Sen. Thune rules out nuking the legislative filibuster to end the government shutdown

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is refusing to use the so-called nuclear option to get rid of the legislative filibuster so Republicans can end the government shutdown without needing Democratic votes.

“The 60-vote threshold has protected this country,” the South Dakota Republican said, noting that Democrats could have enacted “a whole lot of bad things” if the legislative filibuster were not in place.

Having a supermajority requirement to pass legislation is what “makes the Senate the Senate,” Mr. Thune said.

“The filibuster protects; it’s been a voice for the minority; it gives the minority a say in what happens in this country,” he said. “The founders created the Senate uniquely that way, for that specific reason.”

Senate Democrats have been filibustering a House-passed stopgap bill that would fund the government through Nov. 21. The Democrats are demanding a bipartisan negotiation over health care and extending a COVID-era expansion of Obamacare premium subsidies set to expire this year.

Mr. Thune said the easier solution to ending the shutdown is five more Senate Democrats voting to end their party’s filibuster of the stopgap bill and reopen the government.

“We need five bold, courageous Democrats with a backbone who are willing to take on their far-left, activist base, join us in passing this,” he said.

Some Republican lawmakers and conservative activists have called for an end to the legislative filibuster in light of the shutdown.

“Senate Republicans CAN reopen the government by using the nuclear option, overriding the 60-vote rule,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on social media Thursday.

Senate rules changes typically take a two-thirds majority vote to enact, but Democrats and Republicans have both deployed the so-called nuclear option in recent years to change the rules with a simple majority. Those moves have largely ended the filibuster for executive and judicial nominations.

Several Senate Democrats in recent years have called for ending the legislative filibuster. They’ve argued it impedes passing voting rights legislation and codifying federal protections for abortion that were eroded by the Supreme Court.

Republicans, after taking back the Senate majority in the 2024 election, have resisted engaging in similar calls because they know the shoe could again be on the other foot.

“Frankly, that’s what I think this last election was largely about,” Mr. Thune said. “If the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would have tried to nuke the filibuster, and then you’d have four new United States senators from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, you’d have a packed Supreme Court, you’d have abortion on demand, a whole bunch of things that were on that laundry list.”

Ms. Greene said Democrats will try to end the filibuster if they regain power, so Republicans should beat them to the punch. She pointed to Senate Democrats’ 2022 effort to create a filibuster carveout for voting rights legislation.

That effort failed because of opposition from then Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have both since left the Senate and switched their party affiliations to independent.

Many Senate Democrats remain interested in changing the legislative filibuster rules, although some who supported the 2022 carve-out are unlikely to support fully getting rid of it. But many Republicans believe that is still a likely outcome if Democrats retake the majority.

“Bipartisanship is dead and everyone knows it,” Ms. Greene said. “Republicans should use the nuclear option and pass our agenda. Democrats most definitely will if they regain power!”

Some members of both parties have suggested a filibuster carveout for government funding bills.

“Just have an exception where 51 senators can keep the government open and that will prevent shutdowns, whether we have a Republican or Democratic president,” Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, said Thursday on Fox Business.

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, one of only three Senate Democrats backing the GOP stopgap bill, said he would support ending the filibuster to “make it a lot harder to shut the government down.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno, Ohio Republican, told HuffPost he is open to using the nuclear option to end the shutdown if Democrats drag it out for much longer.

“I think if it takes too long, that’s probably an option that should be considered,” he said. “There’s probably 80% of Americans that can’t go without two paychecks in a row. I think at that point we have to look at it and say, if the Democrats are still doing political stunts, we have to do the right thing and reopen the government and pay our employees.”

Still, a majority of GOP senators agree with Mr. Thune and are against altering the legislative filibuster.

“I do not support nuking the filibuster,” Sen. Mike Rounds, South Dakota Republican, told reporters last week. “Long term, I think the Senate would be doing an injustice to the country.”

The Senate, he said, is “where the heat of the day, the emotion of the day, is secondary, and the long-term look of people that have a six-year term comes into play to where you look at the big picture.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, also said the filibuster is an important safeguard to “prevent one party just running roughshod.”

“I would be deeply concerned if the Democrats had a bare majority in the Senate right now of Marxist ideology taking over the Democrat Party,” he said. “Do I want them to have no safeguards and no stumbling blocks or hurdles at all in the way of turning us into a communist country? I don’t think that’s a great idea.”