicans will use these same new rules to pass a “border wall, school vouchers, more gun rights, election integrity laws, defunding of woke programs” and so on.

Mr. Lee then said that even though he would support all of these bills, abandoning the filibuster isn’t the way to achieve these legislative victories.

I’d like to commend two Senate Democrats who put country above party and saved the filibuster. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona were the two Senate Democrats who heroically saved the filibuster two years ago. (Both have since left the Democratic Party and become independents.)

That’s the good news. The bad news is that both will leave the Senate next year.

The Democrats may sweep the November election, or the election may tilt the other way to a wave for Republicans winning the political troika: the White House, Senate and House. Who in the Senate will take a principled position as Mr. Lee, Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema have done to prevent mob rule in Washington?

The filibuster is not in the Constitution. In the first years of our nation, however, George Washington called the Senate the chamber of Congress that would “cool” legislation coming from the House of Representatives. The Senate is supposed to be the most deliberative body ever invented, which can be frustrating for those who want dramatic change.

But bad laws passed in the heat of the moment are much worse than no laws.

• Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and co-author of the new book “The Trump Economic Miracle.”