Filibuster

Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I rise today to express my opposition to the majority leader's plan to change the Senate rules. It will open the door wide for the filibuster to be eliminated for all legislation moving forward.

The bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called the ``cooling saucer of democracy'' into the rubberstamp of dictatorship. They want to because they can't get their way. They want to wash away 200 years of history. They want to turn this country into a banana republic, where if you can't get your way, you change the rules. It would be a doomsday for democracy.

These are strong words, and these are wise words, but they are not my words. They are direct quotes from Senator Schumer back in 2005, when he was a staunch opponent of weakening the filibuster. That is because during that time, the then-junior Senator from New York and his Democratic colleagues were making unprecedented use of the filibuster to derail President George W. Bush's judicial nominees.

The majority leader at one point profoundly admitted that ``[y]es, we are blocking judges by filibuster. That is part of the hallowed process around here of the Founding Fathers saying the Senate is the cooling saucer.''

But things have certainly changed two decades later.

President Biden, the majority leader, and their Democratic allies were intent on ending the filibuster the second the Democrats won the Senate last January.

The majority leader's latest attempt is to force a carve-out of the filibuster for what he claims will be just for one piece of legislation. But he knows where it leads: the full elimination of the filibuster and sooner rather than later.

I thought my friend the senior Senator from West Virginia put it perfectly last week. He said:

The problem with carve-outs is that you end up eating the whole bird.

There is no such thing as a carve-out when it comes to the filibuster. We all know it. I will talk a little bit about that later.

But for more than a century, the filibuster has served as a safeguard for our Republic. It has prevented one party from ramming through an ideological agenda when that party controls both the White House and Congress.

Without the filibuster, both the far left and the far right would have free rein to ram through extreme ideological agendas. Divisive partisan proposals could become law with only a simple majority. And with both parties regularly trading control of Congress, laws can just as easily be overturned and replaced, promoting the kind of chaotic, confusing policymaking we see in some European Parliaments.

By requiring 60 votes to end debate in the Senate, the filibuster promotes stability. It necessitates bipartisan compromise to pass legislation. That is something we need more of, not less.

I saw it firsthand when I was a proud participant in the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. That is the way this Chamber needs to work.

That is why when President Trump demanded, I think some 30 times, that the Republicans should eliminate the filibuster in 2017, 61 Senators joined together in a letter making it clear that we would not let it happen. Thirty-two were Democrats, and 29 were Republicans. I was one of them.

And even though I received my fair share of pushback from my side of the aisle back in North Carolina, I was proud to sign that letter in 2017, and I would be proud to sign that letter today.

Unfortunately, this modest display of political courage has not been reciprocated by many of my friends on the other side of the aisle. Twenty-seven of the Senators who signed that letter are still in the Senate. Twenty-six of them are now supporting the full elimination of the filibuster. What changed? Nothing except the party in power.

Democrats staunchly defended and used the filibuster when Donald Trump was President at an unprecedented level, but Democrats are suddenly against the filibuster now that Joe Biden is President. Many of my Democratic colleagues are practicing situational principles: putting their own party's short-term interests ahead of what they know are the best long-term interests for the Senate and the Nation. It doesn't get more politically cynical than that.

President Biden served in the Senate for 36 years. He was known as a strong defender of the institution, including the filibuster. In this very Chamber, 21 years ago, Senator Biden declared that defending the filibuster was about defending ``compromise and moderation.'' And he noted that his speech was one of the most important he would ever give. But now he favors destroying compromise, moderation, and the institution he had long cherished, all for the sake of political expediency for the next 12 months, until Republicans take back the House and most likely the Senate.

As I noted earlier, the majority leader also shares a partisan double standard with the President. In a ``Dear Colleague'' letter just earlier this month, he wrote that ``Senate Democrats must urge the public in a variety of different ways to impress upon their Senators the importance of acting and reforming the Senate rules, if that becomes a prerequisite for action to save our democracy.''

The Senate rule change he refers to is carving out the filibuster in order to pass one of the far left's priorities; that is, the voting bill that many of my Members or colleagues have talked about today.

But in 2018, the then-Senate minority leader struck a different tone. He said:

The legislative filibuster . . . is the most important distinction between the Senate and the House. Without the 60- vote threshold for legislation, the Senate becomes a majoritarian institution like the House . . . no Senator would like to see that happen.

What is the difference between today and only a few short years ago? Again, it is the party that is in power.

This same pattern of situational principles also applies to the majority whip. He went on national television when Donald Trump was President to warn that eliminating the filibuster ``would be the end of the Senate as it was originally devised.''

That is Senator Durbin.

But less than 4 years later, after Democrats won control of the White House and the Senate, the majority whip has a much different take. He recently declared that ``the filibuster is making a mockery of the American democracy.'' He made that statement after he and his fellow Democrats used the filibuster a recordbreaking 328 times between 2019 and 2020, when President Trump was in office. That level hypocrisy is audacious, even by Washington, DC, standards.

And I know Democrats have been pushing back on this claim, claiming they are not trying to end the filibuster. They assure us that this is a one-time deal that will only apply to this one bill.

I would refer them to Newton's third law of physics: ``For every action, there is an equal and opposite action.'' It most definitely applies to Senate rules as well.

In 2013, Senate Democrats invoked the nuclear option to end the 60- vote cloture requirement on judicial and Executive nominees other than the Supreme Court. All Republicans, and even a handful of Democrats, including the senior Senator from West Virginia, pleaded with the Democrats not to do it.

Minority Leader McConnell warned Democrats at the time that ``you'll regret this, and you might regret it even sooner than you think.'' But they did it anyway. And, indeed, there was that reaction.

Four years later, Republicans controlled the Senate, and we used the nuclear option to finish what our Democratic colleagues started on the executive calendar. We ended the 60-vote requirement for Supreme Court nominees.

There is a clear precedent on what happens when we change the Senate rules on a partisan basis for political expediency. It produces long- term consequences that I believe both sides will ultimately regret.

Democrats invoked the nuclear option to get more district judges, but by doing so, they paved the path for Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett, who now sit on the Supreme Court today.

What do we think now if the Democrats nuke the filibuster for just one bill? The Senate rule change that the majority leader is pushing is really a proxy vote for ending the legislative filibuster altogether and turning the Senate into the House, full stop.

So I ask my Democratic colleagues to consider this: When President Trump called for ending the filibuster, a large majority of Republican Senators stood up to preserve bipartisanship and to protect and respect this institution. Now, the roles are reversed. President Biden and the majority leader are demanding that you give them your vote to weaken the filibuster so it can ultimately be ended.

To my Democratic colleagues who signed on to the very same letter I did in difficult circumstances, I ask you: Will you stand up for the principles that you stood for just a few years ago and respect and defend this institution?

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