President Trump vs. The Filibuster

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File

President Trump brings an outsider's perspective to the long debate over the Senate filibuster. An overwhelming majority of the Senate disagrees with his desire to kill the filibuster, which means he doesn't have a prayer of winning. But he's not entirely wrong, either.

Set aside Trump's sledgehammer tweets directed at Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In private conversations, Trump has made a reasonable and sophisticated case against the filibuster. Not only has the filibuster been eliminated for appointments, Trump has noted, it has also been eliminated (through the process of reconciliation) for some of the most important things the Senate does — that is, the budget and related bills it passes each year. So now, after all those changes, what remains of the filibuster is somehow supposed to be sacred and can never be changed again?

Trump's question not only recognizes the reality of former Majority Leader's Harry Reid's nuclear-option destruction of the filibuster for appointments, and McConnell's extension of that to Supreme Court nominations — it also takes into account the reality of reconciliation, by which, a generation ago, the Senate killed the filibuster for budget-related bills. The rule allows those measures to pass on a simple majority vote.

In other words, the filibuster has been steadily whittled down — by the Senate itself, of course, and not by a headstrong president — so why can't the Senate do it again?

Read the rest from Byron York HERE.

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